Nathaniel Stern & Sasha Stiles
The mind moves at the speed of dreams. Hold on! Hold on! Hold on! I like to think of my brain as a hand, palm of my soul, fragile nerve bundle. I think about my brain as I hold my heart in both hands — a private thing, a pulsing secret. It fills my palms and bones with heat. The world is full of heartbeat. I am trying to hold it all together... -- Excerpt from STILL MOVING, by Technelegy
NOTE: To fully experience STILL MOVING, please open in LIVE VIEW and enable your webcam for motion tracking.
The first project of its kind, STILL MOVING is an interactive poem about humanity’s visceral engagement with the virtual – written and published via the blockchain as a token word performance, and embodied by each collector as a uniquely intimate, personalized interpretation. In this epic on-chain ode to the relationship of bodies and machines, literal and figurative wordplay activates the liminal space between text and reader, extending the two-dimensional screen/page into a somatic, material realm where language moves us in every sense of that phrase – up, down, sideways, forwards, backwards, and in otherwise inexpressible directions – urging us to reclaim our dynamism and intuitive physicality in an age of technological acceleration, bodily inertia, and rote gestures.
A collaboration between Nathaniel Stern and Sasha Stiles – rooted in Stiles’ AI-powered verse and Stern’s career in digital, interactive, and networked art – STILL MOVING is an ars poetica about what it means to be a human body facing a machine: a showdown, a form of worship, a distraction, a mirror gaze, an other, an alter, an alter. After we bend to our technologies, do we spring back into shape, or assume new forms? Where does input end, and output begin? As we continue to think, work, and play faster than ever while rooted in place, it is still possible to be moved – really moved?
STILL MOVING also embodies the future of web3 literature, in which the book – read-only – evolves into a read-write-interact experience, and authors begin to adopt such tools as webcams and NFTs in their writerly arsenal. In each unique edition of STILL MOVING, camera-based motion tracking (data confined to your local machine only) facilitates a play-full and meaning-full interface between the reader’s physical self and language on screen. Human forms and gestures shape machine expression, and vice versa, cybernetic serendipity inspires poetic association. Make a move, and be moved… Stand still, and instill meaning…
Palettes pair paper, charcoal, and pencil colorings – emblematic of the stationery/stationary – with neon and electric highlights that nod to computational restlessness. Preview images feature lines from the core poem, potent standalone phrases, or rare, gestural graphics and images, caught somewhere between language and illustration, expression and wordless apprehension.
FUNCTIONS
Click inside the interaction area if any of the function keys below are not working.
Space Bar to toggle Play/Pause the interaction and animation
'd' Downloads the current image at the screen/browser resolution
Up/Down arrows increase/decrease camera sensitivity by 5 (for use in high and low light situations; 0-150, default is 90; higher numbers = more text)
Top two keyboard rows (numbers 1 thru 0 and letters q thru p) also birth semi-mapped text
'c' toggles Camera use (if present and on) between keyboard only or both
'v' Views/hides the Verse (your poetry / your iteration’s text)
'f' toggles Full screen (Live View only)
's' downloads / Saves the entire AI poem to the hard drive
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