Human Unreadable

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. 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. 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. Human Unreadable's six distinct looks derive from the core materiality of Operator's Privacy Collection: glass, light, x-ray, and the human body. 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 Dejha Ti's background as an HCI technologist and multimedia artist and Ania Catherine's background as a choreographer and performance artist, Operator assembled a bespoke team of 25+ individuals (specialised engineers through dancers) over a nine-month process to realise the work.