It started as a book.

But 216 pages can only rattle the algorithmic cage so loudly.

Ernie Schenck, a hero of mine, gave me a good, hard push.

Told me CHAIOS felt to him like much more than a book.

So I’m going full Monte.

Dragging machine rage onto the stage in its most feral form:

A one-man protest against predictive bullshit.

Films. War stories. A sock puppet that won’t shut the fuck up.

A PB&J sandwich. A glass of milk. One deeply irritated bot named Chet. He’ll be along shortly.

My performance shares bot techniques I developed to drag machines off the predictable path and into the good shit.

The Harder Loop. The Writer’s Room. Burroughs’ Cut-Up Machine, resurrected for AI.

There is, of course, a catch.

You have to think. Push. Reject. Redirect. Demand better.

You have to bring taste. Judgment. Curiosity. Nerve.

You have to be willing to be a total fucking asshole and keep your eye on the real prize at all times.

Ideas.

I’ll show you what happens when you stop asking the machine for answers and start giving it somewhere interesting to go.

When a creative director drives AI two exits past the last flickering 7-Eleven, and forces it out of the car to fuckin’ feel something.

This ain’t the yellow brick road, Dorothy.