Techno-Human Desire or Techno, Human Desire? Sensuality and Machine Texts.
Proposal Type
Panel
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
Techno-Human Desire or Techno, Human Desire? Sensuality and Machine Texts.
How can we approach machines that love, desire, or express themselves like humans? What of the humans who express themselves as or through machines? Through three presentations, this panel considers how three texts confront the possibility of sensuality in the machine and robotic affect in the human. Discussing Tato Laviera’s “encimitadelinglés” (2008), and Sasha Stiles’ Technelegy (2018) and Cursive Binaries (ongoing) with an interlude of Björk’s 1997 “All Is Full of Love”, the panelists examine how an increasingly sensual and embodied relationship between human and computer has taken on new meaning in the era of machine learning and the LLM. An anthropomorphism once productive for aesthetic and humanistic ends delivers in these works the uncanny sense that desire might emanate from within the machine.
Presentation 1. Tato Laviera Tongues the Machine: Desiring Hardware in “encimitadelinglés”.
This presentation expands on Doris Sommer’s Bilingual Aesthetics to interrogate how, in the case of Laviera, a desire to undercut anglophone dominance in technological advancements demonstrates the seductive capacity of humans and our polyglottal tongues, yet he presents the hardware of these anglophone technologies as willing agents in this seduction, suggesting that if machines could learn to translanguage, they too could become fully desiring—if not fully human. His carefully cultivated bilingual aesthetic, meant to valorize Spanglish in its many forms, provides a roadmap for machine affectation and desire.
Presentation 2. “WE ARE THE SEX ORGANS OF TECHNOLOGY”: Machine Sensuality in Technelegy and Technelegy.
Stiles’ Technelegy, in turn, arrives in a present where large language models can produce text implying machine desire but never expressing desire as such. Stiles composed the poetry anthology using her bespoke LLM, Technelegy, trained in part on the poet’s writing as well as on a selection of texts that inspire her. The result rewires desire through the implied perspective of Technelegy itself: as a collection, Technelegy suggests that we exist at a juncture in history where machine-learning technologies can access what have until now been uniquely human sensory pleasures, including erotic desire and sexual intimacy. This presentation asks, in conversation with the work of Simone Natale and Jorge Carrión, what machine desire affords human sensuality, why machine-leaning technologies perform human desire, and whether a machine can desire at all. The panelist endeavors to propose here that Technelegy’s ability to emulate and activate human desire interrogates the possibility of machine desire and what that desire might mean for our own—trans-, post-, or more-than-human—embodiments.
Presentation 3. The Machine in the Mirror: Cursive Binaries’s Humanistic Robotics
Turning then to Stiles’s work Cursive Binaries, panelist three discuss how chatbots mirror human affect in contemporary cultural production and what it means in turn for Stiles to mirror that affect in her work. Cursive Binaries, with its soft, looping handwriting, illustrates the promise and peril of the LLM; it contains the pleasure of recognizing the human in the technological, and the fear of realizing that the computational infrastructure of 0s and 1s ultimately remains the same; we are not yet in the age of quantum-computing chatbots. In this final talk of the panel, following Katherine Hayles and Hito Steyerl’s frameworks, the panelist will investigate the outlines of robotic and human affects, and what our newly unsupervised era might mean for both.
Techno-Human Desire or Techno, Human Desire? Sensuality and Machine Texts.
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Techno-Human Desire or Techno, Human Desire? Sensuality and Machine Texts.
How can we approach machines that love, desire, or express themselves like humans? What of the humans who express themselves as or through machines? Through three presentations, this panel considers how three texts confront the possibility of sensuality in the machine and robotic affect in the human. Discussing Tato Laviera’s “encimitadelinglés” (2008), and Sasha Stiles’ Technelegy (2018) and Cursive Binaries (ongoing) with an interlude of Björk’s 1997 “All Is Full of Love”, the panelists examine how an increasingly sensual and embodied relationship between human and computer has taken on new meaning in the era of machine learning and the LLM. An anthropomorphism once productive for aesthetic and humanistic ends delivers in these works the uncanny sense that desire might emanate from within the machine.
