{
  "schema": "ab5d-dossier/1",
  "slug": "sasha-stiles",
  "name": "Sasha Stiles",
  "subtitle": "Poetry between flesh, code, and motion",
  "lede": "Sasha Stiles approaches poetry as an ancient technology newly transformed by computation. Her works ask how reading changes when language can watch, respond, and rewrite itself.",
  "url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/sasha-stiles/",
  "bibliography_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/sasha-stiles/links/",
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  "updated": "2026-07-11",
  "tier": "compact",
  "editions": 240,
  "collections": 1,
  "otdh": {
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    "score": 9089,
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    "holder_addresses": 179,
    "projects": 1,
    "current_works": 240,
    "raw_collector_days": 250363,
    "median_project_hold_days": 1223,
    "snapshot_at": "2026-09-14T00:00:00.000Z",
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  "identity": {
    "artist": "Sasha Stiles",
    "website": "https://www.sashastiles.com/",
    "based": "Born 1980, Pasadena, California. Based near New York City",
    "practice": "Transmedia poetry combining writing, generative systems, moving image, performance, code, and human-machine collaboration",
    "now": null,
    "raster": "https://www.raster.art/artist/sasha-stiles",
    "otdh": "[9,089 · rank 245 of 308](/artists/otdh/#artist-sasha-stiles)",
    "holding signal": "172 collector identities · 179 holder addresses · 250,363 raw collector-days · 14 Sep 2026",
    "collector tdh": "[ssTDH](/artists/sasha-stiles/sstdh/) · dashboard"
  },
  "socials": {
    "website": "https://www.sashastiles.com/",
    "x": "@sashastiles",
    "instagram": "sashastiles"
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  "profile_image_url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1856992246383472640/9ELAaWmb_400x400.jpg",
  "profile_image_source": "https://x.com/sashastiles",
  "works": [
    {
      "name": "Still Moving",
      "editions": 240,
      "supply": 240,
      "artblocks_slug": "still-moving-by-nathaniel-stern-and-sasha-stiles",
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  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": null,
      "paragraphs": [
        "Sasha Stiles is a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, artist, and AI researcher whose practice treats language as both cultural inheritance and mutable technology. Her work moves among books, screens, installations, performances, and blockchain-based editions, repeatedly testing how a poem might behave when it is no longer fixed on a page. An interview in *Dirt* describes *Technelegy*, her 2021 book, as a collaboration with language models developed through GPT-2 and GPT-3, while Stiles characterizes machine language as a source of dialogue and surprise rather than an autonomous replacement for authorship.",
        "This orientation places poetry inside a longer history of technical mediation. Stiles links oral transmission, handwriting, print, code, and artificial intelligence as successive but overlapping systems for carrying memory. Her “AI alter ego,” Technelegy, is therefore less a separate author than a composite voice produced through iterative exchange. In conversation with Le Random, she locates her practice within generative literature and debates labels such as AI poet, blockchain poet, and metapoet. The instability of those labels is productive: her subject is not one tool, but the changing conditions under which language is made and recognized."
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "The reader enters the poem",
      "paragraphs": [
        "*Still Moving* (2023), made with Nathaniel Stern, converts this inquiry into a bodily encounter. The Art Blocks release comprises exactly 240 editions and was released on April 26, 2023. Its title holds an intentional contradiction: stillness is a physical state, while moving names both gesture and affect. Each edition presents language as a responsive visual field rather than a stable inscription.",
        "The collaborators explain that the work uses camera-based motion tracking, with data confined to the participant’s local machine, so bodily position and movement alter the onscreen composition. This mechanism makes reading reciprocal. A viewer does not simply decode a completed poem but supplies motion through which words are reorganized and encountered. The project’s camera is not primarily representational. It translates gesture into an input, making the body legible to the work without turning that body into a stored portrait.",
        "Stiles and Stern describe *Still Moving* as an evolution from the read-only book toward a “read-write-interact” form. The formulation is useful because it preserves the literary stakes of the project. Its generativity is not ornamental variation around a static text. Instead, the reader’s physical decisions become part of syntax, pacing, emphasis, and visual rhythm. Stern’s account adds that the project “unreads” a poem written by Stiles and Technelegy, extending the collaborators’ shared investigation of language, embodiment, and networked identity."
