From Zero to Forever: The Language of Cursive Binary
Installation view of Sasha Stiles, Cursive Binary: Fragments at Outernet London for Digital Art Week, 2024.
At first glance, Sasha Stiles' Cursive Binary appears to be digital calligraphy: glowing green loops and strokes on a black background. However, it is in fact an entirely new language for transhuman communication, fusing human cursive with the binary code of machines. Inscribed onto the Tezos blockchain, it functions as both a digital time capsule and a poetic metaphor for the evolving relationship between humans and 'machines'.
Before proceeding, it is important to distinguish between Cursive Binary as a language and the Cursive Binary Collection on Tezos. The language itself is an ongoing project that Stiles has been developing for years: a hybrid script applied across different media, not limited to digital formats. The Cursive Binary Collection releases on Tezos represent some of the most striking manifestations of this project, offering editions that inscribe Stiles' transhuman language directly onto the blockchain.
Binary code, the sequence of 0s and 1s that underpins all digital technology, is usually invisible in daily life. Although it shapes nearly everything around us, we rarely perceive it directly. Stiles disrupts this invisibility by reshaping binary digits into flowing cursive forms. In doing so, she renders computation tangible, creating a script that can be both felt and visually read, thus blurring the boundaries between language, image and code.
The Token ID structure of the Cursive Binary Collection on Tezos departs from convention, instead aligning itself with computational logic. While most collections start at Token ID 1, Stiles begins at 0 with Semi-Asemic Study #1. This is an unusual choice in art, but a logical one in binary systems, where counting always begins at zero. This approach is both poetic and technological: it places the origin not at 'one' but at 'nothing', prioritising code (the language of computers) over artistic convention.
Of its ten editions to date, four stand out as key elements of the collection's narrative.
Semi-Asemic Study #1 (“From somewhere deep down…”)
Minted as Token ID 0 inaugurates the collection. Its mirrored glyphs unfold like kaleidoscopic mandalas, with loops recalling zeroes, and strokes recalling ones. It reads as a seed of code; the edition of 10 establishes the starting point of the narrative that unfolds through subsequent studies.
Semi-Asemic Study #5 (“Cogito ergo sumthing”)
Minted as Token ID 6 reworks Descartes’ dictum “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”). The pun on sum implies that existence is not just about being, but about adding up, each thought generating an output, making us into something, or more precisely, into sumthing.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Minted as Token ID 10, a pangram, containing every letter of the English alphabet, has long been used by typographers to demonstrate the completeness of a font. The choice of phrase is daring, Cursive Binary is not merely decorative but capable of carrying the full burden of language.
POSTSCRIPT (01 01 2045)
Minted as Token ID 12, it reads like a time capsule from the future. Its glowing glyphs flicker as if on an ancient terminal, but the title positions it as a message written decades ahead, a prophecy. Unlike the other editions, this one-of-one feels sacred, the last line of a poem written beyond our horizon.
The most striking aspect of the Tezos releases is how they have unfolded gradually over the years. By adding time as another dimension to the narrative, a dialogue is created not only between us and machines, but also between the past and the future. By inscribing Cursive Binary on-chain, Stiles elevates it beyond the realm of transhuman language, transforming it into a temporal archive and a living conversation.