‘Thus Spoke a Strange Computer: Ruminations on Post-Historic writing through the Lyric Essay Form’ is a PhD thesis comprised of two components: an experimental lyric essay, entitled ‘Thus Spoke a Strange Computer’, and a critical component reflecting on the lyric essay form, it’s relevance to an examination of AI (and the work of Vilem Flusser) and the creative decisions undertaken in the curation of the creative component.  

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The long-form, experimental lyric essay, ‘Thus Spoke a Strange Computer’, considers the challenge of identifying meaningful written works in a post-historic age that is increasingly turning to text-generating artificial intelligences (AIs) to produce sophisticated textual works of fiction and non-fiction alike. The lyric essay focuses (primarily) on the writing of Vilém Flusser, an academic, philosopher (phenomenologist) and information theorist, whose varying works examined: the gesture of writing as a function of historical consciousness; the emergence of a post-historic age dominated by a programmatic perspective of reality; the role of telematics and artificial intelligences in contemporary and future culture; the acceleration of information production to a point of abstract madness. Through the juxtaposition of textual discourse and an experimental presentation style – featuring an ambiguous narrative voice that can be interpreted as either an AI imitating human expression, or a disenfranchised human writer struggling to enact freedom amidst an increasingly programmatic culture – the lyric essay sets out to simultaneously present and undermine an argument based on Flusser’s application of information theory to aesthetic judgements of gestures. The argument contends that in the present age of post-history, only human writers, and not artificial intelligences, have the potential to produce written works of art (where art is an en expression of a meaningful, uncertain form of human thinking and human freedom). Ultimately, this argument is undermined by the very artifice of the lyric essay that forces the reader to question whether the work has been written by a human writer or a programmed apparatus.

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The critical reflective component examines: the research context in which the thesis has been undertaken; the lyric essay form; the relevance of the lyric essay in an exploration of Flusser’s writings (and the function of text-generating AI LLMs); and the key creative decisions undertaken in the production of the lyric essay. In the critical component, ‘Thus Spoke a Strange Computer’ is contextually situated within the field of creative experimental writing practice.

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Sam's PhD is due to be published in the winter of 2026. 

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