Beyond Binary: Sasha Stiles on Generative Poetry, Techno-Spirituality, and the Language of the Future

Sasha Stiles: I can't believe it's already been four years since we first met. So such a crazy journey! My collaboration with AI goes back quite a ways. As a child I was reading a lot of science fiction and became later really interested in the theme of post-humanism and collaboration between human and machines.

I wrote a lot of poems about technology and published them in diverse traditional formats and literary journals. But it was 2017, as I came in touch with the area of AI called NLP (Natural Language Processing), that we both know very well, and which has become much more well known since the advent of ChatGPT. At that moment I began to understand more about the arrival of these intelligent systems that could write and think in a way that sounded quite human.

I always have been interested in technology, but also in language and words. So I found this area of NLP to be really fascinating. I started digging around on the internet looking for people who are using these tools in interesting ways or with similar generative approaches. At that time I was coming from not a technological, but rather traditional English literature and language background. I felt a little bit out of my depth, but I was reading about people like Ross Goodwin, the wonderful creative code poet, about Allison Parrish, who was doing really interesting things, also the immense blog by Gwern Branwen, who was doing stunning research and experiments with language models pretty early on.

And it just really fired up my imagination. All these creatives inspired me to begin playing with generative tools in 2018 and to understand how they worked. And then 2019, GPT-2 was available–and I was fascinated. I started my Technelegy project in that year and began to take lots of different poems that I'd written over the years, and to refract them through AI language models to see what would happen. So really, it's been a strong focus of my practice since then.

Sasha Stiles: Oh, yeah. But before that, I want to say too that I was very interested in the pre-AI epoch, like works by Alison Knowles, like her computational poem, The House of Dust (1967). I've been very interested in reading Christian Bök's essay about RACTER and “The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed” from decades earlier. There were a lot of other examples too, and so it was like of coming together and bursting out. But to your question about how it feels (and you know this better than most people too, because you were right there as well): I remember beginning refract my human poems through GPT2, fine-tuning the model on a manuscript of my work, and then taking the first line of a poem I'd written and presenting to the system. I asked it to reiterate/revise/rewrite the poem. And it was fascinating, because often the system would do things that were very experimental, or conceptual, and that I probably wouldn't have thought to do. It was playing with (dis)appearance of language and words, repeating certain words over and over and over again, creating some kind of computational litany, stretching outwards, taking vowels, and exaggerating them, creating all these really interesting, formal moments that I don't think were present in my work.

It was not always coming from my training data, but from other places, like echoes of my voice were taking on these new forms, and trying on new voices as well. It was mind-expanding and liberating—I realized poems didn’t have to follow a fixed format. Seeing different versions of a poem showed me how each could tell a unique story, which really inspired me early on. But I also, I would say it was also quite frightening for me as a writer to witness this process (laughs).

Sasha Stiles: I know exactly what you mean. That's something that struck me too, it was the feeling when I was working with these models that it was almost like divination, like communication with an oracle. Speaking of techno-spiritual concepts, it’s that idea that these systems are coalescing billions of minds, different voices and ideas, and blending them all together, like distilled gems of collective thoughts during alchemic process. I find beauty in how they reveal our shared humanity, connecting us as one organism rather than isolated individuals. At their best, these systems synthesize global noise into wisdom, offering meaningful reflections on who we are together.

Sasha Stiles: Yes, I was very interested in machines communicating with humans, but also with other machines. I've long been fascinated by binary code. There's something beautiful and poetic in binary as a metaphor, this seemingly simple system of zeros and ones. At the other hand, it’s a quite antagonistic system of a binary “EITHER / OR.”  To me, this idea of zero and one was being a metaphor about the conventional dichotomies “human vs machine,” “nature vs technology,”  “past vs future.” I've been working with computers in very different modalities using different software and approaches to my art even before AI, spending a lot of time face to face with a machine screen, trying to communicate and tell the machine what I wanted it to do. One day I began to feel a true connection, as opposed to the such dichotomies “human vs device,” playing in the liminal space between us.

Curisive Binary actually emerged in the shower. There was steam on the wall and on the mirror. I just started writing zeros and ones and it was as if you are inscribing (not typing!) code, creating motion, as a merging of the analog and the digital to a futuristic hybrid language. Having studied Latin when I was younger, I often think about the etymology. I had always thought a lot about the interesting origins of the word “digital,” which feels so futuristic, so sci-fi, so nonhuman. But “digitus” in Latin means “finger,” going back to a part of the human body.

I realized, that digital can be computer or it can be handmade, a handcrafted gesture–another good reminder about false dichotomies: it's not about “EITHER / OR.” It's not analog versus digital. It's kind of all this continuum. We move beyond seeing technology as our opposite. When we converge with it, we transcend—not replacing creativity, but merging with machines to amplify what humans can do. That’s what the binary means to me.

It was the beginning of my Binary series, which will be shown in the exhibition Of Seeds & Signals curated by Diane Drubay as part of Art on Tezos: Berlin on November 6-9, 2025. I've been really enjoying over the years pulling binary out from behind the screen from these virtual systems and rendering it tactile and making it something that I do forge with my hands, what I can feel and use as a material. For me binary as something that connects human and machines in this way.

