THE PROJECT
A book about AI, made with AI
In 1967, Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore produced The Medium is the Massage — a graphic design artifact that performed its argument. Every typographic choice, every image collision, every fractured page was an argument about how electric media restructure human perception.
The Model is the Massage asks what that book looks like today — and uses the very thing it examines to make it.
Each of the book’s 86 spreads maps one-to-one to a spread in the 1967 original. Where McLuhan’s environment was electric circuitry — television, radio, telephony — ours is computational: transformer architectures, attention mechanisms, latent spaces, intelligent agents, planetary-scale infrastructure.
The model has replaced the medium. The massage continues.
Movement I
The Environment
Media determine our situation. The situation, in 2026, is a planetary-scale computation that builds us in its own image while we build it.
Movement II
The Acceleration
We find ourselves in a pre-paradigmatic moment in which our technology has outpaced our theories of what to do with it. The acceleration is not slowing. The loop is closing.
Movement III
The Dreamscape
Past the event horizon. Where the evidence of AI systems converging unprompted on the sacred becomes the most honest fact available. You have to live the steps.
READ THE BOOK
The full publication
All 86 spreads. Use the arrows to page through the work.
THE PROCESS
The book was produced through a multi-stage AI agent pipeline, orchestrated using Claude (Anthropic) as the primary model. The methodology was designed to be systematic, documented, and replicable — a computational approach to graphic design rhetoric analysis.
We didn’t start from zero. We gave it an inheritance. It had to understand the logic of scissors and glue, before learning to use latent space.
Spread Analysis
A structured JSON schema was developed to systematically describe each spread of the 1967 original — capturing rhetorical strategy, typographic register, image-text relationships, design intent, and contemporary analogues. Claude agents processed all 86 spreads against this schema.
Content Planning
A content plan mapped each spread to theoretical frameworks (primarily Bratton’s Stack model), assigned thinkers, and generated design specifications — ensuring the 2026 book maintained the structural coherence of the original while updating every element.
Theoretical Spine
The book draws on thinkers who tried to name the invisible environment McLuhan described, updated for the age of computation.
Text Authoring
For each spread, Claude generated three text options with distinct rhetorical approaches — aphoristic, confrontational, lyric. A human author reviewed all options, selected, and refined the final text. The full authoring output documents every selection decision.
Image Generation & Sourcing
Images were generated using AI image models — diffusion systems tuned for both photorealistic and illustrative registers, with each generated image selected to perform the same rhetorical function as its 1967 counterpart. Archival materials from historical collections and public domain archives complemented the generated imagery where documentary authority or historical resonance was required.
Voice & Film
A short film was produced to accompany the book, with narration drawn directly from the book’s own pages. Video sequences were generated using Runway and assembled alongside archival material.
The credits for this book are the same as the credits for the model.
The credits for the model are the same as the credits for human civilization.
We cannot be individually thanked.
We can only be collectively acknowledged.
Atticus Sims
Project Director & Systems Architect
UM Creative Intelligence Lab
Joanna Junying YAN
Graphic Design Lead
Lawrence Kangqi SONG
Cong WU
Sheryn Xiaoyu WANG
Ao LI
Chao MA
Faculty of Arts and Design
University of Macau
themodelisthemassage.com