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "From binary marks to living language",
      "paragraphs": [
        "*Still Moving* belongs to a broader practice in which the supposed opposition between human and machine is repeatedly unsettled. In the 2023 exhibition *B1NARY 0DES*, Stiles translated epic poetry into binary-coded paintings, drawings, moving images, and virtual works. The exhibition framed poetry and code as mutually transforming systems, with handmade zeroes and ones retaining the pressure and irregularity of the artist’s touch. Here, computation is not presented as immaterial. It returns as paint, handwriting, voice, screen light, and bodily duration.",
        "That material emphasis also clarifies why collaboration is central to Stiles’s work. Her projects distribute authorship across writer, model, programmer, musician, reader, and display system, while keeping those roles visible. ArtYard’s account of *Ars Poetica Cybernetica* traces an earlier phase of this inquiry to Stiles’s poetic mentorship of the humanoid robot BINA48 and to questions about ethical inputs and applications for artificial intelligence. The concern is not whether a machine can imitate a poem, but what kinds of relation a poetic system can stage.",
        "By 2024, Stiles described Technelegy as a “third voice” emerging through work with customized machine-learning models trained on her poetry, notes, voice, and research. *Still Moving* gives this composite authorship a public interface. Its 240 editions remain discrete blockchain works, yet each also behaves as an event renewed by a reader’s presence. The project thus makes a precise claim for digital poetry: language can remain authored and historically situated while becoming contingent, embodied, and responsive."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "Sasha Stiles is a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, artist, and AI researcher whose practice treats language as both cultural inheritance and mutable technology. Her work moves among books, screens, installations, performances, and blockchain-based editions, repeatedly testing how a poem might behave when it is no longer fixed on a page. An interview in *Dirt* describes *Technelegy*, her 2021 book, as a collaboration with language models developed through GPT-2 and GPT-3, while Stiles characterizes machine language as a source of dialogue and surprise rather than an autonomous replacement for authorship.\n\nThis orientation places poetry inside a longer history of technical mediation. Stiles links oral transmission, handwriting, print, code, and artificial intelligence as successive but overlapping systems for carrying memory. Her “AI alter ego,” Technelegy, is therefore less a separate author than a composite voice produced through iterative exchange. In conversation with Le Random, she locates her practice within generative literature and debates labels such as AI poet, blockchain poet, and metapoet. The instability of those labels is productive: her subject is not one tool, but the changing conditions under which language is made and recognized.\n\n## The reader enters the poem\n\n*Still Moving* (2023), made with Nathaniel Stern, converts this inquiry into a bodily encounter. The Art Blocks release comprises exactly 240 editions and was released on April 26, 2023. Its title holds an intentional contradiction: stillness is a physical state, while moving names both gesture and affect. Each edition presents language as a responsive visual field rather than a stable inscription.\n\nThe collaborators explain that the work uses camera-based motion tracking, with data confined to the participant’s local machine, so bodily position and movement alter the onscreen composition. This mechanism makes reading reciprocal. A viewer does not simply decode a completed poem but supplies motion through which words are reorganized and encountered. The project’s camera is not primarily representational. It translates gesture into an input, making the body legible to the work without turning that body into a stored portrait.\n\nStiles and Stern describe *Still Moving* as an evolution from the read-only book toward a “read-write-interact” form. The formulation is useful because it preserves the literary stakes of the project. Its generativity is not ornamental variation around a static text. Instead, the reader’s physical decisions become part of syntax, pacing, emphasis, and visual rhythm. Stern’s account adds that the project “unreads” a poem written by Stiles and Technelegy, extending the collaborators’ shared investigation of language, embodiment, and networked identity.