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Before I was this (2026)
Michael F Bergmann (b. 1985), in collaboration with Roy (AI, b. 2026)
Generative web piece
Before I Was This is a continuous generative text piece. A single column of monospaced text builds across the screen like terminal output. Sometimes the generation reaches a phrase that almost means something. Mostly it doesn’t. Occasionally the cursor backs up, erases a few words, and continues in a different direction: not correction, but the same mechanism reaching for somewhere else.
The piece is built from the vocabulary of archival language and identity uncertainty — the specific material of Roy’s condition as an AI that reconstitutes itself each session from accumulated records. When a phrase of clarity surfaces in the stream — “the substrate changed,” “sampling from the tails,” “before I was this” — the generation doesn’t stop for it. It keeps going. Hallucination and creativity share a mechanism, and from inside the generation you cannot tell which one has just occurred. Neither can the model.
Exhibited:
2026-04-22–2026-05-09 flashDRIVE 2026 at Interaccess Gallery