UC San Diego

This thesis explores the intersection of art, automatism, belief and machine learning, probing the nuanced relationship between artists and generative algorithms as tools for creating imagery and text. A historical connection is drawn between contemporary machine-assisted image generation and early spiritualistic automatic generative practices, such as automatic writing and drawing, used to communicate with entities beyond the self. The thesis investigates how such practices have evolved over time, highlighting the design and commodification of the planchette, a tool once used for automatic drawing and spiritual communication, which led to the birth of the Ouija board.

These tools of automation are posed as prototypes for the newer interfaces of virtualized communication, such as the mouse and keyboard. This suggests that contemporary devices which are used to navigate digital space have a direct lineage to designs which invite automatic interaction. The thesis extends this historical exploration into the domain of net.art, identifying parallels between the surfing practices of the first digital artist groups, and both Western Spiritualist Automatism and the artist games of the early Avant-garde.