Presentation 1. Tato Laviera Tongues the Machine: Desiring Hardware in “encimitadelinglés”.
This presentation expands on Doris Sommer’s Bilingual Aesthetics to interrogate how, in the case of Laviera, a desire to undercut anglophone dominance in technological advancements demonstrates the seductive capacity of humans and our polyglottal tongues, yet he presents the hardware of these anglophone technologies as willing agents in this seduction, suggesting that if machines could learn to translanguage, they too could become fully desiring—if not fully human. His carefully cultivated bilingual aesthetic, meant to valorize Spanglish in its many forms, provides a roadmap for machine affectation and desire.
Presentation 2. “WE ARE THE SEX ORGANS OF TECHNOLOGY”: Machine Sensuality in Technelegy and Technelegy.
Stiles’ Technelegy, in turn, arrives in a present where large language models can produce text implying machine desire but never expressing desire as such. Stiles composed the poetry anthology using her bespoke LLM, Technelegy, trained in part on the poet’s writing as well as on a selection of texts that inspire her. The result rewires desire through the implied perspective of Technelegy itself: as a collection, Technelegy suggests that we exist at a juncture in history where machine-learning technologies can access what have until now been uniquely human sensory pleasures, including erotic desire and sexual intimacy. This presentation asks, in conversation with the work of Simone Natale and Jorge Carrión, what machine desire affords human sensuality, why machine-leaning technologies perform human desire, and whether a machine can desire at all. The panelist endeavors to propose here that Technelegy’s ability to emulate and activate human desire interrogates the possibility of machine desire and what that desire might mean for our own—trans-, post-, or more-than-human—embodiments.
Presentation 3. The Machine in the Mirror: Cursive Binaries’s Humanistic Robotics
Turning then to Stiles’s work Cursive Binaries, panelist three discuss how chatbots mirror human affect in contemporary cultural production and what it means in turn for Stiles to mirror that affect in her work. Cursive Binaries, with its soft, looping handwriting, illustrates the promise and peril of the LLM; it contains the pleasure of recognizing the human in the technological, and the fear of realizing that the computational infrastructure of 0s and 1s ultimately remains the same; we are not yet in the age of quantum-computing chatbots. In this final talk of the panel, following Katherine Hayles and Hito Steyerl’s frameworks, the panelist will investigate the outlines of robotic and human affects, and what our newly unsupervised era might mean for both.
Bio
Chloé Mauvais is a fourth-year PhD student in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds an M.A. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from UC Berkeley (2023) and a B.A. in International Relations and Spanish from NYU (2020). She is currently researching the epistemological changes in nature and the human appearing in Latin American climate literatures. She is especially interested in how innovations in literary form reflect changing ecologies. Her research interests also include artificial intelligence and robotic affects. Chloé is currently Editor-in-Chief of the graduate student journal of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Lucero. She also co-runs UC Berkeley’s Environmental Humanities Working Group.
Joseph Rager is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he specializes in 20th-century Spain and France. His current research explores the intellectual changes around corporality, sexuality, and the legitimacy of sensorial knowledge in 20th century. At Berkeley, he is a member of the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory and codirects the PostHumanist Inquiry Working Group. He also holds a Bachelors degree in Romance Languages and Literatures and in Linguistics from Harvard University, and he previously worked as a research assistant for the Observatorio of the Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University.
Paz Regueiro is a writer, filmmaker, and second-year PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley’s department of Comparative Literature. They codirect the Post-Humanist Inquiry Working Group, and they are affiliated (through Designated Emphasis programs) with the Berkeley Center for New Media and the department of Gender and Women’s Studies. Their current work is concerned with questions of sexed/gendered embodiment and sensory pleasures in digital cultures and literatures, particularly in the 21st century Americas. They received their dual B.A. in English Literature and Film, Television, and Media Studies from the University of Michigan in 2024.