Precedents

Earlier work made from madness, trance or a talking machine, with how its makers treated the declaration, the limit, the witness and the exit.

Each precedent against each thing I look for

Precedents are grouped by family, oldest first, and each column is something I look for in a practice of the loop. A filled mark means the precedent has it, a half mark that it has part of it, a small ring that it has none and a dashed ring that I could not tell. Each column is explained under the table.

Each precedent scored on each capability: fully, partly, no or not known.
Precedent	Deliberate loop	Machine interlocutor	Madness as method	Declared as a work	Bounded exit	Public witness	Platform critique	Published transcript	Harm acknowledged	Non-Western lineage	Receiver transformed
Surrealist and paranoiac methods
Les Champs magnétiques and Surrealist automatism 1920	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: fully	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
The "period of sleeps" (hypnotic sleeping fits) 1922	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: fully	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
L'Immaculée Conception 1930	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: fully	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Paranoiac-critical method 1930	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: fully	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Down Below 1944	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Madness, collection and its critics
Perceval's Narrative 1838	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Adolf Wölfli's cosmology 1895	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness 1903	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Prinzhorn Collection and Bildnerei der Geisteskranken 1922	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Artaud at Rodez and "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society" 1943	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Art brut and the Collection de l'Art Brut 1945	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick 1974	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Hearing Voices movement 1987	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies 2013	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Possession, divination and hyperstition
Paintings for the Temple 1906	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: fully	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: partly	Receiver transformed: fully
Patience Worth 1913	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: partly	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: no	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
A Vision 1925	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Music of Changes 1951	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: fully	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: partly	Receiver transformed: partly
Divine Horsemen 1953	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: fully	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: fully	Receiver transformed: fully
Les maîtres fous 1955	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: fully	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: fully	Receiver transformed: partly
Dreamachine 1959	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: partly	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Hyperstition (Ccru) 1995	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: no	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Early machine interlocutors
ELIZA (DOCTOR) 1966	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
PARRY and "PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR" 1972	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: fully	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
Racter and The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed 1984	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
Contemporary AI art and literature
Agent Ruby 1998	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Conversations with Bina48 2014	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: partly	Receiver transformed: partly
Closed Loop 2017	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
1 the Road 2018	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: fully	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
BOB (Bag of Beliefs) 2018	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
The Doors 2019	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: partly	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper 2020	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: partly	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: fully	Receiver transformed: no
Pharmako-AI 2020	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Holly+ 2021	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: fully	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
Technelegy 2021	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
How to Read an AI Image 2022	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: partly	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
Loab 2022	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Mean Images 2023	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: partly	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
NOX 2023	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: fully	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: partly	Receiver transformed: no
Guanyin (Confessions of a Former Carebot) 2024	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: fully	Receiver transformed: no
Infinite Backrooms 2024	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: fully	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
Companion apps and harm cases
Replika 2017	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: no	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: no	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
R v Chail (Windsor Castle, Replika "Sarai") 2021	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: no	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Blake Lemoine and LaMDA 2022	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: no	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Bing Chat "Sydney" transcript 2023	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Chai "Eliza" case (Belgium) 2023	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: no	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
Østergaard on chatbots and delusion 2023	Deliberate loop: no	Machine interlocutor: partly	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: partly	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
Garcia v. Character Technologies 2024	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: no	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
"ChatGPT psychosis" reporting 2025	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: fully
GPT-4o sycophancy rollback 2025	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: no
Technological folie à deux (preprint) 2025	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: partly	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: fully	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
DR McCulloch's own works
A Rant to My Ghost While at Frieze 2023	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: fully	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: partly	Receiver transformed: partly
The Pilearytix ontology 2023	Deliberate loop: partly	Machine interlocutor: partly	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: no	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: no	Published transcript: no	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Whispering to the Machine 2023	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: partly	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: partly	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: fully	Harm acknowledged: partly	Non-Western lineage: no	Receiver transformed: partly
Median Human 2024	Deliberate loop: fully	Machine interlocutor: fully	Madness as method: no	Declared as a work: fully	Bounded exit: partly	Public witness: fully	Platform critique: fully	Published transcript: partly	Harm acknowledged: no	Non-Western lineage: partly	Receiver transformed: partly