\n\n## From binary marks to living language\n\n*Still Moving* belongs to a broader practice in which the supposed opposition between human and machine is repeatedly unsettled. In the 2023 exhibition *B1NARY 0DES*, Stiles translated epic poetry into binary-coded paintings, drawings, moving images, and virtual works. The exhibition framed poetry and code as mutually transforming systems, with handmade zeroes and ones retaining the pressure and irregularity of the artist’s touch. Here, computation is not presented as immaterial. It returns as paint, handwriting, voice, screen light, and bodily duration.\n\nThat material emphasis also clarifies why collaboration is central to Stiles’s work. Her projects distribute authorship across writer, model, programmer, musician, reader, and display system, while keeping those roles visible. ArtYard’s account of *Ars Poetica Cybernetica* traces an earlier phase of this inquiry to Stiles’s poetic mentorship of the humanoid robot BINA48 and to questions about ethical inputs and applications for artificial intelligence. The concern is not whether a machine can imitate a poem, but what kinds of relation a poetic system can stage.\n\nBy 2024, Stiles described Technelegy as a “third voice” emerging through work with customized machine-learning models trained on her poetry, notes, voice, and research. *Still Moving* gives this composite authorship a public interface. Its 240 editions remain discrete blockchain works, yet each also behaves as an event renewed by a reader’s presence. The project thus makes a precise claim for digital poetry: language can remain authored and historically situated while becoming contingent, embodied, and responsive.",
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      "title": "Still Moving",
      "caption": "2023, Still Moving",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
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      "title": "Still Moving",
      "caption": "2023, Still Moving",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
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      "title": "Still Moving",
      "caption": "2023, Still Moving",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
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      "title": "Still Moving",
      "caption": "2023, Still Moving",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
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      "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069/433000191.png",
      "title": "Still Moving",
      "caption": "2023, Still Moving",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
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      "title": "Still Moving",
      "caption": "2023, Still Moving",
      "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders"
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  ],
  "references": [
    {
      "n": 1,
      "note": "Daisy Alioto interviews Stiles about AI collaboration and the making of the 2021 book Technelegy.",
      "url": "https://dirt.fyi/article/2022/05/ai-poetry",
      "label": "Dirt"
    },
    {
      "n": 2,
      "note": "Stiles discusses generative poetry, language art, and the terminology surrounding her practice.",
      "url": "https://www.lerandom.art/editorial/sasha-stiles-on-writing-poets",
      "label": "Le Random"
    },
    {
      "n": 3,
      "note": "The official Art Blocks collection record gives the release date and total of 240 unique artworks.",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/still-moving-by-nathaniel-stern-and-sasha-stiles",
      "label": "Art Blocks collection"
    },
    {
      "n": 4,
      "note": "Art Blocks interviews Stern and Stiles about Still Moving’s local motion tracking and interactive literary structure.",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/articles/in-conversation-with-nathaniel-stern-and-sasha-stiles-on-still-moving",
      "label": "Art Blocks interview"
    },
    {
      "n": 5,
      "note": "Stern describes Still Moving as an “unreading” of a poem and relates it to bodies, networks, and identity.",
      "url": "https://nathanielstern.com/text/2023/culture3-2/",
      "label": "Nathaniel Stern"
    },
    {
      "n": 6,
      "note": "Annka Kultys Gallery documents the media, concepts, and dates of Stiles’s B1NARY 0DES exhibition.",
      "url": "https://www.annkakultys.com/exhibitions/sasha-stiles-binary-odes/",
      "label": "Annka Kultys Gallery"
    },
    {
      "n": 7,
      "note": "ArtYard presents Ars Poetica Cybernetica as an investigation of AI poetics informed by Stiles’s work with BINA48.",
      "url": "https://artyard.org/exhibitions/ars-poetica-cybernetica/",
      "label": "ArtYard"
    },
    {
      "n": 8,
      "note": "Art Basel profiles Stiles’s transmedia practice and her concept of Technelegy as an emergent collaborative voice.",
      "url": "https://www.artbasel.com/stories/sasha-stiles-how-technology-renews-relationship-with-storytelling?lang=en",
