Bang & Olufsen x Sasha Stiles

Event Dates:
April 4 - 10th, 2024
12:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Location:
Bang & Olufsen
121 Spring Street
New York, NY

Sasha Stiles' AI-Poetry Installation Transforms Bang & Olufsen Store — *Sasha Stiles' AI-Poetry Installation in Partnership with MakersPlace Transforms Bang & Olufsen Store*

A brilliant collaboration that brings together technology, art, and audio excellence, renowned digital artist Sasha Stiles’s installation in partnership with MakersPlace at the Bang & Olufsen store in Soho is a must-see highlight of NFT.NYC 2024.

The project is the brainchild of Jessica Marinaro, Senior Director and curator at MakersPlace. Stiles’ new series of works, FOUR CORE TEXTS, were debuted at the Bang & Olufsen store with a big opening party, and exclusive NFTs were made available on MakersPlace.

Stiles, known for her innovative use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create her poetry work, has collaborated with her partner, Kris Bones, to create the soundscape of the pieces — her art with Bang & Olufsen's high-quality speakers elevate the store's ambiance to new heights.

“An epic collaboration with Bang&Olufsen and testament to the power of futuristic exploration and visionary thought leaders in the digital art/web3 space”

— Jessica Marinaro

The installation marks an exciting collaboration between visual arts and audio sophistication. Visitors to the Bang & Olufsen store are treated to a multi-sensory experience, where Stiles' AI-generated poems are not only visually captivating but also resonate deeply through the store's state-of-the-art speakers.

“A quartet of transhuman poems powered by the ever-evolving technology of language. Written and performed by Sasha Stiles + Technelegy, with original music by Kris Bones. Fusing Stiles’ ancestral heritage with her longtime interest in futurity, this collection of four unique media-rich works pays homage to the eternal power of spoken word and the musicality of verse, marrying ancient rhythms with algorithmic cadence in a quest for meaning in our posthuman age.”

— FOUR CORE TEXTS

Sasha Stiles is a poet and a digital artist, pioneering in the field of AI-powered literature. In 2022, the generative text poem “COMPLETION: When it’s just you,” co-authored by Sasha Stiles and her AI-powered “alter ego,” was sold at Christie’s, making Stiles the first writer to bring AI-generated literature to a major auction house.

She has been experimenting with algorithmic language tools like GPT-2 since 2018. Her practice took an invigorating turn when she asked the AI to translate a poem she was working on into a trans-human language — a poem about what it means to be human in a post-human age.

Stiles started using AI-powered language models to revise her verses and even further reflect her voice as a poet. She trained her AI alter-ego, Technelegy, by feeding it with her own writings as well as texts by other writers that were influential for her, such as T.S Elliot, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsburg, Walt Whitman, and Octavia Butler.

By giving the AI all the information in her head, Sasha Stiles asks her AI alter-ego to write more like her.

At the heart of the installation lies Bang & Olufsen's iconic speakers, renowned for their unparalleled sound quality and precision engineering. Paired with Stiles' evocative poetry, the speakers add a new dimension to the auditory experience, immersing visitors in a rich soundscape that complements striking visuals.

MakersPlace is the “world's most trusted marketplace and community to discover, buy, and sell authentic NFTs from the world's leading digital creators.” They offer digital creators a safe and secure platform to sell their art directly to collectors around the world.

For Bang & Olufsen, the collaboration with MakersPlace and Stiles represents a big step into the world of contemporary art, showcasing their commitment to innovation and culture. By providing a platform for Stiles' visionary work, the brand reinforces its reputation as a supplier of not just audio equipment, but also a curator of immersive sensory experiences.

“Each poem is a one-of-a-kind handmade book unto itself – a dynamic palimpsest of personal narrative, analog performance, and generative materials and metaphors in which pages, letters, translations, effects, animations, visuals, voice and music are powered by Augmented Imagination. Together, these FOUR CORE TEXTS honor literature’s roots while engaging a suite of next-gen poetic devices and testing the limits of Authorial Innovation.”

— FOUR CORE TEXTS

MakersPlace and Stiles' collaboration with Bang & Olufsen represents a convergence of creativity and craftsmanship, and is a must-see installation during NFT.NYC 2024.