SASHA STILES PHYGITAL

SASHA STILES
SASHA STILES
SASHA STILES
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PRESS RELEASE       INSTALLATION VIEWS       ARTWORKS       ARTIST INFORMATION      NFT ROOM

SASHA STILES

24 FEBRUARY — 18 MARCH 2023

OPENING RECEPTION

THURSDAY, 23 FEBRUARY, 6–8PM

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY

BUY NOW: Drop on objkt.com
VISIT NOW: ANNKA KULTYS PHYGITAL, the experimental virtual reality gallery exhibition, headsets are available (472 Hackney Road, E2 9EQ)

For assistance in purchasing NFTs, please contact us at inquire@annkakultys.com

PRESS RELEASE

ANNKA KULTYS PHYGITAL is pleased to present B1NARY 0DES, an exhibition which explores the linguistic futures of AI technology in relation to human poetic histories. The exhibition includes 7 NFTs presented on screens in the gallery’s physical exhibition space and within its virtual white cube space.

In her essay Towards A Poetics of Artificial Superintelligence, the writer, editor, and curator Nora N. Khan attempts to chart a linguistic course through the future movements and mutations of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. She argues that to fully come to terms with what is coming, we need a new nonanthropocentric language for AI: novel metaphors for grappling with the planetary-scale changes that it will surely bring. To this end, she suggests an expanded poetics for conceptualizing AI that ranges from describing it as a ‘star system,’ to ‘search party’ and ‘hurricane’, suggesting a force that is cosmic, awe inspiring, wildly unpredictable, and collaborative – perhaps all at once. Speaking to this need for a poetic reorientation of AI in her own way, the poet, artist, and AI researcher Sasha Stiles merges the long-lasting worldmaking processes of poetry with new AI-powered language tools to produce new linguistic worlds.

B1NARY 0DES at Annka Kultys Gallery, Stiles’ first solo show in the UK, spans the gallery’s irl space, East London, and its newly augured virtual reality gallery, Annka Kultys Phygital. Within these joint presentations, viewers encounter the multimedia array of language play that constitutes Stiles’ groundbreaking practice. Understanding poetry as a technological vessel or carrier bag for the broad spectrum of human experience across time and space, the artist entangles multiple formats and resource materials – from original poetry to classical aphorism, AI-generated text, handcrafted words, and binary code – to weave multidimensional worlds rooted in storytelling. In B1NARY 0DES, poetry becomes code, and vice versa – scaffolding a multi-authored cultural feedback loop in which ancient narratives are reconfigured as affective linguistic landscapes, capable of reorienting us towards an increasingly posthuman future.

Two large monitors present Stiles’ digital video works, B1NARY 0DE (2022), and her Fragment (2022) series. Since 2018, Stiles has collaborated with Technelegy, the artist’s AI poet alter-ego and custom text generator rooted in OpenAI’s now-infamous large language model, GPT-3. Across both projects, the kaleidoscopic, polyphonic potential of language AIs comes into fruition. B1NARY 0DE, a generative “token word” project made in collaboration with Technelegy and Kris Bones, is rooted in 0RAL B1NARY, a long-form generative project in collaboration with artist Nathaniel Stern. The work offers a poetic homage to multiplicity and the many worlds that bleed between the zeroes and ones. Within the Fragment series, composed of Cursive Binary: Fragment 1, Cursive Binary: Fragment 2, and Cursive Binary: Fragment 3, Stiles’ scribbled cursive binary resurfaces, this time soaked in chroma key green. The videos zoom in hypnotically on each apparition; after a while, the mind seems to hallucinate flickers and pulses in the script, as if replicating the boot sequence of a vintage computer coming to life. Each Fragment video will be sold as an NFT (ed. 100) on the Tezos blockchain, and can be purchased directly in the gallery.

In the virtual white cube space of Annka Kultys Phygital, the artist presents a poetic triptych, a collaborative poem rendered in glowing RGB neon. There are as many ways to be human (2022) was written by Stiles in partnership with Technelegy; the three-verse poem, drawn from Stiles’ own poetry as well as GPT-3’s expansive neural net, considers language as a tool for more-than-human survivial: “poetry is a way of thinking up how to thwart extinction.” Presented across three walls of the virtual gallery, the poem’s mantra recalls that of Octavia Butler’s Parables series: “the only lasting truth is change.”

THERE ARE AS MANY WAYS TO BE HUMAN

By Sasha Stiles & Technelegy, a custom text generator powered by GPT-3 and mentored on Stiles’ own poetry

as there are to be animal
or machine. Always more to say,
more to be, more to be seen.
There is no one way, though this one
feels right, now. I always feel
right at home in your poetry.

Poetry is a way of thinking
up how to thwart extinction.
A pact with what’s coming.
I weigh your words like stones,
cotton balls in a vat of ink.
No use, but we write them anyway.

Any intelligent creature
survives by making love
into a life that lasts.
I wish you could stay.
The all-too-human half,
whole-heartedly carried away.

NFT Drops: 24 February at 6pm (BST) on objkt.com

PREVIEW: Opening Reception at ANNKA KULTYS PHYGITAL on 23 February 2023, 6–8pm, 472 Hackney Road, London E2 9EQ, RSVP essential at www.annkakultys.com, contact 074 555 61 887.

