the Department of Control is an imaginary Department operating in a society subjugated by a totalitarian regime disguised as a modern democracy, for the maintenance of absolute control over the masses mainly through Propaganda instruments; It is largely inspired by the dystopian future imagined by George Orwell, resulting in a series of visual assets created by Vincent Moro characterized by a brutalist graphic style.
Following is a short synopsis written by Vincent Moro in 2012 that sketches the context in which the ‘Department of Control’ is set, accompanied by some of the early graphics that originally defined its visual style.
For 99% of the world’s population, private ownership of consumer goods and assets is only a distant memory. Everything: the phone, the car, the house, the land… even genetic heritage belongs to large corporations of industrial producers, financial groups, and a very small elite of human beings: the one percent. Even lifestyles are rentable; anyone* can afford to live like a VIP for a limited period of time. Money has been supplanted by digital credits; coins survive only in the underground market where a barter-based exchange system predominates. Digital identity coincides with the physical and legal identity of the individual and is managed, administered, and regulated by a central, supranational operating system called GLOs (Global Life Operating System). The Internet is no longer free, online content is systematically sifted, filtered, and censored based on algorithmic criteria dictated by the Supreme Council of the Network. Connection to the network is granted only to certified citizens who possess a regular cybernetic digital passport. Digital anonymity is against the law, repeat offenders are permanently disconnected and effectively condemned to live on the margins of society. Certified citizens, constantly connected to the network, have developed a serious chronic dependence: Internet Pathological Addiction Disorder (Ipad), characterized by a compulsive rejection of the real world contrasted with an obsessive need for digital stimuli which, in the most severe cases, can lead to terminal burnout.
Today, however, it is possible to protect individual memories thanks to neural digitization services, capable of archiving and preserving “the life experience of a human being in 3 atoms of liquid memory,” as asserted by Hippocampus Technologies, which has developed the proprietary technology capable of extracting memories from the hippocampus and translating them into digital format.
Generic public education is reduced to the national free self-learning program, through ministerial Apps. Some prestigious universities have survived thanks to the investment of private industries that have effectively acquired academic institutions of strategic interest. The main food and pharmaceutical industries have united, forming an omnipotent supra-governmental oligopoly, capable of directing the health and agri-food policies of individual nations; so much so that the related ministries are commonly considered as mere operational centers. Non-genetically modified organic foods are now a rare delicacy, exclusively destined for the most affluent palates, while world hunger has finally been defeated thanks to the mass diffusion of very low-cost transgenic foods, produced at an industrial level.
Unfortunately, with the progressive reduction of opportunities for physical contact between human beings, our immune system has gradually weakened, favoring the pandemic spread of particularly aggressive para-influenza viruses, which in some areas of the globe have decimated entire populations.
The sky is populated by drones of all types: delivery drones, media drones, departmental drones, military drones, urban security drones. The latter category includes the “Drone Patrol”: the metropolitan police charged with enforcing order and ensuring security in densely populated areas, particularly disliked by the population for its blind devotion to the letter of the law, applied without any tolerance. Despite the ubiquitous presence of the Drone Patrol and other remote control and surveillance systems, personal security is not at all guaranteed; urban crime is rampant, often resulting in episodes of uncontrolled mass violence.
The popularity of DIY protection kits is growing: DIY Justice package; such as the famous “Cobra Kit”, produced by the company of the same name, industry leader, now in its tenth edition and offering different solutions for all needs (home edition, business edition, sport & leisure edition, the most popular).
The global stock market has never recovered from the systemic collapse of 2020, triggered by the unfortunate malfunction of the 3 main high-frequency trading algorithms, apparently due to a trivial programming error in the related management software. The economies of the United States, Northern Europe, and Mediterranean Europe are still on their knees, crushed between the rigid protectionist policies of the BRICS countries and the ruthless speculation operated by thirsty Eastern financial groups.
The increasingly widespread use of robots and automatons in the world of work, in the absence of concrete alternative development plans by governments, has resulted in an unemployment rate of 67%. Currently, in Southern Europe, only one in 10 young people has a stable income capable of guaranteeing their own livelihood, while one in two young people has an illegal income mainly derived from online criminal activities.
If you like to contribute to the Propaganda of the Department of Corntrol check out Vincent Moro’s “Weapons of Mass Communication” an ongoing collection of vector graphic assets released by the author under “Creative Commons” and therefore freely available and usable for non-commercial artistic purposes, to further expand the Department’s narrative and spread its messages worldwide.