Four Core Texts

"The First Quartet" on view at Bang & Olufsen in Soho, NY.

FOUR CORE TEXTS is a quartet of transhuman poems powered by the ever-evolving technology of language – a generative literary gesamtkunstwerk composed with four forms of AI. Presented in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen and MakersPlace.

In this collection, Stiles leverages her AI-powered alter ego, Technelegy – a customized LLM (large language model) that she has been training and collaborating with since 2018 – as co-author, family historian, multilingual translator, scribe, bookmaker, illustrator and polyphonic spoken word performer. Cutting-edge technology gives voice to ancestral lineage, language and lyric folklore, honoring poetry’s roots in oral tradition while embodying the visceral, immersive possibilities of more-than-human storysharing.

Fusing Stiles’ ancestral heritage with a longtime interest in futurity, FOUR CORE TEXTS marries ancient rhythms with algorithmic cadence in a quest for meaning in our posthuman age

The Poems

“THE FIRST QUARTET” (2024; mp4 with audio, 6:00 min, 1920 × 1080) delves into the primal origins of language, tracing its journey from the raw vibrations of embryonic sound to the complex symphony of communication.

“SEVEN GENERATIONS” (2024; mp4 with audio, 5:39 min, 1920 × 1080) is a multimodal exploration of kinship, sifting through personal and collective storytelling to unearth variations on fundamental narratives.

“A RESTLESS MIND” (2024; mp4 with audio, 3:18 min, 1920 × 1080) meditates on the boundless landscape of consciousness, the probabilities of emergent sentience, and the constant struggle for clarity and calm in the vortex of modern existence.

“HUMANIFESTO” (2024; mp4 with audio, 10:53 min, 1920 × 1080) is a declaration of human resilience and imagination in the face of existential uncertainty, celebrating the profound beauty and pain we experience through the shared act of living, as well as the hope for a better future through human-machine collaboration. Written via a process driven largely by Technelegy, the generated text uses the contextual richness and complexities of poetic language to begin to understand what it means to be human, and opens with a dedication that has appeared nowhere else in the AI poet’s repertoire thus far: “For Sasha.”

AI Co-Authorship

Four modes of Authorial Imagination synthesize and expand Stiles’ work at the forefront of creative AI:

1. Autobiographical Intelligence

​Poem texts are generated via personalized AI models fine-tuned and prompted on aspects of Stiles’ cultural heritage and family memories -- part of a larger effort to decipher and encode the dying Kalmyk-Mongolian dialect and preserve ancestral wisdom.

2. Augmented Invocation

​Stiles’ analog spoken word readings are merged with a polyphonic chorus of AI voice clones trained by Stiles on personal recordings and other sources, exploring Technelegy’s extension as a chameleonic, performative alter ego.

3. Aural Immersion

​Original music composed in collaboration with Kris Bones uses digitally-powered sound design and generative music production to unearth primal emotion, allowing us to say and hear the otherwise unspeakable.

4. Algorithmic Illumination

​Generative tools alchemize poetry into wordless language and material metaphor – from text-to-image programs that translate verse into illustrations, to the inscription of poetry on dynamic palimpsests of digitally handcrafted paper.

A Deeper Look Into The Four Core Texts

The Title

In addition to evoking T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” (the great meditation on time, spirituality and our place in the universe) and the musicality of verse, FOUR CORE TEXTS nods to the role of Core Text(s) in training data, computing and cultural canon, as well as to the cerebral cortex as seat of consciousness, memory and emotion -- the higher functions that make us “human.”

The Translations

The collection shifts between English and Mongolian, a language associated with oral tradition and folklore, nomadism and portability. As the Kalmyk dialect spoken by members of Stiles’ family is highly endangered, it is not available via contemporary translation tools. Therefore, FOUR CORE TEXTS uses standard Mongolian alongside research and input from Stiles’ mother, Erna Akuginow, and marks the start of a long-term effort to cultivate bespoke Kalmyk tools. Inherent mistranslations suggest the promise and peril in relying on technology to foster human connection as we attempt to cross linguistic divides, generational and otherwise.

​The Voices and Music

Produced in collaboration with musical veteran Kris Bones, and developed to be premiered with Bang & Olufsen, FOUR CORE TEXTS is an ode to oral tradition as a pivotal technology that enabled humans to preserve and transmit stories long before the advent of written language. The collection is an anthem of the viscerality of voice in a technological culture dominated by the visual and virtual -- a “book” to be heard and felt as much as read or seen.

To perform the poems, Stiles merges her analog spoken word with a polyphony of AI voice clones trained on public sources and personal recordings -- exploding her AI alter ego Technelegy into a Greek (Kalmyk?) chorus of cybernetic interpreters whose accents, timbres, cadences and inflections are shaped by training data as well as formal cues (punctuation, text formatting, blank spaces, etc) -- text as libretto or score.

The collection employs aural elements like ASMR, distortion, deep bass rumbles and the sweeping expanse of Dolby Atmos as poetic devices in their own right. Sonic landscapes offer exciting possibilities for immersive readership, and draw attention to how sound and rhythm -- like the coded patterns of machine speak -- unlock wordless emotion, equipping us to understand the otherwise unspeakable.

The Visuals

Building on fonts, colors, motifs and techniques from Stiles’ media-rich visual poetry practice, the collection engages a mix of analog and generative tools to alchemize poetry into wordless language -- weaving legible literature with elements forged via text-to-image tools. Individual pages are crafted from digitally handmade papers, inks and textures, and illuminated by “translating” natural language into illustration. Key lines are highlighted as generative metaphors -- e.g., an old book becomes “moth wings from another world,” in both word and image. Intricate digital collage and layers upon layers of motion graphics yield dynamic palimpsests. Each poem is a one-of-a-kind book unto itself, nodding to the golden age of rare tomes, bespoke manuscripts, and the sacred space of the personal library

Click below to experience each work:

THE FIRST QUARTET (1/1)

SEVEN GENERATIONS (1/1)

A RESTLESS MIND (1/1)

HUMANIFESTO (1/1)

FOUR CORE TEXTS: THE DIGITAL CHAPBOOK (Limited Edition of 100)

FOUR CORE TEXTS: THE AUDIOBOOK (Collector’s Edition of 4)

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Explore the full collection at MakersPlace.