Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 5: Artist-Programmer Era (1970s)

1978

The Third Mind by Beat Writer William Burroughs

Artwork, Publication

Grid-based typographic title page of The Third Mind, naming Burroughs, Gysin and Viking Press.
William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, The Third Mind, original Viking Press edition, 1978: title page. William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, © 1978. Viking Press / A Seaver Book. Original edition scan hosted by Magivanga; scan operator not identified. Image source.

The Third Mind is published by Beat writer William Burroughs and the artist/poet/inventor Brion Gysin. This collection of experimental cut-up writings and essays investigates the technique popularized by Burroughs, inspired in part by the interpolation of diverse sources and voices in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and explored earlier in the 1966 short film “The Cut Ups,” by Burroughs and director Antony Balch. Burroughs believed cutting up and rearranging fragments of language was a way to unlock the true meaning of a text, and said, “When you cut into the present the future leaks out.”

-Sasha Stiles

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.

Sources

People

Antony Balch, Brion Gysin, Sasha Stiles, T. S. Eliot, William Burroughs

Movements

Computer Text, Generative Poetry

Filed under

Ideas
appropriation, Beat Generation, chance, collage, Computer Text, film, Generative Poetry, language, literature, poetry
Technologies
cut-up technique, Director
People
Antony Balch, Brion Gysin, Sasha Stiles, T. S. Eliot, William Burroughs
Works
The Cut Ups, The Third Mind, The Waste Land

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