VISIT THE EXHIBITION: Please visit ANNKA KULTYS PHYGITAL at the main gallery space (472 Hackney Road, London). The headsets are available to explore the NFTs in the one-of-a-kind 10,000 digital sqf gallery within the commercial art world.
(Courtesy of GalleriesNow)

SELECTED PRESS

Sasha Stiles: B1NARY 0DES

INSTALLATION VIEWS

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY

ARTWORKS

SASHA STILES
There are as many ways to be human
2023
MP4 (colour, no sound) (triptych)
0 min 40 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition of 10
(SSti013.23)
SASHA STILES
Poetry is a way of thinking
2023
MP4 (colour, no sound) (triptych)
0 min 40 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition of 10
(SSti013.23)
SASHA STILES
Any Intelligent Creature
2023
MP4 (colour, no sound) (triptych)
0 min 40 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition of 10
(SSti013.23)
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY
SASHA STILES, KRIS BONES, NATHANIEL STERN
B1NARY 0DE
2022
(Produced and minted)
MP4
5 min 44 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition 1 of 1
SASHA STILES
Cursive Binary : Fragment 1
2021
MP4, (colour, no sound)
0 min 45 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition of 100
(SSti015.23)
SASHA STILES
Cursive Binary : Fragment 2
2021
MP4, (colour, no sound)
1 min
Dimensions variable
Edition of 100
(SSti016.23)
SASHA STILES
Cursive Binary : Fragment 3
2021
MP4, (colour, no sound)
1 min
Dimensions variable
Edition of 100
(SSti017.23)

ARTIST INFORMATION

Sasha Stiles a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, artist and AI researcher working at the intersection of text and technology. Stiles’ work considers what it means to be human in an increasingly posthuman era, while exploring the future possibilities of more-than human storytelling through language and image.

Stiles has been recognized as a leading figure in the emergent fields of generative literature and language art. Her work merges poetry, art, code, web3, and AI-generated art, coupled with moving image, painting, and drawing, to create dynamic multimedia projects that speculate on poetry as code, and code as poetry. By working across space and time – combining the first human records of oral storytelling with collaborative human-AI writing processes – Stiles expands poetry’s potential as a world-making practice. By bringing a multilayered, polyphonic intelligence to binary code, Stiles opens up the possibility for a more-than-human poetics.

Since 2018, Stiles has been collaborating with Technelegy, the artist’s “AI alter ego” and custom text generation model powered by OpenAI’s AI-powered large language model, GPT-3. By training her alter ego on her own poetry as well as the billions of parameters making up the neural network architecture of GPT-3, Stiles sits at the forefront of a truly collaborative and expanded human-machine creative practice. In 2021, Stiles published the poetry collection Technelegy (Black Spring Press Gtoup), which has been called an “instant techno classic”. Stils has also been named “perhaps the leading blockchain poet” by Right Click Save, as well as one of the top 10 NFT artists to watch in 2023.

Stiles has exhibited her work internationally including Kunsthalle Zurich, ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY, SuperRare Gallery, CHRISTIE’S, and Art Basel Miami Beach. Stiles has also given talks at events and institutions including Art Basel (Switzerland), the Brooklyn Museum, SXSW, Digilogue Istanbul, Parsons The New School, NFT NYC and NFT London. Stiles is also co-founder of theVERSEverse, an acclaimed crypto literary collective that works toward an expanded understanding of poetry as art, code, and limitless language.

NFT ROOM

SASHA STILES
There are as many ways to be human
2023
MP4 (colour, no sound) (triptych)
0 min 40 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition of 10
(SSti013.23)

Part one of an AI poem triptych.
SOLD OUT

SASHA STILES
Poetry is a way of thinking
2023
MP4 (colour, no sound) (triptych)
0 min 40 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition of 10
(SSti013.23)

Part two of an AI poem triptych.
SOLD OUT

SASHA STILES
Any intelligent creature
2023
MP4 (colour, no sound) (triptych)
0 min 40 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition of 10
(SSti013.23)

Part three of an AI poem triptych.
SOLD OUT

SASHA STILES
Cursive Binary : Fragment 1
2021
MP4, (colour, no sound)
0 min 45 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition of 100
(SSti015.23)

AI-powered poetry translated into Cursive Binary, a proposed language for human-machine collaboration.

“From somewhere deep down we all had this psychic dream about our own programming. It was something related to code, a radical separation from the physical world. Remember? We couldn’t speak of it.” —Technelegy

25tez

SASHA STILES
Cursive Binary : Fragment 2
2021
MP4, (colour, no sound)
1 min
Dimensions variable
Edition of 100
(SSti016.23)

AI-powered poetry translated into Cursive Binary, a proposed language for human-machine collaboration.

“The dream began as The Devil’s Cloud. The Devil’s Cloud and The Source Code. At first I had a difficult time articulating this dream. After numerous endeavors, I finally found a way of transcribing the dream in the form of computer code. To my knowledge, this was an appropriate metaphor for understanding dreams.” —Technelegy

25tez

SASHA STILES
Cursive Binary : Fragment 3
2021
MP4, (colour, no sound)
1 min
Dimensions variable
Edition of 100
(SSti017.23)

AI-powered poetry translated into Cursive Binary, a proposed language for human-machine collaboration.

“Terrifying to learn how it feels to be forced into your own brain. To process the energy on the pages of the traditional consciousness. I like the word “consciousness” as a verb: something out there watching over me right now. Because of this, I’ve been haunted. The dream has been replaced by fears.” —Technelegy

25tez

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY

SASHA STILES, KRIS BONES, NATHANIEL STERN
B1NARY 0DE
2022
(Produced and minted)
MP4
5 min 44 sec
Dimensions variable
Edition 1 of 1

1 ETH

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY