Unravelling The Roots Of Operator’s UNKNOWN SITTER

In the history of portraiture, a person who could not be identified would be known as an unknown sitter.

In contemporary art, much of which is increasingly digitised on the blockchain, obfuscation of identity is a meaningful part of the pseudonymous interactions of artists and collectors.

This invokes a peculiar tension between attempts at privacy on the one hand, set within the transparent native architecture of the blockchain (on the other). Yet this is an ancillary consideration in the context of the ambitious multidimensional Privacy Collection by Operator (artist duo Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti).

“We don’t do discord, we do experiential dinners.” Operator, VCA Unknown Sitter dinner, Carousel London, 11.10.22

The project’s inception is rooted in the societal imperatives currently ostensibly driving artistic appreciation in the modern age. Here the creative and, incidentally, romantic duo known as Operator seek to peel back the curtain on a now established aspect of the cultural zeitgeist.

Having worked primarily on commissions since the formation of their collaboration in 2016, their award winning SCAD Museum of Art commission “On View” (2019) began to recognise an audience desire to become the subject of art experiences. Phenomena such as selfie culture, and surveillance capitalism, perceptibly shifting the act of going to see art — to wanting to be part of it. The piece asked the question:

“Are you going to see what’s on view, or are you going to see yourself on view?”

The evolution of their artistic practice has sought to unravel these machinations across mediums that coalesce to unpack profound aspects of the human condition. As a rule there is no allegiance to one creative vector, enabling a multi-pronged approach (that pulls from different skill sets) to identify the best vehicle for examining these precepts. Projection mapping, human computer interaction (HCI), performance art, immersive environment design, poetry: all experiential interfaces that (boiled down) capture the most organic impacts. This is an alliance that celebrates the primacy of the message, never reliant on novelty to deliver it.

“Tech doesn’t age well, concepts do”

“On View”, the public facing immersive installation, explored the role of human agency within the framework of the systems that keep us constantly connected and watched. The marquee Lumen Prize award winning piece — “I’d rather be in a dark silence than” in 2020 (an installation centered on their signal blocking and isolating trench coat) — is representative of a space where we cannot be tracked and listened to. The sanctity of silence burgeons henceforth thematically.

The musical theorist John Cage ruminated deeply on the tenet of silence in his lectures, writings, teachings, and creative outputs. His works were concerned with the influence, and resonance, of nothingness — challenging assumptions about musicianship and musical experience. Thereafter he birthed the term “nothingtoseeness” as a word and solution which sought to identify the equivalent of silence in visual arts.

"4:33 is a favourite piece of ours where John plays silence for four minutes and thirty three seconds. As a choreographer, I always pay close attention to movement as a way of framing stillness, through those explorations of absence we are able to derive meaning via context." Operator, VCA Unknown Sitter dinner, Carousel London, 11.10.22

This preponderance with nothingness, and silence, gained sufficient gravitas in the Operator schema to give rise to its first collaboration with VerticalCrypto Art. Harnessing the curatorial prowess, stakeholder advocacy, and Web3 ecosystem expertise embodied by this avant garde media hub, consultancy, and crypto focused studio has enabled Operator to push the boundaries in producing a durational generative performance based experience.

Operator’s Privacy Portraits came to life at Proof Of People, London’s first immersive 3-day festival showcasing art, fashion and music through the lens of NFT-backed technology. The premise entailed the creation of NFTs through performance art, with the duo challenged to look at ways to be generative in analogue ways — through physicality.

Generative art started way before 2020, or even 2017, a period within which it has now been popularised on a wider scale with the advent of NFT’s. A series of tributes to Herbert W. Franke, the very sadly recently deceased pioneer of computer art who anticipated the metaverse, illuminates the history of this tradition. Over 80 of the most renowned generative artists, photographers, poets, and virtual world builders working today were invited by art meets science — Foundation Herbert W. Franke to honour his life and work.

