Act III​

Floor 3, Theater

November 19 at 7 pm
November 21 at 1 pm and 7 pm
November 22 at 11 am and 5 pm 

Performances on November 21 at 1 pm and November 22 at 11 am will be livestreamed at institutions around the world as indicated below.

Presented as part of artport: A History of Internet Art, Act III is a multimedia performance by artist duo Operator (Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti), the third and final act of their work Human Unreadable, which began in 2022 by asking how much of a body survives translation into code and its absorption into technological systems. Structured as theater aware of its own construction, the 80-minute performance moves between computational choreography and spoken narrative. 

Drawing on histories of experimental choreography and art and technology, from Merce Cunningham and Analivia Cordeiro to E.A.T., Human Unreadable is a three-act structure exploring “the slow recovery of the human.” Operator built a library of dance movements and an algorithmic method for generating choreographic sequences stored on the Ethereum blockchain. In Act I (May 2023), the artists created 400 visual compositions through this generative code and auctioned them as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). Act I obfuscated each underlying choreographic sequence within a generative artwork. Act II (November 2023) allowed collectors to uncover the dance sequences behind their Act I artworks in the form of choreographic scores and record them on the blockchain, making them visible to the public.   

In Act III, the first hundred choreographic scores (#2–101) become the raw material for an evening-length multimedia performance. Dancers embody the choreography, bringing the generative art out of the screen into performers. The initial obfuscation resolves through presence: bodies witnessing bodies in the absence of technological mediation. In Act III the work becomes an X-ray of the artists' and audience’s own negotiations between body, ambition, and technology.  

Act III will also extend into the exhibition artport: A History of Internet Art through Operator’s Entr’acte, a database artwork newly commissioned for artport and built from the evolving archive of the artists’ process of creating Act III.  

The performance on November 21st at 1pm EST will be livestreamed to audiences at Haus der Kunst Munich (Munich), LACMA (Los Angeles), NEWART Centre (Tarragona), NODE Foundation (Palo Alto), Nxt Museum (Amsterdam), OGR Torino (Torino), Onassis Ready (Athens), Palazzo Diedo Berggruen (Venice), PHI (Montreal) and SOLO Contemporary (Madrid). The performance on November 22nd at 11am EST will be livestreamed to audiences at HEK (Basel), LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura (Lugano), Nxt Museum (Amsterdam), PHI (Montreal), and V&A (London). The livestream is itself is a work of broadcast art: a live-mixed transmission, edited in real time across multiple perspectives, unique to each performance.  

Operator’s Act III was commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Conceived, Written and Directed by Operator 
Script: Operator, Paul Bennun 
Composer: RYAT 
Creative Producer: Alex Darby 
 
Host/Ghost/Guest: Andrew Smith 
Dialogue Performers: Aaron Applebey, Julia Campanelli, alyxåndra ciale 
Siren/Ospite: Andrea Chiampo 
Art Conservator: Maddoux LaRocque 
Dancers: Kacie Boblitt, Timothy Brausch, Genna Carey, Jenna Davis, Shizu Higa, Cleo Craft-Holloway, Annalise Gehling, Vivake Khamsingsavath, Nelson Mejia, Mia Moraru, Lili Tewes, Noah Wang 
 
Scenic Design: Operator, Leticia Leon 
Costume Design: Don Aretino 
Lighting Design: Seth Bernstein 
Screen Content: Operator 
Video Content Production: Typical Organization, The Hybrid Studio 
Graphic Design: Typical Organization 
Video Programmer: Zack Lobel 
Lighting Programmer: Kelley Shih Production 
Production: The Hybrid Studio Choreographic 
Previsualization Tool: Operator, developed by Pariah Interactive 
 
Entr'acte 
Created by Operator 
Engineering: Isaac Patka 
Front End Developer: Mattaniah Aytenfsu  

Ania Catherine (b. 1990, US) and Dejha Ti (b. 1985, US) are an artist duo whose collaborative practice, Operator, develops critical and conceptual approaches to experience. With Ti’s background as a multimedia artist and HCI technologist, and Catherine’s as a choreographer and performance artist, they engineer medium-agnostic output, joining environments, technology, and the body. Their exploration into privacy and extractive technologies began with their installation On View (2019), commissioned by SCAD Museum of Art, and continues with the Privacy Collection, a durational release of works exploring the tension between privacy and transparency in blockchain technology. For their seminal work Human Unreadable, they created an on-chain generative choreography method. 
 
Operator has been awarded The Lumen Prize (Immersive Environments in 2021 and Generative Art Award in 2023), HOFA x Phillips Digital Art Award, ADC Awards (Gold Cube), S+T+ARTS Prize (Honorary Mention), and MediaFutures (a European Commission funded programme). They have spoken at events and institutions including Christie's Art+Tech Summit, University of Cambridge, Art Basel, ZKM, Francisco Carolinum Museum, Bloomberg ART+TECHNOLOGY, and MIT Open Doc Lab.