0RAL B1NARY: “BINARY ODE”

An “algorhythmic” exploration of the oral/aural tradition in poetry.

“Zero is a time of night.
Zero is the color of snow.
Zero is the space between notes.
Zero is the silence between words.
Zero is the pause before breath.
Zero is void in the heart of a crowd.
Zero is not nothing, but it’s not everything.
One is a time of day.
One is the color of spring grass in sunlight.
One is the warmth at the back of my neck when I turn to find you standing there.
One is the rhythm at the base of my spine.
One is the peace at the core of my being.
One is the sound of your voice in the dark.
And one more thing:
Without one I am nothing…”
–Technelegy

Fusing AI-powered verse, spoken word, original music and visuals all in generative composition, this playful ode to our universal language is inspired by Stiles’ binary-based art and Stern’s performative poetics. The experiment centers on a transhuman poem by Stiles’ AI alter ego, Technelegy, voiced as zeroes and ones, layered with human- and machine-generated sound – evoking ancient data transmissions in the oral tradition as well as the immersive potential of multisensorial, multimedia, metaversal language and literature. Brought into existence via the blockchain, it is a new form of “token word poetry.”

As with the duo’s other poetry “unreadings,” all minters will receive an airdropped broadside of the full poem after all editions are collected. A 1/1 media-rich version of the entire poem will also be made available.

Poetic traits:

• 321 editions performed by the algorithm, out of billions of possible combinations
• Each unique piece contains between 3 and 6 (out of 60) lines of generative text from a poem by Technelegy – a custom text generator fine-tuned on Stiles’ writing and research material, seeded with prompts from Stiles’ and Stern’s work – translated into binary and performed by Stiles
• 24 possible binary backbeats performed by Stern in his “Nathaniel Fun Time” (NFT) stylings, and generatively re-mixed
• 98 possible intros
• 15 musical stems composed by Kris Bones, generating millions of possible mixes
• Thousands of possible ending combinations
• 5 fonts, layered in billions of potential ways, including Stern and Stiles’ custom AI font, NNFT (Neural Network Font Type), developed for their ongoing collaboration, “Mother Computer”
• 13 color palettes based on Stern and Stiles’ respective artworka
• Very rare attributes including music-less performance, poem-less music, repeated “B1nary 0de” (title only)

Click to start and stop or replay. Although the first play through will be the same every time, starting and stopping may create minor variations in your mix (though not any of the core attributes).

0RAL B1NARY: “BINARY ODE” was produced with partial support from Refraction DAO’s Creative Grants program, and premiered as part of Refraction Festival at Art Basel Miami 2022. 15% of primary sales go to Refraction, and 5% of primary sales will be donated to Black Girls Code.