As revealed in the Operator x VCA twitter spaces, delineating the progression from the Privacy Portraits to Unknown Sitter, when participants arrived, they would then have a polaroid photo taken of them, whilst considering something they would like to keep to themselves (a secret). With that moment captured, the participant would roll a dice; the sequence of numbers they rolled determined what anonymization processes and materials would be used on their portrait. These would then be anonymised live, scanned, and minted as a limited collection of 67 Privacy Portraits. **

“Privacy Portraits speak to the desire to hide within transparent systems, and nod to select mechanisms of the PFP (profile picture) while bringing slowness and analog algorithms to the digital portrait. The Privacy Portrait is a visual pseudonym of sorts, allowing the collector to be present without being exposed.” Operator

Privacy Portraits is part of Operator’s Privacy Collection, which is organised into several NFT lots which have been unfolding since February 2022. The first lot after “Privacy Key 00 ” was Attempts (Lot 00) — which perceives online privacy as a series of attempts incorporating movement phrases, a glass avatar, and the concept of a digital identity one moves in and out of: attempting to fit our messy human selves into clean glassy digital personas. This comprised eleven unique works in a choreographic attempt to establish online privacy (real or imagined).

The second lot, Privacy Portraits, Lot 01, is the installation that led to an unintended appendage piece, “Unknown Sitter”– which the artists now almost feel is the perfect end to the Privacy Portraits story. Privacy Portraits, like the rest of the collection, is web3 site specific, acknowledging a phenomenon that is hard to ignore. The artists anonymize the collectors, who achieve anonymity through abstraction (to the point they could not be recognised), rather than substitution (as is the case in PFPs). Further questions arise: if the collector sells the portrait, do they still keep the experience? And what relationship does that have with this digital entity?

It is thus that a group of 26 collectors, aficionados, supporters, and advocates find themselves gathered in an upstairs enclave at Carousel London on Wednesday 11th October 2022. Nestled between Fitzroy Square and Oxford Street, this bohemian Fitzrovian patch of the capital was once home to writers such as Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Rimbaud. Tonight it will tell a different story.

Our patrons are the stalwart Vertical Crypto Art team including founding mother Micol and director of operations Fil. The custom high specification adornment of the space, in keeping with the nuanced artistic aesthetic consistently maintained across Operator’s works, adds to the frisson of intrigue permeating the air.

We are called to attention.

The signature bittersweet hint of juniper and grapefruit divinely sluices over our collective palettes as we imbibed on delicately crafted Negronis. The Unknown Sitter is present, both figuratively and physiologically — holding intense physical energy. Beyond the 67 Privacy Portraits, one portrait is delivered to the anonymization desk with missing information; leaving us with a polaroid with no visible subject, a contemporary unknown sitter.

The physical embodiment of the Unknown Sitter is enshrined in a translucent glass cased pedestal at the centre of the room.

Even though Unknown Sitter appears to be blank, it is a portrait. There is a person in this photo, a person who is thinking about something they prefer to keep private–the prompt given to each sitter before the photo was taken. It may even be considered a portrait of absence received both the physical and a digital portrait.

With performance being a central aspect of their practice, the dinner was also an opportunity for participants to encounter the Unknown Sitter as an embodied concept.

The figurative embodiment of the Unknown Sitter?

A magnificent stream of performance art by British dancer Emma Farnell-Watson. Sworn to silence, shrouded in mystique, her enigmatic presence served to elicit an all consuming innate desire for interaction. A vociferous vacuum of exchange, prodding at the human conditions’ frail, fallible, faltering at the absence of reciprocity in engagement.

Her reflections, once the moratorium on dialogue was lifted, long after the dinner:

To be given the chance to observe, witness and just be. It was such a gift. To finally strip everything back in this overly chaotic world, where so much is talking at you; inside and out of your mind. It’s so hard to find that quiet place inside. The silence allowed room for that. With no pressure to conform or entertain. To analyse or judge. To worry, or anticipate. To simply be. And to trust that to guide you.

It brought me a profound sense of presence. A quality that can be so challenging to truly experience in the fast paced chaos of today. I was able to relate so differently to the energetic chaos that unfolded in front of me throughout the night. I felt deeply what each person was going through. Tuned into their feeling of awkwardness, openness, sometimes fear or curiosity. I had a small insight into their inner world. I began to witness humans as energetic beings, and an overwhelming sense of love arose.

Time almost became suspended… an inner slowness, while the energetics of the room span around me. I left the night with such peace. Gratitude for what really matters. I felt so connected with the guests of the dinner, despite not having spoken a word. The silence had allowed me to meet the moment, as I was, with who each person was.

Papa — linktr.ee/papajams