A book.
A system.
Decisions.

The medium examined by this book is the medium that made it.

The Model is the Massage revisits Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore’s The Medium Is the Massage (1967). Where the earlier book explored an environment shaped by electric media, this work encounters systems that generate language, images and interpretations. AI writes about AI. The resulting book asks what changes when a medium can participate in producing its own account of the world.

The experiment began with a human-designed production system. AI agents analysed the earlier book’s rhetorical and visual operations, developed contemporary connections and generated alternative texts. Atticus Sims directed the conceptual inquiry, augmented its theoretical inputs, selected material and asked for revisions. Agents wrote those revisions. Joanna Junying YAN led the graphic design, working with the team to transform proposals and generated material into typography, imagery, layouts and a sequence of pages.

The cover reads 23:58. The opening asks, “How can I help you this Evening?” The work places McLuhan and Fiore’s electronic dawn at the end of a cycle: a medium now generates the forms of earlier media. This temporal reversal is part of the artwork’s premise.

Three movements structure the book: The Environment, The Acceleration and The Dreamscape. Fingerprints meet circuitry. Identity becomes data. Repeated faces unsettle the apparent stability of an image. Typography changes scale; a statement is interrupted by a page turn. These operations make reading part of the inquiry.

The website extends that inquiry into another medium. A cursor introduces the work. Graphic forms trace, repeat and pause; an eye responds to the viewer. A changing stage borrows the rhythm of the spread and the page turn. Visitors can move through the presentation or stop to inspect the complete book and a recorded decision behind its making.

Developed in the Creative Intelligence Lab at the University of Macau and personally funded by Sims, the work is independently published and freely accessible. Its fixed edition gives generated language a form that can be scrutinised and returned to. The book, film and website invite readers to consider how computational proposals and human decisions together shape an artwork.

AI agents wrote the book’s prose, including its revisions. Atticus Sims designed and directed the production system, shaped its conceptual inquiry, contributed thinkers and sources, selected material and requested changes. Agents supplied the revised writing. Joanna Junying YAN led the graphic design, working with the collaborating team on the imagery, typography, page layouts and sequence. The artwork emerges from these distinct contributions: a system capable of proposing language, and people deciding how that language becomes a book.

The agents also researched and synthesised theoretical connections under human direction and augmentation. The final book’s graphic form was composed by the human team. The website makes those differences visible instead of treating the whole process as a single act.

Inspect a recorded editorial decision ↗

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 systems that generate language and images also shape perception, authorship and artistic production.

Developed in the Creative Intelligence Lab at the University of Macau, the project brings these questions into the form of an artist book. Sims designed and directed the production system, shaped its conceptual framework, selected material and directed agent-written revisions. He worked with graphic design lead Joanna Junying YAN and a collaborating team to give the work its final visual form. Personally funded by Sims and freely available online, the project treats system construction, editorial direction and graphic design as connected creative practices.

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

Film director, editor & sound designer

Ao LI

Film producer

Atticus Sims

Film planning & graphic design lead

Joanna Junying YAN

Film photography & video

Yanxiu Zhao; Haozheng Wu

Website interpretation

Developed with OpenAI Codex, under the editorial and artistic direction of Atticus Sims

Work / year

The Model is the Massage / 2026

Medium

Experimental artist book, moving image and interactive website

Materials

AI-generated prose and visual material; human-directed revisions, imagery, typography, layout and sequencing; digital images, PDF, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and original vector graphics

Book tools

Claude (Anthropic); Gemini image-generation workflow; custom analysis, planning and authoring interfaces; Adobe InDesign

Website edition

85 views: cover and 84 spreads, following the published website sequence

Companion PDF

169 PDF pages; retained InDesign export dated 1 April 2026

Document dimensions

110 × 184 mm per page in the InDesign document and PDF

Film

2 minutes 7.73 seconds; complete film with sound; 16:9; native 720p and 1080p H.264/AAC editions

Publication

Independently published; freely accessible online

Affiliation & funding

Creative Intelligence Lab, University of Macau; personally funded by Atticus Sims

The complete reader follows the confirmed website edition. The downloadable PDF preserves the retained April InDesign export; it is a companion export rather than a claim that every word and image is identical to the website edition. The document dimensions above are digital page measurements, not measurements of a finished printed object.

Read all 85 views ↗
Open the 169-page companion PDF · 30 MB ↗

This is an independent project responding to McLuhan and Fiore’s 1967 work. It is not presented as an authorised edition or estate-endorsed publication.

The film introduces a book about AI made with AI. A mid-century announcer-like voice connects the project to McLuhan and Fiore’s use of the page as a performance of an idea. Screens replace faces. The film turns from networks of agents and human judgment toward the book’s Dreamscape, where the distinction between a generated image and a reliable account of the world becomes unsettled.

The full edit is presented intact. It was directed, edited and sound designed by Ao LI, and produced by Atticus Sims. The website’s written story and complete book remain accessible independently of playback.

This is an editorial synopsis, not a verbatim transcript. The native film has no separately verified caption track.

Watch the complete film ↗

Use Next and Previous, the chapter index, or the left and right arrow keys when focus is on the presentation. On a full-height desktop stage, a deliberate scroll turns the page; on a phone, swipe sideways or use the arrows. Longer screens retain ordinary vertical scrolling.

Motion can be switched off at any time and follows your device’s reduced-motion preference. The film plays only when requested. The reader provides full-size images and a separate text view. This page contains the written project story, biography, credits and technical details without requiring animation.