🧾 DETAILS
Artists: Ana Maria Caballero & Ivona Tau
Year: 2022
Medium: AI-assisted generative text and image (GenText series, NFT)
Dimensions: n/a
Category: Generative Poetry / AI Image
Room: Room 6 — Language & Generative Narrative (Section: Language as Generation)
🧠 DESCRIPTION
From theVERSEverse's GenText series, CITY LIFE, is a collaboration between poet Ana Maria Caballero + artist Ivona Tau, with generative text from a poem co-created with AI writing tool Sudowrite.
Caballero sketched a rough draft of the twelve stanzas of CITY LIFE during the funeral of a close friend's father. She sent Tau these notes, which Tau took as inspiration to create the poignant, urban visuals for the piece. Using AI as poetic conspirator, Caballero crafted the final version of the poem.
Caballero's writing has won the Beverly International Prize, Colombia's José Miguel Arango National Poetry Prize, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize + been a finalist for the Academy of American Poets Prize. Her digital poems were featured by MOCDA, displayed at Dreamverse + received a Sevens Foundation x Playboy grant. Her work questions romanticized motherhood + notions that present female sacrifice as a virtue. Her signature, straightforward verse gives voice to what's left unsaid in the home. anamariacaballero.com
Tau is an artist + researcher from Lithuania who works with AI as a medium in visual arts. Her goal is to find + evoke emotions in artificially intelligent tools, this way making them more human. By collaborating with machines, she also explores her inner emotional states. Tau holds a Master's degree in Mathematics at Warsaw University. Currently, she pursues a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. She received highest honors at the Digital Ars 2020 contest for her two projects: “These humans did not feel” + “Unseen Warsaw”. She is one of the top-50 creators on Tezos + her work was sold at Sotheby's in New York. ivonatau.com
theVERSEverse.com is poetry's home in the metaverse, a literary gallery where text is art, poetry is technology + language is limitless, founded by Ana Maria Caballero, Kalen Iwamoto + Sasha Stiles. theVERSEverse offers specially curated 1/1 visual poems by critically acclaimed poets + its GenText, which explores the craft + creativity of GPT3-powered generative text. Each stanza, or GenText block, from the poem is paired with visuals offered as a limited edition series.
CITY LIFE
In the city with blunt edges, life comes forth— against the crafted rock of sidewalks our feet forget black dirt.
Water, light, concrete, and time— elements that we compress and compact. Cranes of metal cut the sky, then, a solitary pigeon flies by.
I am here to sing, I state, but the day swings back, and I fall hard. I grieve amongst the infrastructure— columns and footers underpin my call.
You were here, once, in this built metropolis, with us. You loved to swim, your body bronzed by my sun.
Do I cry for you? Or do I cry for every father— for mine?
For all my high-heeled asphalt walking I remain a daughter: a fruit who at its core is summed up as seed.
In the funeral mass, I hold the thin wafer—memory of a father— on my tongue before I swallow.
Bread breaks within me, becomes me, but I remain hungry.
After the ceremony, bodies form a single row— we wait for a moment to embrace the bereaved.
A faint breeze blows, stirs frail leaves, while beneath the red-tiled ground soft dirt sustains my feet.
World of tree, world of cut stone. Place of passing through, land of soundless bone.
I take one step forward within the breath-held line. It is always almost my turn to mourn.
~
in loving memory of C.C.
🔍 SIGNIFICANCE
- Demonstrates human–AI co-authorship in both text and image
- Unifies poetry and visual generation into a single system
- Shows language as input for image production
- Represents full convergence of narrative modalities
- Embodies contemporary LLM + generative image workflows
✍️ INTERPRETATION
This work marks a decisive transformation:
👉 language becomes generator
The poem originates in human experience:
- grief
- memory
- urban life
- personal loss
But it is not fixed.
It is:
👉 expanded through AI
The image does not illustrate the poem.
It emerges from the same system:
👉 text → generation → image
This creates a new condition:
- meaning is not authored alone
- it is produced through interaction
The poem speaks of:
- city as constructed space
- memory embedded in material
- grief within modern life
At the same time, the image reflects:
👉 a synthetic city
A place that feels:
- real
- but reconstructed
- filtered through machine perception
The key tension:
👉 intimate human experience vs. artificial generation
This is not contradiction.
It is:
👉 coexistence
The system does not erase emotion.
It:
👉 translates it
🧩 POSITION IN THE COLLECTION
This work occupies a concluding position within the collection, where language, image, and system converge.
It functions as a synthesis, articulating the integration of human experience and machine generation.
Within the collection, it is distinguished by its emotional and structural balance between authored text and generative image.
It does not resolve the system—it inhabits it.
📚 PROVENANCE
NFT — Objkt platform