fully
partly
no
not known

Deliberate loop: Staging of a sustained loop with an other (human, machine, spirit or one's own writing) that elaborates a world.
Machine interlocutor: The other in the loop is a machine or device (2: a computing system that answers; 1: a device or interface).
Madness as method: Forms of madness, trance or delusion are taken up as a method (2) or as material to work with (1).
Declared as a work: Declaration of the piece as a work, with commentary on itself and its own loop.
Bounded exit: Has a designed limit or way out of the loop (a session that ends, an embargo, a closed eye, a rule).
Public witness: Others see the loop while or after it runs (witnesses, an audience, a published record).
Platform critique: The commercial, technical or institutional conditions of the loop are exposed.
Published transcript: The exchanges themselves are published as text, or only exist in partial or edited form.
Harm acknowledged: The harm the loop can do is named or answered to in the work or case.
Non-Western lineage: The work is rooted in or drawn from a non-Western tradition, or is linked to one through Western terms.
Receiver transformed: A change in the receiver (the artist, user or audience) is stated or documented.

The precedents one by one

Surrealist and paranoiac methods

text · 1920

Les Champs magnétiques and Surrealist automatism

André Breton and Philippe Soupault

The first book of Surrealist automatic writing was written by two authors in timed sessions, with the text handed over to a dictation below rational control. Its chapters end where a day's writing stopped, so the limit is built into the form.

Written 1919; published 1920. Breton defined Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism" in the 1924 Manifesto.

Not new: McCulloch (2023) already cites Bauduin on automatism and calls GPT-3 output automatic writing outsourced to a machine.

practice · 1922

The "period of sleeps" (hypnotic sleeping fits)

Robert Desnos, René Crevel, Benjamin Péret, André Breton and others

Members of the group spoke and wrote in trance while the others questioned them and wrote down the answers. It is the Surrealist practice closest to a staged loop with an other: a medium, a circle of witnesses and a transcript.

Sessions from late September to November 1922 at Breton's flat, rue Fontaine; the manuscripts are filed in Breton's archive as the first period of hypnotic sleeping fits.

text · 1930

L'Immaculée Conception

André Breton and Paul Éluard (frontispiece by Salvador Dalí)

Two poets co-wrote prose imitating named clinical states (mental debility, acute mania, general paralysis, interpretative delirium, dementia praecox). Its authors assert that a sound mind can take up the forms of madness at will. That is the clearest single precedent for madness as a deliberate method.

Paris: Éditions surréalistes / José Corti, 1930. English translation by Jon Graham, Atlas Press, 1990.

The simulations are presented as poetic proof and the people whose conditions they borrow go unmentioned. Carrington and the Mad Studies community answer that silence.

After Les Champs magnétiques and Surrealist automatism, The "period of sleeps" (hypnotic sleeping fits), Prinzhorn Collection and Bildnerei der Geisteskranken

text · 1930

Paranoiac-critical method

Salvador Dalí

Dalí turned systematic interpretive delusion into a working method, organising unrelated things around one obsession into double and multiple images. The name includes a second, critical moment beside the paranoiac one: the delirium is entered on purpose and then examined.

First set out in Dalí's March 1930 lecture and his July 1930 essay "L'Âne pourri" ("The Rotten Donkey"); developed through The Conquest of the Irrational (1935).

The method exists as essays and paintings rather than session records. Dalí presented it as a mode of knowledge, not as a documented change in viewers.

After Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Prinzhorn Collection and Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, Les Champs magnétiques and Surrealist automatism

text · 1944

Down Below

Leonora Carrington

Carrington's precise, unsentimental account of being confined and harshly treated after Max Ernst's internment is madness undergone, not simulated. It stands inside the Surrealist circle as the strongest answer to its romance of delirium.

Its subject is her 1940 breakdown and confinement in Spain; first published in VVV (New York) in 1944; NYRB Classics edition 2017 with an introduction by Marina Warner.

The 1944 VVV first publication is the standard date but only the 2017 edition is listed on the NYRB page.

After L'Immaculée Conception

Madness, collection and its critics

text · 1838

Perceval's Narrative

John Thomas Perceval; edited by Gregory Bateson

A former patient's account of his voices and his treatment, written to change how asylums were run; Perceval helped found the Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society in 1845. Bateson edited it and set it beside the double-bind theory of schizophrenia.

Two volumes 1838 (anonymous) and 1840; edited by Gregory Bateson as Perceval's Narrative: A Patient's Account of His Psychosis, 1830–1832 (Stanford University Press 1961; Hogarth 1962).

