THE MODEL
IS THE MASSAGE

An experimental artist book · 2026

Atticus Sims
& collaborators

The Model
is the Massage

The medium that this book examines is the medium that created it.

An experimental artist book in which AI writes about AI. A human-designed production system, sustained editorial judgment and graphic design turn the model’s language into a book about the conditions of its own making.

Read the book ↗Explore the process ↓Watch the film ↓
The Model is the Massage cover: a phone interface and a hand against a black background.
THE BOOK AS AN INTERFACE

01 / The book

An inventory
of model effects.

Eight spreads from one complete digital edition. Open a spread to inspect the composition, or read each page at its own pace in the full reader.

Black and white double-page composition joining a fingerprint with circuit traces, with the words ‘… the massage?’
01The human becomes computationalFingerprint ridges meet the paths of a circuit. A bodily mark becomes an image of the computational environment the book examines.
Read PDF pages 6–7 →
The opening thesis of the book, set as dense black and white text across two pages.
02Already hereThe opening thesis begins with the reader’s ordinary day. This is the finished spread connected to the documented editorial decision below.
Read PDF pages 10–11 →
White statements including ‘Your name is a string’ and ‘Your face is a vector’ set over a dark log-file image.
03Identity becomes dataA name, a face, an address and a history become fields in a system. Short statements and a log-file background give the argument its visual form.
Read PDF pages 48–49 →
A black and white coastal landscape beside the heading ‘A brand-new world of generated reality’ and a text column.
04A world of generated realityAn image and a block of explanatory text introduce The Acceleration. The page asks readers to reconsider what a convincing image now establishes.
Read PDF pages 64–65 →
The phrase ‘When models are trained on models’ next to a sequence of increasingly distorted faces.
05When models are trained on modelsA sequence of faces gives recursive generation a visible rhythm. Repetition and degradation become part of the argument, rather than background decoration.
Read PDF pages 78–79 →
A very large letter M dominates a two-page typographic composition reading ‘The Model’.
06The modelA letter becomes a page-sized event. Scale and interruption change the pace of reading before the following spread completes the phrase.
Read PDF pages 134–135 →
A restrained black and white typographic spread with the words ‘is anything’.
07Is anythingThe adjacent typographic statement is given space to remain unresolved. The page turn is a designed interval in the book’s argument.
Read PDF pages 136–137 →
Close detail of a human eye beside a page of text, including ‘Talk to the model, not to the programmer’.
08The DreamscapeThe eye turns the inquiry toward perception and consciousness. Image, quotation and open space invite a slower reading of the book’s speculative movement.
Read PDF pages 144–145 →

The complete book, freely accessible.
169 PDF pages · No account required

Open the full reader ↗Open / download PDF ↗

02 / The proposition

AI writes
about AI.

The medium that this book examines is the medium that created it.

The Model is the Massage is an experimental artist book in which AI writes about AI. It revisits Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore’s The Medium Is the Massage (1967), asking what happens when a medium can generate its own account of the world. The change from ‘medium’ to ‘model’ names a change in the environment: systems that once carried messages now produce language, images and interpretations.

The experiment began with a human-designed system for reading the earlier book’s rhetorical and visual operations. Networks of AI agents analysed those operations, proposed contemporary counterparts and generated alternative texts. People constructed and directed the system, set its conceptual framework, compared the alternatives, and selected and edited the writing. The final graphic design and page layout were created by the human team. AI writing is essential to the proposition, while the book’s final form depends on extensive human conceptual, editorial and design work.

Three movements — The Environment, The Acceleration and The Dreamscape — move from the computational systems surrounding everyday life to their recursive effects and speculative implications. Fingerprints meet circuitry. Identity becomes data. Repeated generation unsettles the stability of a face. Changes of scale, typographic interruptions and the sequence of spreads make the argument something encountered through reading, rather than an explanation laid over illustrations.

The book also gives generated language a form that can be stopped, scrutinised and returned to. Its fixed sequence contrasts with the endless availability of another response. That tension makes authorship visible as a set of decisions: how to construct a system, what to keep from its outputs, what to change, and how to give the result a public form.

Developed in the Creative Intelligence Lab at the University of Macau and personally funded by Atticus Sims, the work is independently published and freely available online. The complete digital edition, production evidence and companion film invite readers to examine both the artwork and its making. When people design a system that writes, how do its language and their decisions together shape what can be thought?

03 / How it was made

A system.
Then decisions.

The system produced alternatives. The artwork took shape through the decisions people made across analysis, writing, editing, design and sequencing.

  1. 01

    Construct

    Atticus Sims designed the production system and conceptual framework, organising an inquiry into the earlier book’s rhetorical and visual operations.

  2. 02

    Generate

    Networks of AI agents analysed, planned and generated alternatives. AI writing formed the material of an experiment about the medium producing it.

  3. 03

    Select & edit

    Human review compared alternatives, recorded judgments and changed the writing. The example below connects an actual review note to a revised text and finished spread.

  4. 04

    Give form

    Joanna Junying YAN led graphic design. The human team created final typography, page layout and sequence in the independently published book.

Production interface showing generated text alternatives, quality ratings and review controls.
Production interface, preserved from the project archive. This screenshot documents the comparison workflow; the traceable example alongside it is drawn from the saved review records.

