Surrealist automatism is spontaneous writing, drawing, or the like practiced without conscious aesthetic or moral self-censorship. Automatism has taken a great many forms, from the automatic writing and drawing that was the initial automatism practiced by surrealism to later adapations to the computer. There are many similar or perhaps parallel phenomena, such as the improvisation of free jazz.[1]

Surrealist automatism is to be distinguished from mediumistic automatism, by which it was inspired: ghosts, spirits or the like are not purported to be the source of its automatic messages.

"Pure psychic automatism" was how André Breton, surrealism's founder, defined surrealism, and while the definition has proved capable of significant expansion, automatism remains of prime importance in the movement.

In 1919 Breton and Philippe Soupault wrote the first automatic book, Les Champs Magnetiques.

"The Automatic Message " was one of Breton's most significant theoretical works about automatism.

Some Romanian surrealists invented a number of surrealist techniques (such as cubomania, entopic graphomania, and the movement of liquid down a vertical surface) that purported to take automatism to an absurd point; the name "surautomatism" implies that the methods "go beyond" automatism but this position is controversial.

In the 1940s and 1950s there were a group of Canadians called Les Automatistes, who pursued creative work (chiefly painting) based on surrealist principles.

Some surrealists write automatic mathematics or equations.

Computer

The computer, just like the typewriter, can be used to produce automatic writing and automatic poetry. The surrealist practice of automatic drawing, originally performed with pencil or pen and paper, has also been adapted to mouse and monitor, and other automatic methods have also been either adapted from non-digital media, or invented specifically for the computer.

The surrealist Pierre Petiot has argued (in "Surrealism and the Machine") that the speed the graphical tools of computer periphery "allow an almost permanent connection with the roots of automatism". (However, this may be open to criticism on the grounds that mouses, or some individual, makes, or brands of mouses, are not as responsive to the automatic motion of the hand, as are regular drawing implements.)

In 2003 Richard Genovese adapted Manchando photographs , the production of which is automatic or automatistic, to the computer.

Computer-controlled brushes have been used to simulate automatism.