What does it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence? Since 2018, artist and poet Sasha Stiles has explored this question through collaborations with her alter ego, Technelegy, an evolving AI system trained to emulate and augment her writing and voice. Their projects consider how human and machine minds process language, shaping new forms of expression for a rapidly changing world.
The next step in their ongoing experiment is A LIVING POEM, an infinite text powered by human imagination and computer algorithms. Inspired by text-based art from the Museum’s collection, the poem rewrites and performs itself anew every 60 minutes. Each page comes to life in real time via a bespoke language model, intricate prompting, custom datasets, and sensory elements such as voice, sound, and visuals. The words appear in multiple fonts, including Cursive Binary. This custom typeface—fusing the artist’s handwriting with the zeros and ones of binary code—offers a poetic metaphor for humanity’s evolving relationship with technology.
Stiles has described this work as a “poem in residence,” transforming the screen in the Museum lobby into an autonomous notebook. A LIVING POEM includes an intimate, immersive soundscape by Stiles’s studio partner, Kris Bones, that reminds us of poetry’s roots in oral tradition. This auditory experience is accessible via QR code. Together, these layers form a dynamic language system—a poem that reveals itself moment by moment, always becoming, never finished.
