Human Unreadable

Human Unreadable is part of our Privacy Collection, and that context is very important because it drove all the major decisions around the work. The Privacy Collection—building off of our explorations of privacy for the last several years but with a web3 twist—is an ongoing exploration of the tension between privacy and transparency in blockchain technology. We consider the Privacy Collection to be culturally “site-specific” to crypto art. The collection ingests and reflects back what we see as significant phenomena or movements happening within crypto art with a particular focus on privacy, anonymity, selective showing and revealing, asking: what are the myriad of ways that people hide within a transparent system? It is fascinating to us that in the crypto world, people can be known for being unknown. Human Unreadable is the fourth lot of this collection, and long form on-chain generative art—being as central as it is the entire crypto art movement—felt like a natural context to dive into. We are hopeful that Human Unreadable will bring more attention to the body and performance in web3 art conversations.

In Human Unreadable, as a metaphor for people hiding in plain sight, we took instances of raw human expression (movement), obfuscated them, and created a process for collectors to uncover the vulnerability buried beneath the work. We consider this three-act experience the slow recovery of the human. 

From a process standpoint: we created an on-chain library of single movements, which were captured and turned into data and stored on-chain. This data was translated into code, and our generative model creates unique choreographic hashes. A unique movement sequence is generated with every mint. The motion data of that on-chain choreographic sequence drives all the visual parameters you see in the final artwork outputs. We love that in these pieces, you know that human movement made them, but you are only seeing the result of the movement, not the movement itself. There’s something powerful even in the knowledge that movement happened and imagining what it might have been. The artwork output is an invitation, a transparent layer through which the human experience can come into focus after the reveal.

There are six distinct looks in Human Unreadable. They share a visual language as a result of them all being variations using the material motifs of the Privacy Collection which are: the human body; glass/transparent materials; light; and x-ray. There is actually quite a bit to expect post-reveal as the reveal on Art Blocks is the first act. In the second act, collectors are able to go to Operator’s website, connect their wallet, and uncover the hidden choreography that created their piece in the form of a fully on-chain movement score. This is a secondary token that is soul bound to the Art Blocks piece. In this phase, the human becomes a bit more visible. The third act is a live performance in which the movement sequences behind the first 100 pieces will be performed. The human is readable.