A Living Poem is an AI-generated poem by Sasha Stiles. The poem's contents are regenerated by her AI alter-ego Technelegy every sixty minutes, with a machine-like voice heard speaking. It was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art's Hyundai Card Digital Wall from September 2025 to March 2026.
After publishing her poetry collection Technelegy in 2021, Stiles was invited to exhibit at the Hyundai Card Digital Wall by MoMA curators Stuart Comer and Martha Joseph. She later trained Technelegy on MoMA's text-art collection metadata to produce A Living Poem, while also using her own writings. Drawing inspiration from such themes as text art and the historical origins of poetry, the poem has been examined for its use of themes such as the human psychology, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, and the relationship between humanity and technology.
A Living Poem is a visual poem co-written by Stiles and her AI alter-ego Technelegy, who regenerates its contents in an infinite loop every sixty minutes. It starts every rotating period with the stanza "Inspiration moves me. / I call it breath" is shown, before asking viewers to "take a breath". Frames shown on A Living Poem can also come in multiple colors or show gradients in the background, and they may also show multiple square panels or one background. In line with the computer aesthetic, a text cursor often appears and a computer code-like digital font representing Technelegy is used.
Although Stiles describes A Living Poem as "an infinite epic", Terry Nguyen of The Brooklyn Rail characterizes it as lyric poetry. The poetry in A Living Poem also uses ambiguous language and poem-styled rhetoric. In addition to the Technelegy font, Stiles' unique Cursive Binary font is used for the poetry.
To create A Living Poem, Technelegy runs on the Museum of Modern Art's text-art metadata; Nguyen compares this to Refik Anadol's 2023 installation Unsupervised, except through a "more discursive [but] no less bland" approach where each line is traceable to one specific artwork in the MoMA collection. In addition to the metadata, Stiles' own writings were used to produce the poem, as well as GPT-4 and p5.js. In this regard, she calls the work a "poem in residence" which changes on a large screen.
A electronic music-like soundscape for A Living Poem, also accessible with a QR code, was composed by Stiles' husband and studio partner Kris Bones. A machine-like voice is also heard speaking throughout the poem.
In 2017, Sasha Stiles discovered natural language processing, piquing her interest in its ability to process thoughts and words comparably to its human counterparts. Despite lacking a technological background, she managed to channel people like Gwern Branwen, Ross Goodwin, and Allison Parrish as inspirations for her AI work. In 2019, she debuted Technelegy, an alter-ego powered by AI that appears in her work. In 2021, Black Spring Press published her poetry collection Technelegy, where she combines AI-generated content produced by the titular alter-ego with her own traditionally-created work. This process eventually provided the basis for A Living Poems creation.
While working at the Hyundai Card Digital Wall program, MoMA curators Stuart Comer and Martha Joseph invited Stiles to have her work appear on the wall at MoMA's Agnes Gund Garden Lobby, where similar generative artworks had previously been exhibited. Previously, Stiles had collaborated with MoMA after their Web3 curator Madeleine Pierpont invited her to participate at the 2023 MoMA Postcard project. A generative algorithm was subsequently used to create the work for A Living Poem, named as such "as a living system across various conversations", and layers of code were used for creating its verses and placing that process in an infinite loop.
Stiles explained that poetry is "one of our most ancient and enduring technologies", comparing to "a system of meter and rhyme invented to store vital information", and that AI is a "natural heir". Stiles also cited as inspirations metapoetics, including the 1967 generative poem The House of Dust; artists such as Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Bruce Nauman, and Ed Ruscha; and technological inspirations behind modern text art, including printing and computer technology and mass media. Luna Last-Bernal of The Luna Collective also cites the oral tradition behind the origins of poetry as another inspiration.
A Living Poem debuted at the Garden Lobby on September 10, 2025, as part of the Hyundai Card Digital Wall. It was curated by Martha Joseph, an associate curator at MoMA's Department of Media and Performance, and Juyeon Song, a Hyundai Card exchange visitor at MoMA. Originally set to end on December 15, it ran until March 3, 2026.
An online version of A Living Poem was also made available on MoMA's site, as well as on Stiles' website. The poem also inspired A Living Poem: The Codex, a book whose copies are unique.
The AI Art Magazine called A Living Poem "a poem that remakes itself moment by moment, endlessly in flux, always becoming, never complete." Shae Centanni of Washington Square News remarked that A Living Poem "shows how, with the right care, artificial intelligence can be an artistâÂÂs most treasured tool", explaining that it counters the idea of existential risk from artificial intelligence by "treat[ing] it as a mirror, a muse and a medium for creativity". Last-Bernal called it "Frankenstein's monster as an immortal living poemâÂÂautonomous, ever-changing and evolving before your very eyes".
Centanni describes the perceived uniquity of each visit to the exhibition as the "most compelling element of this installation", citing for example the introspective and visceral nature of several verses, which allow the poem's algorithm to "understand this deeply human experience". Last-Bernal notes that this provides "a uniquely subjective encounter for every viewer" by providing verses "shaped by the viewer's own internal landscape", and that the soundscape enhances the immersive nature of the poem. Nguyen said that despite its tendency to display human emotions or self-awareness, the poem's penchant for direct address "only emphasizes the distance between the machine-speaker and reader", comparing this to the knowledge limitations inherent in large language models.
Centanni notes that A Living Poem challenges the idea of art by being capable of infinite regeneration, explaining that Technelegy "blurs the boundaries between humans and AI while creating art". Last-Bernal said that the poem depicts the art of poetry as "a medium of living and evolving communication" and "synthesiz[es] her artistic process with technology", in line with her combination of emerging technology and creative writing. The AI Art Magazine describes the use of different fonts as "a poetic metaphor for" the relationship between humanity and technology.