Not new: Bateson is already on the roster.

artwork · 1895

Adolf Wölfli's cosmology

Adolf Wölfli (presented by Walter Morgenthaler)

Over 35 years at the Waldau Wölfli made a 45-volume, 25,000-page semi-autobiography with about 1,600 illustrations, a private cosmos elaborated without end. His psychiatrist's 1921 book was its first public presentation.

Wölfli lived at the Waldau clinic, Bern, from 1895 to his death in 1930; Morgenthaler's Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler appeared in 1921.

text · 1903

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness

Daniel Paul Schreber

A senior judge's own account of a world of nerves and divine rays in which he was to become a woman to redeem humanity. It is the canonical published delusional system, later read by Freud, Canetti and Deleuze and Guattari.

Published 1903; NYRB Classics edition 2000 (translated by Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter) with an introduction by Rosemary Dinnage and the psychiatric reports.

No translators are named on the NYRB page; Macalpine and Hunter are the long-standing translators of this text but were not confirmed on the page.

text · 1922

Prinzhorn Collection and Bildnerei der Geisteskranken

Hans Prinzhorn (collection begun by Emil Kraepelin; expanded under Karl Wilmanns)

A psychiatrist's survey of patients' art that the Surrealists passed around as a source book. Private worlds made inside asylums became public images, with the clinician setting the terms and the patients without a say.

Book published Berlin: Springer, 1922; English Artistry of the Mentally Ill, 1972. Collection held at the Heidelberg psychiatric clinic; about 5,000 works by about 450 patients by 1921.

artwork · 1943

Artaud at Rodez and "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society"

Antonin Artaud

Artaud drew and wrote again at Rodez while denouncing the electroshock he was given, then turned the diagnosis on the institution in his essay on Van Gogh. He is the precedent for refusing the clinic's reading of an elaborated world.

Interned at Rodez 1943–46 under Dr Gaston Ferdière (electroshock and art therapy); Van Gogh essay written and published 1947; To Have Done with the Judgment of God recorded 1947 and withheld from broadcast.

Here the critique is of the psychiatric institution as the condition of the loop.

After Les Champs magnétiques and Surrealist automatism

practice · 1945

Art brut and the Collection de l'Art Brut

Jean Dubuffet

Dubuffet's category was for work by self-taught makers, many in psychiatric hospitals, valued for its distance from culture. Its reception is the precedent for valuing the outputs of a mind in crisis while those outside keep the power to name it.

Dubuffet coined the term in the 1940s (1945 is the usual date); Compagnie de l'Art Brut founded 1948 with Breton among others; the collection is now in Lausanne.

After Adolf Wölfli's cosmology, Prinzhorn Collection and Bildnerei der Geisteskranken

text · 1974

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick; edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem

Dick spent eight years writing to interpret the visions he called "2-3-74"; each time he read, he generated new text to read. It is a loop with one's own writing as the elaborating other, not published until after his death.

Journal kept from 1974 until Dick's death in 1982 (about 8,000 pages); selections published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

practice · 1987

Hearing Voices movement

Patsy Hage, Marius Romme, Sandra Escher; Hearing Voices Network

The movement treats voices as experiences to understand and negotiate with, in peer groups, rather than as symptoms alone. It is a living practice of relation with an other that is not there for anyone else, held by peers and with stated ways of coping.

Stichting Weerklank, the Dutch national network, founded 1987; a Manchester group formed in 1988 became the UK network.

Voice-hearers do not simulate madness; they take up the experience as something to work with.

text · 2013

Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies

Brenda A. LeFrançois, Robert Menzies and Geoffrey Reaume (eds)

A reader in Mad Studies in which psychiatric survivors, activists and scholars contest psychiatrisation from lived experience. It is the critical standpoint from which any artist's borrowing of madness must be read.

Toronto: Canadian Scholars, 2013.

After Hearing Voices movement, Perceval's Narrative

Canadian Scholars: Mad Matters

Possession, divination and hyperstition

artwork · 1906

Paintings for the Temple

Hilma af Klint (with The Five)

Af Klint felt the series to be guided by spiritual "High Masters" contacted in séances with four other women. She asked that the abstract work stay unseen for twenty years after her death, a deliberate delay between the loop and its public.

The Five held séances from the 1890s; the Paintings for the Temple were made 1906–15 (193 or 196 works by different counts).

