Sonic Bodies
by Ana María Caballero
ICONIC Art Pass Presale · November 16
Public Sale · November 18
Both open at 12 PM ET
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“Every encounter with a text writes its words anew.”
SONIC BODIES
Every reading is its own universe.
In Sonic Bodies, poet and artist Ana María Caballero transforms fifty readings of a single poem into fifty distinct digital paintings. Working with creative coder Cameron Nelson, she built a custom-coded system that translates the acoustic characteristics of her voice into abstract compositions. The poem, the reader and the system stay the same. The readings never do.
The poem is “Memoir,” the final poem in Caballero’s seventh book, Material (2026), a poem about returning to the self. Its words never change, but each of the fifty readings differs in pace, emphasis, duration and the small hesitations between phrases. Those differences guide a virtual brush across the canvas, so every painting holds the trace of one reading that cannot be repeated.
At the heart of the work is Caballero’s concept of analog generativity: literature has always been generative, recreated each time a reader meets a text. In Fifty Ways of Looking at a Poem, fifty readers annotated the same poem. In Sonic Bodies, one reader, the poet herself, meets the same poem fifty times. The technology does not make the poem generative. It makes the poem’s existing generativity visible. The work also takes up a question central to generative art: what counts as a valid computational input? Caballero’s answer is that a voice, a gesture or an act of close reading can be as consequential as massive streams of real-world data.
Presented by ICONIC with the Museum of Art + Light, which reserves one work for its permanent collection during the pre-sale, Sonic Bodies asks where a poem resides: in its words, in the body that speaks them, or in every encounter that follows. As Caballero puts it, “Its point is not that the machine has become expressive, but that voice already was.”
The Voice as a Brush
Every painting begins with a performance. Caballero records a reading of “Memoir,” and the audio becomes a spectrogram, a picture of sound. The system she developed with Cameron Nelson turns that picture into a poem-brush: the intensity of each frequency in her voice sets the opacity and trail of each mark, from stippled to feathered, and the marks accumulate as she reads. Caballero chose the palettes, layering, format and textures, and layers the frequencies until much of the information no longer reads as a chart. The palettes are drawn from Memoir, the three-channel choreographic video installation Caballero built around the same poem, which premiered at the Museum of the Moving Image in July 2026; the wider Memoir project also includes a one-of-one Book Sculpture and works from Speech Patterns. Some readings share a palette, so the difference between them is the reading alone. A conventional spectrogram makes sound legible. Sonic Bodies makes it painterly. Rather than adapt an off-the-shelf audio visualizer, Caballero and Nelson spent nearly a year building the framework by hand. Below are two readings of the same poem. Take your time with one, then the other, and notice where they part.
Two readings of the same poem, at the poem’s final word
ABOUT
Ana María Caballero
Ana María Caballero is a Colombian-American poet and multidisciplinary artist whose work explores embodiment, memory, care, and the literary implications of emerging technologies.
She works with language across books, performance, film, sculpture and generative systems, and calls the thread that runs through them analog generativity: the idea that readers and writers construct each other in an endlessly procreative process. She is the first living poet to sell a poem via Sotheby’s, a Lumen Prize winner, and a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, the International Beverly Prize, and Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize. She is the author of eight books, including her first novel, /Cuts (Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, Texas Review Press), and the poetry collection Material (Trio House Press).
Her work is held in public collections including the Museo Reina Sofía, MACBA Barcelona, the Ashmolean Museum and Fundación Juan March, and has been exhibited at the V&A, HEK Basel and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. In 2026, the Francisco Carolinum in Linz presented Read the Room, her first institutional retrospective. She has performed at the opening of the Venice Biennale, Art Basel Miami Beach and Tate Modern, and spoken at Fundación Telefónica, Christie’s and the Americas Society.
The Journey
From the page to the voice
Caballero has always treated a poem as something made: the word comes from the Greek poiema, a thing fashioned. Since 2023 she has moved her verse off the page and into readers’ hands, bodies and code, each time asking how a text changes as it passes through someone.
Sonic Bodies turns that question on the poet herself. One author, one poem, fifty readings, and no two the same. It is the first time she has used her own body as an acoustic instrument.
- 2023
Paperwork
Audience responses to live poetry readings become the inputs for digital paper sculptures.
- 2024
Fifty Ways of Looking at a Poem
Fifty readers annotate the same poem by hand, so each reading leaves its own trace.
- 2024
Echo Graph and Literal Litoral
The body speaks a poem through movement, in choreographic video poems.
- 2025
Speech Patterns
Sculptures that give form to the turns of a performed poem. The same year, The Sylphs, from her Being Borges series, wins the Lumen Prize.
- 2026
Sonic Bodies
Material is published, and “Memoir” becomes a three-channel video installation, first shown at the Museum of the Moving Image, alongside a one-of-one book sculpture. Then her own voice becomes the brush: the Sonic Bodies system debuts at NODE, and she performs “Memoir” at Tate Modern.
Can one body of language ever be experienced the same way twice? How does one text shift via human readership, even if this interpretation is repeated and performed by its very author?
I record myself reading “Memoir.” The audio is translated into a spectrogram, which is, quite simply, a picture of sound. A custom framework written in Python and shader language uses that information to build a moving painted composition. The aural data guides the virtual brush, and the reading accumulates as marks across the screen.
The text stayed the same, but it was impossible to deliver it identically. Pace, emphasis, duration and the little hesitations between phrases changed. Each reading becomes a singular event of voice.
I would like people to consider the amount of life contained in a single reading. The words may not change, but their passage through a body does.
The title Sonic Bodies speaks to two bodies at once: the body doing the reading, and the body of work the reading leaves behind. I want to preserve—and irrevocably connect—both.
