Live broadcast of the performance Act III
What happens when computer code becomes movement and art takes to the stage?
Broadcast worldwide directly from the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Act III by artist duo Operator brings together choreography, generative art, and technology. Alongside international partner institutions, HEK brings this extraordinary live performance featuring 19 dancers to Basel—an encounter that blurs the boundaries between digital and physical space.
In 2023, HEK presented Operator’s generative art experience Human Unreadable Act II as part of the exhibition Exploring the Decentralized Web – Art on the Blockchain. Now, the project’s third and final act can be experienced at HEK through a live broadcast from the Susan and John Hess Family Theater at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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.
Operator’s Act III was commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The performance will be broadcast live to selected art and cultural institutions around the world. The livestream is itself a work of broadcast art: a live-mixed transmission, edited in real time across multiple perspectives, unique to each performance.
On Saturday, 21 November 2026, the performance will be livestreamed to audiences at Haus der Kunst in Munich, LACMA in Los Angeles, NEWART Centre in Tarragona, NODE Foundation in Palo Alto, Nxt Museum in Amsterdam, Onassis Ready in Athens, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen in Venice, PHI in Montreal, and SOLO Contemporary in Madrid.
On Sunday, 22 November 2026, the live broadcast will be shown at HEK in Basel, LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura in Lugano, Nxt Museum in Amsterdam, PHI in Montreal, and V&A in London.
HEK presents Human Unreadable Act III live from the Whitney Museum of American Art on Sunday, 22 November 2026, at 5 pm CET.