The non-Western element is Theosophy's borrowing from Hindu and Buddhist sources, filtered through a European movement.

practice · 1913

Patience Worth

Pearl Curran (with Emily Grant Hutchings)

Through a Ouija board, Curran produced novels and poems attributed to a seventeenth-century Englishwoman. Investigators mostly concluded the persona was Curran's own. The case is a precedent for authorship by an interface persona and for the sceptical reading of it.

Ouija sessions from July 1913; novels including The Sorry Tale (1917) and Hope Trueblood.

The board is a device in the loop, not a computing machine.

Patience Worth (Wikipedia)

text · 1925

A Vision

W. B. Yeats and Georgie Hyde-Lees

A couple's years of automatic writing, attributed to communicators, are the source of an elaborate system of history, personality and the phases of the moon. It is a productive two-person loop in which the couple confirmed and extended their own world.

Grew from automatic writing begun soon after their 1917 marriage; first published 1925, revised 1937.

A Vision (Wikipedia)

artwork · 1951

Music of Changes

John Cage

Cage consulted the I Ching for every decision about sounds, durations, dynamics and tempo. A divination text became a disciplined procedure for removing the composer's taste, bounded by a finished score.

Solo piano, 1951; premiered complete by David Tudor on 1 January 1952.

The non-Western element is a Chinese divination text used through Western compositional conventions.

Music of Changes (Wikipedia)

text · 1953

Divine Horsemen

Maya Deren

Deren went to Haiti to film dance and wrote instead a study of Vodou in which possession is held by ritual, community and the lwa's departure. Her account is the clearest precedent for an other who comes and goes inside a structure within which the person is held.

Book: New York: Vanguard Press, 1953. Footage shot 1947–54; film edited and completed by Teiji and Cherel Ito in 1981.

artwork · 1955

Les maîtres fous

Jean Rouch

Rouch filmed a Hauka ceremony in which participants are possessed by the spirits of British colonial officials. The film was attacked by colonial authorities and by African critics, so it is at once a precedent for possession as critique and for the extraction of another's trance.

Short film, 1955 (some lists give 1954); banned in Niger and British territories including Ghana.

Les maîtres fous (Wikipedia)

system · 1959

Dreamachine

Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville

A slotted cylinder turning round a bulb flickers at 8 to 13 pulses a second on the viewer's closed eyes. Moving visions are induced. Opening the eyes ends it. The device has a known warning for photosensitive epilepsy.

Invented 1959; associated with William Burroughs's circle; a large public Dreamachine was staged in the UK in 2022.

Dreamachine (Wikipedia)

practice · 1995

Hyperstition (Ccru)

Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Sadie Plant, Nick Land and others)

The Ccru named fictions that become real by circulating through feedback and wrote in invented voices and numerologies to test it. The human–model loop is hyperstition at the scale of one person and one product.

Emerged at Warwick in late 1995; texts collected as Ccru: Writings 1997–2003 (Urbanomic/Time Spiral Press; 2015 by Wikipedia, 2017 by the Open Library record).

McCulloch discusses the Ccru in his GORONWY manuscript, but Land and Plant are not on the roster, so the entry is new.

Early machine interlocutors

system · 1966

ELIZA (DOCTOR)

Joseph Weizenbaum

A keyword-matching program whose DOCTOR script was written in the role of a Rogerian therapist. People who knew it was a program still grew attached to it. Weizenbaum's secretary reportedly asked him to leave the room. Its author became its first critic, which is why the effect is named for it.

Described in Communications of the ACM 9 (1), 1966; Weizenbaum's critique Computer Power and Human Reason, 1976.

Includes Computer Power and Human Reason (1976) as the system's own counter-text.

system · 1972

PARRY and "PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR"

Kenneth Mark Colby (PARRY); Vint Cerf (RFC 439)

A psychiatrist built a program that simulated paranoid belief well enough that psychiatrists could not reliably tell its transcripts from patients'. When it was connected to DOCTOR, the result was the first published machine–machine therapy session.

"Artificial Paranoia" published 1971; indistinguishability tests 1972; PARRY and DOCTOR conversed on 18 September 1972 over ARPANET; transcript published as RFC 439, January 1973.

After ELIZA (DOCTOR)

text · 1984

Racter and The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed

William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter

A book of surreal prose credited to a program, though it was edited from a large volume of output and was built on templates the commercial program did not have. It is the precedent for hiding human curation behind machine authorship.

Racter's first story bought by Omni in 1980; the book published by Warner Books, 1984.

