Human Unreadable #36

Art Blocks Collection: Curated

Project Description: Human Unreadable (Privacy Collection - Lot 03)

Human Unreadable is a three-act, embodied generative artwork hiding the human body in plain sight (on-chain). Bringing together choreography, code, blockchain, generative art, and cryptography, the work culminates in a live performance. Each output is driven by the motion data of its underlying unique, on-chain choreographic sequence. The sequences behind the first 100 minted works (mint #2 to #101) will be performed during the IRL premiere. The hosting art institution will be announced in 2023.

A journey of slowly recovering the human unfolds as such: 1) reveal on Art Blocks, 2) uncover the choreographic score, and 3) final performance. After the reveal, the human is still unreadable, visible only through the results of movement on glass, obfuscated by code, rendered as a still image. In the next phase of the work, collectors get a glimpse at their underlying choreography by unlocking the secondary token—an on-chain choreographic score. In the final phase, the performance, life is breathed into the human movement that has been lying dormant inside the pieces. Human Unreadable brings flesh and viscerality into code and "vulnerability as a feature" into long-form generative art. What you don’t immediately see in the visual artwork outputs is the invisible potentiality of performance, inscripted on-chain and able to be brought to life by a dancer at any moment.

Human Unreadable intentionally punctures the safety of modernist design and the idea of a universal voice, pushing the limits of human expression within rigid technical systems. With a focus on the body, the collection brings risk, chaos, confusion, and vulnerability to the reveal, everything that function-focused design systems normally prevent. Each piece is an invitation, a transparent layer through which the messy human experience can come into focus through the three phases of the work. This work is a continuation of the pivot away from modernism, clean lines, and the quietly gendered values therein, in favor of a more embodied and sensual approach to human-machine collaboration pioneered by early women in digital art. Human Unreadable's 6 distinct looks derive from the core materiality of Operator’s Privacy Collection: glass, light, x-ray and the human body. The transparent and illuminating nature of these materials reveal what is below the surface.

What are you revealing when you reveal?

Human Unreadable has roots in various histories such as computational choreography (Analivia Cordeiro, Jeanne Beaman), Merce Cunningham's Chance Dance, and the Experiments in Art and Technology movement. With Ti’s extensive background as an HCI technologist and multimedia artist and Catherine’s background as a choreographer and performance artist, Operator architected a bespoke team, 25+ individuals ranging from specialized engineers to dancers, who embarked on a 9 month process to realize the work. Operator's on-chain generative choreography method is the technical backbone of —the process and open source tooling for which will be made available via white paper in 2023.