A documented editorial decision / spread_009

Choosing C.
Bringing B into it.

The generated opening in option C began with the reader’s day. Option B developed the idea of “cognitive assemblages”. The reviewer selected C and asked to bring the conceptual passage from B into it.

“B and C are both good. Choosing C. I like the cognitive assemblages of B. Perhaps could integrate with C”

The revised draft combines those elements, and the combination appears in the finished book on PDF pages 10–11. Selection and integration alter the argument; the final page is the outcome of that editorial work.

Inspect the source sequence

Generated option C, opening
Before you opened this book, a model chose the news you read this morning.

Review decision
B and C are both good. Choosing C. I like the cognitive assemblages of B. Perhaps could integrate with C

Revised draft and finished book, closing
The assemblage is already here. You joined it this morning. You are in one now.

Review export: 5 March 2026. Sources: authoring_output.json, review_selections.json, revised_drafts.json and the selected digital edition. The records do not identify who typed each intervening revision.

Examine the finished spread ↗Read the evidence extract

04 / Human–AI authorship

Where authorship
takes place.

AI generated writing and visual material within a production system designed and directed by the human team. Human authorship included constructing that system, developing the conceptual framework, selecting and editing generated text, and creating all final graphic design and page layout. Atticus Sims led the project and system architecture; Joanna Junying YAN led graphic design. AI was both a production medium and the subject of the book’s inquiry. Its final form depends on sustained human conceptual, editorial and design decisions.

Concept & system
Human: conceptual direction, production architecture, workflow and criteria.
Generated material
AI: analysis, proposed counterparts, alternative writing and visual material.
Editorial judgment
Human: comparison, selection, integration and editing of generated writing.
Final design
Human: graphic design, typography and all final page layout. Joanna Junying YAN, graphic design lead.

05 / Companion film

The book
in motion.

The published companion film extends the project into moving image and sound. The complete book and written account above remain independently accessible.

Directed, edited and sound designed by Ao LI
Produced by Atticus Sims

Watch directly on YouTube ↗
Published cut · 2:07 · YouTube captions available

The player loads from YouTube only when requested. If embedding is unavailable, use the direct link.

Read a concise account of the film

The film introduces the premise that the medium examined by the book is the medium that made it. It links the project to McLuhan and Fiore’s performative use of the page, describes networks of AI agents producing options for human judgment, and carries the book into its Dreamscape movement. This is an editorial synopsis, not a verbatim transcript. The published film provides auto-generated English captions.

06 / Artist & collaborators

Atticus Sims
& collaborators.

Developed in the Creative Intelligence Lab at the University of Macau. Personally funded by Atticus Sims.

Atticus Sims is an artist, designer, educator and researcher working with generative AI as both a creative medium and a subject of inquiry. His practice connects experimental publishing, media theory and the design of systems for human–AI creative work. The Model is the Massage asks how a medium that generates language and images also reshapes perception, authorship and the conditions of artistic production.

Developed in the Creative Intelligence Lab at the University of Macau, the project brings those questions into the form of an artist book. As project director and systems architect, Sims constructed the production system, directed its conceptual framework, and selected and edited generated writing. He worked with graphic design lead Joanna Junying YAN and a collaborating team to make the final book and its public digital presentation. Personally funded by Sims, the work treats system construction, editorial judgment and visual form as interdependent creative responsibilities.

Artist website ↗
Project director & systems architect
Atticus Sims
Graphic design lead
Joanna Junying YAN
Contributors
Lawrence Kangqi SONG; Cong WU; Sheryn Xiaoyu WANG; Ao LI; Chao MA
Companion film: director, editor & sound designer
Ao LI
Companion film: producer
Atticus Sims
Companion film: project planning & graphic design lead
Joanna Junying YAN
Companion film: photography & video
Yanxiu Zhao; Haozheng Wu

07 / Object & archive

A fixed object.
An open archive.

Work
Experimental artist book; human–AI co-authorship
Year
2026
Digital edition
169 PDF pages; complete edition reproduced in the reader
Page format
110 × 184 mm in the InDesign document and digital PDF
Materials / media
Generated writing and visual material; human editing, typography and page layout; digital PDF and printed book
Principal tools
Claude (Anthropic); Gemini image-generation workflow; custom web-based analysis, planning and authoring tools; Adobe InDesign
Publication
Independently published; freely available online; seeking an external publisher
Affiliation
Creative Intelligence Lab, University of Macau
Funding
Personally funded by Atticus Sims; no university funding
Hands turning pages of the actual printed book on a dark surface.
Actual printed book, documented in the project’s page-turn footage. Frame at 00:15; the camera’s original orientation is retained.

The page as a place
to pause.

Held and turned by hand, the printed object gives generated language a bounded sequence. The digital archive makes that sequence available for close reading.

Complete digital edition ↗Immersive companion ↗

The page format above is verified from the InDesign document and PDF. It is a digital document measurement, not a measurement of a finished print. The project revisits the intellectual and formal proposition of Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore’s The Medium Is the Massage (1967); it is an independent work and is not presented as an authorised edition or estate-endorsed publication.

Open full-size image for closer inspection ↗