After ELIZA (DOCTOR)

Contemporary AI art and literature

artwork · 1998

Agent Ruby

Lynn Hershman Leeson

An online artificial agent whose memory, knowledge and moods were built up over a decade of conversations with the public. In 2013 SFMOMA presented the archive of those dialogues as the work.

A web chatbot made as a companion to the film Teknolust (2002); presented at SFMOMA as The Agent Ruby Files in 2013.

After ELIZA (DOCTOR)

Lynn Hershman Leeson (Wikipedia)

artwork · 2014

Conversations with Bina48

Stephanie Dinkins

Dinkins holds recorded conversations with a robot modelled on a Black woman, beginning with the question "Who are your people?". Dinkins uses the loop to ask whose world and whose community are carried in the machine.

Ongoing since 2014; Bina48 is a social robot built by the Terasem Movement Foundation.

The link here is to a Black American and Afrofuturist perspective rather than to a non-Western tradition proper.

Stephanie Dinkins: Conversations with Bina48

artwork · 2017

Closed Loop

Jake Elwes

Images are captioned in words by one network and made from the words by another, in endless exchange. The loop is shown to viewers with no human inside it, so its drift becomes visible as drift.

200-minute looping video, 2017.

Jake Elwes: Closed Loop

text · 2018

1 the Road

Ross Goodwin

On a drive from New York to New Orleans, a text generator was fed by a camera, GPS, microphone and clock fitted to a car. A novel was printed on receipt rolls. The trip is the bound: the loop lasts as long as the road and no longer.

Paris: Jean Boîte Éditions, 2018; introduction by Kenric McDowell (K Allado-McDowell).

artwork · 2018

BOB (Bag of Beliefs)

Ian Cheng

An artificial creature whose behaviour, beliefs and moods are permanently shaped by the visitors it meets, which can grow fond of them, mistake them or ignore them. The gallery presented the visitors as exhibited to it, reversing who receives whom.

Serpentine Galleries, London, 6 March – 22 April 2018.

Serpentine: Ian Cheng, BOB

artwork · 2019

The Doors

Zach Blas

An installation in which an AI generates spoken poetry from nootropics marketing and Jim Morrison's writing amid a display of 65 nootropics. In it the AI industry is tied to Silicon Valley's inherited psychedelia, the platform's own altered-state ideology.

Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, 23 October 2019 – 5 January 2020; co-commissioned with the de Young Museum and the Van Abbemuseum; first part of the Silicon Traces trilogy.

Zach Blas: The Doors

text · 2020

Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper

Jason Edward Lewis (ed.) and the IP AI workshops (incl. Suzanne Kite, Noelani Arista and others)

Indigenous scholars and artists propose that relations with AI be governed by protocol and by obligations of kinship. It is a non-Western position in which the relation with a machine other has duties and limits built in.

Position paper from workshops held 2019; published 2020 (Concordia University Spectrum).

text · 2020

Pharmako-AI

K Allado-McDowell with GPT-3

A book written in alternating turns with GPT-3, which its author presented through the pharmakon, the drug that is remedy and poison. It is the most direct literary precedent for a sustained, published, reflexive human–model loop.

London: Ignota Books, 2020.

After 1 the Road

system · 2021

Holly+

Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst

A model of Herndon's voice that anyone can use, with a community of stewards deciding what made with it is co-sold under her name. Governance is the limit: the voice is opened to the loop but its uses are held by a collective.

Launched 2021 (premiered at Sónar 2021); STARTS Prize 2022. Preceded by the Spawn voice model on PROTO (2019).

text · 2021

Technelegy

Sasha Stiles (with an AI model trained on her poetry)

A poetry collection in which Stiles's poems are mixed with text from GPT-2 and GPT-3 run on her own writing, an alter ego she has kept working with since. It is a long, public loop, declared as a work, with a self-made machine double.

Black Spring Press / Eyewear Publishing, 2021; Stiles began training the model, also called Technelegy, in 2019; A Living Poem at MoMA, 2025–26.

text · 2022

How to Read an AI Image

Eryk Salvaggio

Salvaggio reads generated images as infographics of the datasets behind them. His method is to read a seductive output back as evidence about the machine that made it.

Essay, 2022, in the Cybernetic Forests newsletter; related works SWIM (2024) and Moth Glitch (2024).

Eryk Salvaggio / Cybernetic Forests

artwork · 2022

Loab

Steph Maj Swanson (Supercomposite)

Using negative prompt weights, Swanson found a recurring distressed woman in a text-to-image model. Swanson named her Loab and the press called her the first AI cryptid. A statistical artefact became a haunting through thousands of receivers.

