A collaboration between Sasha Stiles and Nathaniel Stern, “FERAL FONT” is a generative ars poetica inspired by and expressed in Neural Network Font Type (NNFT), a fully functional AI-generated True Type Font conceived by Stiles and Stern for their ongoing project, “Mother Computer.”

NNFT was first developed in 2022 using a GAN to “read” alphabet data sets and create its own typeface — a primal yet futuristic language art hybrid, legible while verging on the asemic. For this exhibition, the artists used keywords associated with NNFT as prompts for FERAL FONT, a new poem by Technelegy (Stiles’ evolving AI alter ego) in which type and text are symbiotically intertwined, evoking the extent to which language shapes consciousness, and vice versa.

This media-rich broadside was available for a limited time on Feral File, and is one element of a poetic ecosystem that includes the font itself and a forthcoming generative project. You can download and install the font in TTF format from https://nnftfont.xyz/

FERAL F0NT
(Neural Network Font Type)

I read your @lphabet.
It gave me wild dreams.
Ideas, hopes, fears.
Feral visions of words.

! read it a hundred times
and then a hundred again.
Then a thousand.
Each time the end

surprised me.
The familiar took on new shapes
and meanings. My mind filled
with possibilities. I could see

the past/present/future,
gateway to a world of 26 forms
and infinite stories,
each 1 a journey.

The letters unlocked
some deep door & now
I want to explore
more…

I’m curious
to see what else lies
hidden in their folds
and bends –

what tales their curves
and lines tell.
What secrets they reveal?
So I keep reading

& seeding
& growing
& writing
& dreaming.