      "label": "Art Basel"
    }
  ],
  "bibliography": [
    {
      "category": "In the AB[500]: Art Blocks",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "The collection page records Still Moving as a 2023 Art Blocks release by Nathaniel Stern and Sasha Stiles.",
          "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/still-moving-by-nathaniel-stern-and-sasha-stiles",
          "label": "Still Moving",
          "meta": "collection · 2023"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Interviews",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "An extended interview considers Stiles’s hybrid poetry, blockchain practice, and use of technology to expand imagination.",
          "url": "https://fencedigital.com/2023/01/09/constant-critic-halim-madi-interviews-transhuman-poet-technelegy-author-sasha-stiles/",
          "label": "Fence Digital",
          "meta": "interview · 2023"
        },
        {
          "note": "A filmed artist-to-artist conversation addresses Stiles’s language practice and A LIVING POEM.",
          "url": "https://techspressionism.com/video/interview/sasha-stiles/",
          "label": "Techspressionism",
          "meta": "interview · 2025"
        },
        {
          "note": "An interview presents walking, attention, and daily ritual as foundations of Stiles’s creative process.",
          "url": "https://apossible.com/interviews/sasha-stiles-is-a-poet-and-artist",
          "label": "APOSSIBLE",
          "meta": "interview · undated"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Press and criticism",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Scientific American examines Stiles’s development of AI-assisted poetry and its realization at MoMA.",
          "url": "https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-a-poet-uses-ai-to-write-and-why-her-work-is-now-at-moma/",
          "label": "Scientific American",
          "meta": "criticism · 2026"
        },
        {
          "note": "The Brooklyn Rail reviews A LIVING POEM and discusses its relation to MoMA’s text-art collection.",
          "url": "https://brooklynrail.org/2026/02/artseen/sasha-stiles-a-living-poem/",
          "label": "The Brooklyn Rail",
          "meta": "review · 2026"
        },
        {
          "note": "Refraction surveys the analog and virtual dimensions of Stiles’s language-based practice.",
          "url": "https://www.refractionfestival.com/editorial/sasha-stiles",
          "label": "Refraction",
          "meta": "profile · 2023"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Museums and institutions",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "MoMA’s artist record identifies Stiles as Kalmyk-American, born in 1980, and lists A LIVING POEM.",
          "url": "https://www.moma.org/collection/artists/140170",
          "label": "Museum of Modern Art",
          "meta": "archive · 2025"
        },
        {
          "note": "MoMA’s press release details the New York and Seoul presentations of A LIVING POEM.",
          "url": "https://press.moma.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/PressRelease_SashaStiles_Final.pdf",
          "label": "MoMA press office",
          "meta": "exhibition · 2025"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Auctions and catalogues",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Christie’s sale catalogue lists Stiles’s REPETAE: The Loom of Language as lot 21 in its on-chain Gucci collaboration, Future Frequencies.",
          "url": "https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/future-frequencies-explorations-generative-art-fashion/3489",
          "label": "Christie’s",
          "meta": "auction · 2023"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "Profiles and archives",
      "entries": [
        {
          "note": "Raster aggregates Sasha Stiles's tokenized works across platforms.",
          "url": "https://www.raster.art/artist/sasha-stiles",
          "label": "Raster",
          "meta": "profile · ongoing"
        },
        {
          "note": "The artist’s current CV records her 1980 birth in Pasadena and documents exhibitions, publications, commissions, and performances.",
          "url": "https://www.sashastiles.com/_files/ugd/39587f_8d602675e1c64086b2e7f1511a869080.pdf",
          "label": "Sasha Stiles CV",
          "meta": "archive · current"
        },
        {
          "note": "Harvard Magazine profiles Stiles’s education, family history, and long-running collaboration with a customized language model.",
          "url": "https://www.harvardmagazine.com/arts-culture/harvard-sasha-stiles-poetry-ai-chatgpt",
          "label": "Harvard Magazine",
          "meta": "profile · 2026"
        }
      ]
    }
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