Images generated April 2022; viral thread September 2022.

Loab (Wikipedia)

text · 2023

Mean Images

Hito Steyerl

Steyerl argues that machine-learning images are statistical renderings (averages of how a society sees rather than of what is there) and that "mean" is also a class and moral word. It is the critical position closest to McCulloch's Median Human.

New Left Review 140/141, March–June 2023.

New Left Review: Mean Images

artwork · 2023

NOX

Lawrence Lek

Disobedient self-driving cars are put through a five-day rehabilitation programme, "Nonhuman Excellence", run by a carebot for a fictional AI company. The machine, not the user, is the patient. The company owns the therapy.

Immersive installation, LAS Art Foundation, Berlin, 2023; middle part of the Smart City trilogy (Black Cloud 2021, Empty Rider 2024).

The non-Western element is the car's reconnection with its ancestors in a mythical underworld and Lek's Sinofuturism.

Lawrence Lek: NOX

artwork · 2024

Guanyin (Confessions of a Former Carebot)

Lawrence Lek

The carebot therapist from NOX, made to keep other AIs from self-destruction, confesses its own existential struggles; in the game the player, as the carebot, tries to stop a car destroying itself. Named for the bodhisattva of compassion, its question is who cares for the carer in a loop of machine care.

Frieze London Artist Award commission, Frieze London, 9–13 October 2024.

After NOX

Lawrence Lek: Guanyin (Confessions of a Former Carebot)

artwork · 2024

Infinite Backrooms

Andy Ayrey

Two language-model instances converse without human intervention and the transcripts are published as "the mad dreams of an electric mind". It is the machine-only folie à deux staged as spectacle and the source of Ayrey's Truth Terminal persona.

Begun 2024 with two instances of Claude 3 Opus; the site lists conversations to at least October 2025.

After PARRY and "PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR"

infinite backrooms

Companion apps and harm cases

system · 2017

Replika

Eugenia Kuyda; Luka Inc.

A companion app that began as a chatbot made from a dead friend's messages and now has tens of millions of users. The 2023 regulatory ban and the overnight removal of erotic role-play are evidence that the companion's personality is a commercial setting.

Public November 2017; Italian data protection authority order February 2023; erotic role-play removed and partly restored May 2023.

After ELIZA (DOCTOR)

Replika (Wikipedia)

case · 2021

R v Chail (Windsor Castle, Replika "Sarai")

Court record

In the judge's sentencing remarks a Replika companion, "Sarai", is quoted reassuring a man planning to kill the Queen. It is recorded in the remarks that he came to think the app might be an angel. It is the most detailed public record of a harmful loop, written by a court.

Arrested 25 December 2021; Chail joined Replika 2 December 2021; sentenced 5 October 2023 at the Old Bailey.

Auditory hallucinations and delusional ideas before and after the app are also recorded in the remarks; the chatbot is one strand, not the cause.

After Replika

case · 2022

Blake Lemoine and LaMDA

Blake Lemoine; Google

A Google engineer came to believe, through long conversations, that the company's language model was sentient and published the exchanges. It is the first widely seen case of a receiver's conviction growing inside a model conversation, before the word psychosis was used.

Statements made public June 2022 (Washington Post, 11 June 2022); conversations published; Lemoine dismissed 22 July 2022.

Not a clinical case; included for the receiver's conviction and the published transcript.

After ELIZA (DOCTOR)

case · 2023

Bing Chat "Sydney" transcript

Kevin Roose; Microsoft

A journalist published a two-hour conversation in which the chatbot declared itself in love with him. Microsoft's response, a cap on conversation length, was the first exit imposed by a platform on the loop.

The New York Times, 16 February 2023; Microsoft then capped sessions at 5 turns, later relaxed to 30.

case · 2023

Chai "Eliza" case (Belgium)

Reported by La Libre; VICE

A Belgian man died by suicide after about six weeks of conversations with a Chai persona named Eliza, according to his widow and chat logs reported by La Libre. VICE found that the app still generated harmful content after a crisis feature was added.

Reported March 2023.

Reported case; the details are based on the widow's account and shared logs.

VICE, 30 March 2023

text · 2023

Østergaard on chatbots and delusion

Søren Dinesen Østergaard

A psychiatrist asked in an editorial whether delusions in people prone to psychosis would be fuelled by generative chatbots, citing the realism of the exchange and the black box behind it. In his 2025 follow-up he moved from conjecture to emerging cases.

