Choreographing Surveillance, Collecting Obfuscated Movement: On View and Human Unreadable by Operator

This piece will provide an overview of two artworks, On View (2019) and Human Unreadable (2023), both of which are conceptual artworks that include technology and performance created by Operator, my collaborative art practice with Dejha Ti established in 2016. My background is in choreography and performance art, and Dejha is a multimedia artist and HCI technologist. Rather than go into deep detail about each of the works in all their complexity, I will give a brief overview of the work as a whole and focus the text on the precise moments and instances in which performance and technology interface. Asking such questions as: how does technology and interface design choreograph participation in the audience? How does performance expose the limits of technical systems? How does performativity emerge in new ways through and within the confines of new technologies? How do these mediums evolve when needing to adapt to the limitations of technology? How does technology perform for us? Also, considering the financial hardships associated with performance and the inevitably stunted growth when the ability to take risks disappears, it is certainly worth asking: does blockchain technology and digital scarcity have a role to play in ensuring that performance practices are able to continue evolving? With theaters increasingly being shut down, cultural funding cuts ubiquitous, and the difficulty in the US of sustaining an independent dance company or performance practice, one could say that movement and performance are increasingly being relegated to service industries. The impact of infrastructures for art’s creation, distribution, financialization, and preservation cannot be overstated; while it is interesting to discuss performance and technology from an artistic innovation perspective, there are equally important considerations and conversations to be had about technology’s potential role in supporting the continued evolution of performance as a medium.