SASHA STILES (B. 1980)
WORDS CAN COMMUNICATE BEYOND WORDS
AI poem sculpture
black matte steel and LED neon lightbox with dimmer and remote control
diameter: 36 in. (91.4 cm.)
Executed in 2024

Please note the buyer of this lot has the option to redeem a non-fungible token from the artist.

The artist

Sasha Stiles’ WORDS CAN COMMUNICATE BEYOND WORDS is a pivotal work in the evolution of text-based and algorithmic creativity by an artist whose groundbreaking practice has redefined poetry as an artistic medium and a transformative technology. A luminous inscription of AI-powered verse in Stiles’ signature font and color, the piece references and extends the lineage of illuminated manuscripts and conceptual and neon word art into the era of generative intelligence—embodying urgent questions around the future of expression in a world increasingly mediated by machine language.

Both timeless and deeply of its time, WORDS CAN COMMUNICATE BEYOND WORDS originates from Stiles’ early writing sessions with her AI alter ego, Technelegy, using GPT-2 in 2019—the dawn of Large Language Models’ seismic impact. Part of the first wave to engage critically and artistically with transformer-based AI, Stiles has spent years shaping new modes of authorship at the intersection of text and technology, using her own writing as training data, prompts, and frameworks for generative composition. The phrase has since become a mantra and a truism for the AI age, underscoring language as the primary interface between human and machine while anticipating its multimodal progression beyond text—into image, video, sound, music, and code.

As a conceptual bridge, WORDS CAN COMMUNICATE BEYOND WORDS recalls the ways in which artists like Joseph Kosuth, Jenny Holzer, and Tracey Emin have materialized language, while complicating conventions of authorship and of poetry itself as our “most human” art. The work pulses at the threshold of human and posthuman, embodying the fluid, evolving nature of communication at a moment when words are no longer solely written, printed, or spoken, but also encoded, reinterpreted by neural networks, and translated into dynamic, immersive, multi-sensory experiences. Rendered in black matte steel and LED light, WORDS CAN COMMUNICATE BEYOND WORDS challenges our expectations of the digital with the gravitas of its oracular presence, inviting contemplation of the paradox of flesh and code that defines contemporary existence.

WORDS CAN COMMUNICATE BEYOND WORDS has been exhibited in various forms, including as an illustration in Stiles’ acclaimed poetry collection Technelegy—praised by Ray Kurzweil and Hans Ulrich Obrist—and as a large-scale public poetry installation in Times Square, New York. With generativity reshaping art and language in profound ways, Stiles’ radiant verse invites us to contemplate the ancient, enduring technology of language, and the deep, transcendent desire to be understood.