IN THEIR WORDS
ANA MARÍA CABALLERO
THE COLLECTION
50 unique works · One poem, fifty readings
The Reading and the Print
Every work in Sonic Bodies lives in two forms. The video lets you witness the painting being made by the poem and hear the time and effort of the reading. The still holds the accumulated composition at the poem’s final word, so marks that arrived at different moments can be seen together. Neither replaces the other.
Collectors can add a print of their still, produced and shipped by ICONIC’s printing partner. When the print window closes, every print travels to Caballero to be signed and numbered by hand. She suggests close observation and minimal, discreet framing.
Caballero also suggests keeping a copy of Material, the book where “Memoir” was first published, near the work, so the poem can be read on the printed page as well as heard and seen.
Print Details
Paper / Material: [confirm paper]
Size: [in] ([cm]), 4:5 portrait, [framed / unframed]
Prints: One print per digital work [confirm]
Signature: Hand signed and numbered by the artist
Digital Artwork: Video of the reading with sound, plus a still at the poem’s final word, 4:5 portrait. [Delivery method]
Print Price: $250 USD, in addition to the digital work
Add-ons: Material by Ana María Caballero (Trio House Press) [confirm availability and price]
Fulfillment: Ships to collectors after signing [timeline]
Collectors pay shipping and any applicable import duties or VAT on their print.
Sonic Bodies by Ana María Caballero
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Collection Size
50 unique works
Each a single reading of “Memoir” -
Price
$250 USD per work
Signed print, additional $250 USD -
Pre-sale
ICONIC Art Pass Holders
Monday, November 16
12 PM ET · Closes Nov 18, 10 AM ET -
Public Sale
Wednesday, November 18
12 PM ET
Each work assigned at random
HOW TO
COLLECT
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The ICONIC Art Pass pre-sale opens Monday, November 16 at 12 PM ET and closes Wednesday, November 18 at 10 AM ET. The collection opens to everyone Wednesday, November 18 at 12 PM ET. Not an ICONIC Art Pass holder? Sign up below for early access and updates.
Each work is $250 USD. Works are assigned at random when you collect, so every collector receives one of the readings. One work is set aside for the Museum of Art + Light before assignment begins. Your work and its still are delivered to your wallet at collection.
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Fifty works, each one a recorded reading of “Memoir” by Ana María Caballero. Every work is unique: no reading repeats, and each is painted in a palette drawn from her Memoir video installation.
Each work includes a video of the painting forming as she reads, with sound, and a still that holds the whole reading at the poem’s final word, in 4:5 portrait.
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Collectors can add a print of their still for an additional $250 USD. Prints are produced and shipped by ICONIC’s printing partner. When the print window closes, every print travels to Caballero to be hand signed and numbered, then ships to its collector.
Collectors pay shipping and any applicable import duties or VAT on their print.
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“Memoir” was first published as the final poem in Material (Trio House Press, 2026). Caballero suggests keeping a copy near the work, so the poem can be read on the page as well as heard and seen.
Material is available from Trio House Press and wherever books are sold.
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The Museum of Art + Light presents Sonic Bodies with ICONIC as part of its Permanent Collection Series. During the pre-sale, one work from the series is reserved for the museum’s permanent collection.
ICONIC brings its curatorial work, collector relationships and institutional partners to each release, so Caballero’s work reaches collectors, curators and readers beyond her existing audience.
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No. Works are assigned at random when you collect, so the reading that becomes yours may be one you have not heard yet. One work is set aside for the Museum of Art + Light before assignment begins. You can listen to every reading in the field above before you collect.
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Yes. Once Caballero has signed and numbered every print, ICONIC’s printing partner ships each one to its collector. Collectors pay shipping and any applicable import duties or VAT on their print.
ABOUT
THE MOA+L PERMANENT COLLECTION SERIES
The Museum of Art + Light in Manhattan, Kansas, includes a permanent wing dedicated to digital art. Each release in its Permanent Collection Series is presented with ICONIC, and during each pre-sale one work is reserved for the museum’s permanent collection. With Sonic Bodies, the series introduces a poet’s practice to collectors of generative art, and brings readers of poetry to digital work held by a museum.
“I find it meaningful that the museum is recognizing poetry not simply as a literary form, but as an artistic medium with a physical, oral and visual life,” says Caballero. “I love the possibility of visitors first encountering the paintings as abstract compositions, then hearing the readings and realizing that every mark originated in an act of poetic performance.”
“Sonic Bodies beautifully illustrates what happens when artistic tradition and emerging technology come together in unexpected ways. Ana María Caballero has taken something as deeply human as the spoken word and transformed it into an entirely new visual language. We are delighted to welcome her work into the Museum of Art + Light’s permanent collection, where it will contribute to an evolving conversation about the relationship between art, technology, and human creativity.”
— Erin Dragotto, Executive Director, Museum of Art + Light
Image credits: Artist images, stills from the Memoir video installation, 2026, courtesy of the artist and Luis Gaspar. Read the Room, exhibition view at Francisco Carolinum, Linz, photo by Manuel Carreon Lopez / kunst-dokumentation.com, courtesy of the artist and Francisco Carolinum. Gallery view courtesy of the Museum of Art + Light. Artworks courtesy of the artist and ICONIC.
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About ICONIC
At the core of ICONIC’s mission is the integration of traditional art institutions and emerging digital networks.
Founded in 2015, ICONIC has worked to expand the reach of cultural institutions and the arts. ICONIC partners with museums, digital artists, and brands to produce digital and physical art for collectors around the world.
United Nations World Summit Award Winner Culture & Heritage, 2021