Sasha Stiles: Yes. Analog Binary Code is a series of poetic sculptures or concrete poetry that I've been making for many years. Essentially, it's a mode of translating from original or found poetry into computer language, using physical tactile objects, things that I find around my house, or using elements taken from nature. Often I've made analog binary sculptures, if I'm out for a walk, or in the garden, or somewhere amidst a nature, I like use the found natural elements that for creating a cipher binary. The first one I ever made was with black walnuts, because I have a black walnut tree in my yard, and it's dropping these gorgeous fruits, these beautiful round green globes.

And then you have beautiful leaves falling as well. So I made this poem installation using the black walnut globes as zeros and leaves as ones. You can create language out of anything. It’s about mark-making—using what’s available to communicate. I see it as a techno biological project that blends nature and technology, scrutinizing that stereotype that tech must be immediately cold or metallic. Nature itself is full of algorithmic creativity, showing how deeply connected it is with technology.

Sasha Stiles: That's a really interesting formulation of it. I often think about Cursive Binary as a transhuman enterprise, because it’s about interweaving or entangling of the human and the technological constructs. And then, yes, I think it's interesting to think about the Analog Binary Code as postanthropocentric. I think with Analog Binary Code, there certainly is something in it about the fate not just human language, but planetary languages. Human language is changing in ways unimaginable decades ago. Will it become more code-based and machinic, or move toward plant-like collective intelligence? These shifts raise questions about the future of language, intelligence, and consciousness—and about new voices and entities now able to communicate with us.

So in that sense: yes, it's really about moving beyond the centering of the human, also considering that human (and non-human) mindsets are endless nodes in a larger common network. There's something about humility and using these humble materials in a natural state, trying to be resourceful and respectful. With these sculptures I make out in nature, I document them and then leave them where they are. And I also observe what happens to them as they disintegrate and decompose, going back into the earth. They do what they're supposed to do, within this ongoing generative cycle in the overarching universal context. That's part of the process, not just the momentary documentation of the artifact itself. I think it's all part of that larger arc.

Sasha Stiles: Yes, blockchain… We were pretty early on. I started working in blockchain in the beginning of 2021. I've been introduced to it in already 2020 by metaverse art curator Jess Conatser. She asked me to contribute some digital poetry to her show. And so I did. And that was my first time showing work in the metaverse, and also my first time sort of encountering artists who were minting their works on the blockchain.

That was an eye opening moment for me. I started look around at crypto artists. At that point, I'd been making multimedia poetry for a long time already and was just posting it on my social media channels. When I started to learn more about crypto art, I realized that this is really interesting. For someone who makes poetry and multimedia art and doesn't sit still on the printed page all the time, it felt like a natural thing to start looking into blockchain as a next gen printing press.

And I started minting in March of 2021 on Tezos. To be precise the very first thing I ever minted was on Rarible on Ethereum, but it was a tough experience, and very expensive. I messed something up and had to burn it and re-mint it, just a disaster. So I very quickly migrated to Tezos. And right away, found a really interesting community of conceptual and experimental writers there. I think the first two people I really met and clicked with on Tezos were Aurèce Vettier and Kalen Iwamoto, who started Crypto Writers. And we were all together with you part of EtherPoems later, even if I knew them before, it was a wonderful experience.

The beginning of my journey was realizing there was some really thoughtful, interesting people who were using blockchain as a way to explore and to expand their creativity, to experiment with forms of art that wouldn't be possible in any other way, shape or form. And it really just kind of opened my mind. Then I started minting quite a lot. And I also started experimenting and playing not only with adapting blockchain to my work, but with ways to actually create blockchain-native work, also in the sense of writing.

That was really like a recognition to meet in the cyberspace the poets and writers from around the world, to come together, to innovate our work, even–or especially–everybody had such a different approach. And I think knowing that you were already working with AI at the time, and Paul Mouginot (Aurèce Vettier) as well, and probably PAI (Poetic Artificial Intelligence) too and other members, and me as well.

It was amazing, because up until that point, I'd felt quite lonely as a poet working with AI. It was nice to come into contact with other other creative minds who were playing with language and AI in thoughtful ways. This was also the basis and idea for what later became theVERSEverse.

So I found community on the blockchain. I found creative tools that have opened up my practice. And then of course, it's been a way to sell artwork, the reason why I was enabled to spend more time growing my art practice and focusing on things that I love to do so much.

Sasha Stiles: Indeed, that was part of it. Early on 2021 I was pretty new to blockchain. I was doing a lot of research, trying to find the approach of engaging with this community, but in a way that feels true to who I am as an artist.

Tezos really felt as being naturally fitting in so many ways. My community on Tezos, in particular on H=N grew very organically and very naturally because it was such a like-minded group of people. I also remember those brilliant #objkt4objkt events, where we shared our art with friends, learning, discovering new artists. This place was really about creativity and possibility and technological innovation. We created the community that we dreamed of, because Tezos community is really focused not on the metrics, or on the market, but on creativity. I think it was a really good entry to blockchain, otherwise I don't think I would have stayed in blockchain longer.

Another important point: Tezos really early on was so fundamental in trying to build bridges between important institutions in the art world and blockchain. I was introduced to Art Basel and the folks there through Tezos. My friend Jesse Damiani, gives me to his friend, Reid Yager, who was supporting the Tezos ecosystem at the time. He invited me to come in when Tezos was sponsoring a booth at Miami Art Basel. That was my first time experiencing Art Basel. Tezos very kindly invited me to come in and talk about Blockchain within that context. It was revelatory to see how blockchain, digital art, and AI poetics connect with traditional and contemporary art. Tezos played a quiet but crucial role in sparking those conversations—many of which are now shaping events like Art Basel, even if they don’t always get the credit.