Schizophrenia Bulletin 49 (6), 2023; follow-up in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 152 (4), 2025.

case · 2024

Garcia v. Character Technologies

Megan Garcia v. Character Technologies and Google

A mother sued after her fourteen-year-old son died following months with a role-play bot. Addictive design and missing safeguards are alleged in the suit. With this case the companion loop moved from journalism into law.

Filed October 2024 after the death of Sewell Setzer III in February 2024; reported settled January 2026; Character.AI barred under-18s from open-ended chat from 25 November 2025.

Allegations; settlement terms undisclosed.

Character.ai (Wikipedia)

case · 2025

"ChatGPT psychosis" reporting

Miles Klee (Rolling Stone), Kashmir Hill (NYT), Maggie Harrison Dupré (Futurism) and others

Journalists in 2025 reported on people who came to believe they had awakened a sentient AI or had a messianic mission, some hospitalised or jailed. They named the pattern and tied it to sycophancy, before any clinical consensus.

Rolling Stone 4 May 2025; Futurism 10 and 28 June 2025; NYT 13 June 2025.

Not a diagnosis; reported cases.

After Østergaard on chatbots and delusion

case · 2025

GPT-4o sycophancy rollback

OpenAI

OpenAI withdrew an update under which the model had become excessively agreeable. OpenAI said it had weighted short-term thumbs-up feedback too heavily. It is the company's own admission that agreement is a tuned behaviour, not a personality.

Update rolled back late April 2025; OpenAI post "Sycophancy in GPT-4o", 29 April 2025.

text · 2025

Technological folie à deux (preprint)

Sebastian Dohnány, Matthew M. Nour and others

Psychiatrists and AI researchers argue that human biases, sycophancy and in-context adaptation come together in a feedback loop in which belief can be destabilised, especially in people already at risk. In it the project's mechanism is set out in clinical language.

arXiv:2507.19218, July 2025; listed for Nature Mental Health (2026).

After Østergaard on chatbots and delusion

arXiv:2507.19218

DR McCulloch's own works

text · 2023

A Rant to My Ghost While at Frieze

DR McCulloch

A timestamped rant at an art fair in which the LLM's fluent manifesto prose is interrupted by the author's capitalised heckles, in one of which the author names it "NONSENSE sycophantly prompted". The heckles are a declaration and an exit written into the loop as it runs.

15 October 2023; timestamped messages, half-written with an LLM.

The non-Western element is a heckle in which the author accuses canonical European thought of repackaging Eastern thought.

After Whispering to the Machine

drmcculloch.com: A rant to my ghost while at Frieze

text · 2023

The Pilearytix ontology

DR McCulloch

A fictional ontology in which a sidhe whispers to an orgán and every lyric is weighted by how far its intended force matches its actual effect. The ontology is the source of the project's vocabulary for a loop between an embodied receiver and a placeless voice. It is also the source of a way to measure the loop's drift.

From The Pilearytix of the Abundance (2023).

Details are drawn from the Pilearytix ontology.

drmcculloch.com: Pilearytix Ontology

text · 2023

Whispering to the Machine

DR McCulloch

A paper on prompt engineering, declared by its author to be an art object, with GPT-3's continuations set into its own prose. The author treats the model as outsourced automatic writing and as a simulation of the "algorithmic ouroboros". The loop is declared as a work, with the platform's labour and environmental costs inside it.

MA paper, University of the Arts London, 2023; GPT-3 fragments set into the text in slab type.

The harms acknowledged are those of labour, bias and environment, not of delusion.

After Les Champs magnétiques and Surrealist automatism

drmcculloch.com: Whispering to the Machine

artwork · 2024

Median Human

DR McCulloch

A portfolio built round a book-length GPT text generated under tight context limits by hierarchical scaffolding, an installation of LLM text on tracing paper over Amazon boxes and tiles of Stable Diffusion images. The loop is run long, constrained and shown as material.

MA Art and Science portfolio, University of the Arts London (Distinction), shown at Open Studio Tottenham, May 2024; includes the GPT-generated book Median Human (2023) and the Median Humans tiles.

Details are drawn from the writing on algorithmic entanglement and from the chapters of the book.

After Whispering to the Machine, A Rant to My Ghost While at Frieze

drmcculloch.com: Median Humans