![\"\"](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/c21\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/359\/2026\/01\/AAAI-Panel-1080px608px.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Kenilworth Square East Gallery, 2155 N Prospect Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53202<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Free and open to the public, prior registration requested<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- February 12, 3:00 – 4:30 PM<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nAbout<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Join the Center for 21st Century Studies<\/a>, artist-technologist Nathaniel Stern, poet-researcher Sasha Stiles, and The<\/em> Brooklyn Rail<\/em> editor-at-large Charlotte Kent for a panel discussion about the boundaries between human and machine-generated cultural production. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the panel, catch the opening reception for \u202fGeneration to Generation: Conversing with Kindred Technologies<\/a>, <\/em>a collaborative contemporary art exhibition by Nathaniel Stern and Sasha Stiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This event is part of the Center for 21st Century Studies’ Aesthetics, Art, & AI series<\/a>, produced in collaboration with the Center for the Humanities<\/a> at UW-Madison, with support from the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes<\/a> (CHCI).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nREGISTER NOW<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nSasha Stiles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sasha Stiles<\/a> <\/strong>is a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, artist and AI researcher whose work bridges tradition and innovation through hybrid poetics, generative imagination and collaborative intelligence. Her transmedia practice reframes poetry as both art and technology \u2014 a means of encoding human experience across space and time \u2014 and blends word, image and algorithm to explore the role of human voice in a digital age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since 2018, Stiles has been at the forefront of human-machine co-creation, using language as a lens to probe the promise and peril of creative technologies like machine learning and blockchain. Her experiments and insights have established her as a leading voice in creative AI, and a thoughtful contributor to the global conversation about the future of art, technology, and humanity. From Technelegy<\/em> (2021) \u2014 a first-of-its-kind poetry and art collection co-authored with a personalized AI model and praised by Ray Kurzweil \u2014 to award-winning projects such as \u201cCursive Binary\u201d and \u201cRepetae,\u201d Stiles continually pushes the boundaries of expression, situating AI within the broader question of what it means to be human in an increasingly posthuman world. Stiles\u2019 work has been recognized by the Prix Ars Electronica, Sigg Art Prize, Lumen Prize, Women in AI Awards, and Future.Art.Awards; featured in Artforum, Christie\u2019s, NPR, The Washington Post, and Poets & Writers; and exhibited and performed internationally, from Lincoln Center and the V&A to MoMA, Art Basel, Kunsthalle Zurich, Outernet London, New York\u2019s Times Square, and Tokyo\u2019s Shibuya Crossing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nNathaniel Stern<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Nathaniel Stern<\/strong><\/a> is an artist and writer, Fulbright and NSF grantee and professor, interventionist and public citizen.\u202fHe has produced and collaborated on projects ranging from ecological, participatory, and\u202fonline interventions, interactive, immersive, and mixed reality environments, to prints, sculptures, videos, performances. and hybrid forms. His first book,\u202fInteractive Art and Embodiment: The Implicit Body as Performance<\/em><\/a>\u202f<\/em>(Gylphi 2013),\u202f<\/em>takes a close look at the stakes for interactive and digital art, and\u202fEcological Aesthetics: artful tactics for humans, nature, and politics<\/em><\/a>\u202f(Dartmouth 2018) is a creative and scholarly collection of stories about art, artists, and their materials, which argues that ecology, aesthetics, and ethics are inherently interconnected, and together act as the cornerstone for all contemporary arts practices. Stern\u2019s ongoing work with startups and industry, on the other hand, has helped launch dozens of\u202fnew businesses, products, and ideas.\u202fHe has been featured in the likes of the Wall Street Journal, Guardian UK, Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Washington Post, Daily News, BBC\u2019s Today show, WIRED, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, PetaPixel, M Magazine, Time, Forbes, Fast Company, Scientific American, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Leonardo Journal of Art, Science and Technology, Rhizome, Furtherfield, Turbulence,\u202fand more.\u202fAccording to Chicago\u2019s widely popular Bad at Sports<\/em> art podcast, Stern has \u201cthe most varied and strange bio of maybe anyone ever on the show,\u201d and South Africa\u2019s Live Out Loud<\/em> magazine calls him a \u201cprolific scholar\u201d as well as artist, whose work is \u201cquite possibly some of the most relevant around.\u201d \u201cTechnological, thought-provoking and unexpected\u201d (NPR) he\u2019s been dubbed one of Milwaukee\u2019s \u201cavant-garde\u201d (Journal Sentinel), called\u202f\u201dan interesting and prolific fixture\u201d (Artthrob.co.za<\/a>) behind many \u201cmultimedia experiments\u201d (Time.com<\/a>), \u201caccessible and abstract simultaneously\u201d (Art and Electronic Media web site), someone \u201cwith starry, starry eyes\u201d (Wired.com<\/a>) who \u201cmakes an obscene amount of work in an obscene amount of ways\u201d (Bad at Sports) \u2013 both \u201cbizarre and beautiful\u201d (Gizmodo). According to Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, Stern makes \u201cbeautiful, glitched out art-images,\u201d and Caleb A. Scharf at Scientific American says Stern\u2019s art is \u201ctremendous fun,\u201d and \u201cfascinating\u201d in how it is \u201cinvestigating the possibilities of human interaction and art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nCharlotte Kent<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
- February 12, 3:00 – 4:30 PM<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n