xxnft
Operator
Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti are an award-winning experiential artist duo who founded their collaborative art practice, known as Operator, in 2016. Referred to as “the two critical contemporary voices on digital art’s international stages” (Clot Magazine) and “LGBT power couple” (Flaunt), their expertise collide in large-scale conceptual works recognizable for their signature poetic approach to technology. Rooted in the understanding that immersion is not only a physical state but also an emotional one, their approach employs nuance in scale, producing a feeling instead of a spectacle. Ti’s background as an immersive artist and HCI technologist, and Catherine’s as an established choreographer, performance artist and gender scholar make for a uniquely medium-fluent output–bringing together environments, technology and the body. Operator has been awarded The Lumen Prize (Immersive Environments), ADC Award (Gold Cube), S+T+ARTS Prize (Honorary Mention), and MediaFutures (a European Commission funded programme). They’ve spoken and appeared in BBC Click, Bloomberg ART+TECHNOLOGY, Christie’s Art+Tech Summit, SCAD Museum of Art, MIT Open Doc Lab, Ars Electronica, Art Basel, CADAF, and MoCDA. Originally from Los Angeles and currently based in Berlin.
Which was your first NFT ever?
Which is the last one?
How did you start your career in crypto art?
Dejha’s background in digital art goes back nearly 15 years, and our collaborative practice has involved technology since its inception in 2016. Due to our involvement in the digital art sphere (which felt much smaller pre-2021), we were present at some of the early and monumental events in crypto art history, and have been aware of the movement since 2018. However, we decided to wait to engage with the blockchain until it felt right and we found a way to do it while staying true to our experiential practice which has always integrated performance, immersive environments, and technology. In the fall of 2021, after we completed our deepfake/synthetic
media project Soft Evidence, we decided it was time to dive in. We then began working on the Privacy Collection, which is a translation of the themes from our Lumen-Prize winning piece “I’d
rather be in a dark silence than” into a collection of works that explore the tension between privacy and transparency on the blockchain. The release of the Privacy Collection lots
themselves are experiential, durational, and performative. It feels good to have found a way to not try to ‘fit in’, but to bring our practice authentically to the space and be part of the evolution
of what crypto art can be and increase awareness of its expansive artistic possibilities.
How can we increase the involvement of women in crypto?
By being present, making art, being part of expanding narratives around the movement. It’s important that other women and non-binary people hear about something other than NFTs being
scams and “crypto bros” and realize the vast potential there is. We are passionate about speaking about our approach and our experiences to not only offer an alternative narrative, but
also make sure our voices are part of shaping a more inclusive future of the space.
Last project?
Our two most recent projects are Privacy Portraits and Unsigned.
Privacy Portraits was part of Proof of People in London. This series of anonymized portraits was created through a durational performance installation. It was an experiential work, where the
collector is photographed, rolls dice, has their portrait anonymized live through analog techniques, and the anonymization techniques used on their photos were determined by their dice roll. While this is not the first time we’ve centered performance in our NFTs, our past works are art NFTs of performance, these are art NFTs through performance, and the collector becomes the performer as well because they are the subject of the portrait. The other current project we are working on is called Unsigned. This is a conceptual artwork
and collection of 100 signatures from women artists, curated by us and Anika Meier. Unsigned is a response to a finding that while the value of an artwork goes up if it’s signed by a man, it
goes down if it is signed by a woman. A woman’s signature can actually devalue a work to the point that women choose to leave the work unsigned to protect its worth. This is both a
conceptual artwork and collection, raising the symbolic and literal value of women artists’ signatures and to stimulate more conversation and change around such a disheartening reality.
What are the main guiding principles behind your work? Can you step outside yourself
for a moment and let us know what you see?
Being able to use technology is different than being able to be poetic with technology. Even while using complex and new technologies–we never make that the focus, and only using technology to make a concept or message stronger. We like to say “tech doesn’t age well, concepts do.” Also, as experiential artists, we really believe that if we use that word, the work is actually an experience, and not a spectacle. If the extent of the work can be captured in a photograph, it’s likely not experiential. Lastly, I would say highlighting the human body. This does not mean just showing the human body in the work itself, but also considering the choreography and physical experience of the audience-participant; an overall awareness and sensitivity of embodiment is always present. The human body is often is usually neglected in
digital art, even though it is itself an interface.
Do you get any particular source of inspiration for the visual styles of your works e.g.
do they arrive in relation to the place (physical, psychological, or situational) you were
located at the time?
We never know where inspiration will come from. It can come from the way my grandmother reads the newspaper, the way that light reflects through a vase in the morning, architecture, a book, a statue. What is important is that we always remain open and curious. Also, empty moments are important to protect; it is common that activities like walks and baths are when the cacophony of sensory input from daily life can come together into interesting ideas.
Can you dive a bit into the technical aspects of the works? Software or hardware used (in the wide sense; it could be thoughts and bodies), as well as the editing process? What are some of the particular challenges you and your team have faced in realizing the works?
The technology used in our practice always supports the work both technically and conceptually. This is why there is diversity in the technology used in our body of work. In On View, we leveraged TouchDesigner as a mainbrain to manage an array of different inputs and outputs to create an interactive installation affording the technology invisibility to the eye. Physical computing and computer vision played a central role in allowing the technology to fall into the background. For example in On View, there is a network of dozens of microprocessor devices (i.e., ardunios), connected through 100s of feet of fiber optic, that manage workflows such as facial recognition which identify the audience-participant’s face; and, custom capacitive sensors, created out of conductive fabric and ITO plastics which were embedded in the walls and the floors to determine the location of audience-participants. All of these inputs informed the experience of the installation, such as triggering voice commands, moving kinetic scenic pieces, DMX light control, directive signage, and selective media playback based on an audience-participants’ data profile linked to their face. The particular challenge with this project
was that it was a very complex system that had to be integrated into a scenic build of equal complexity. This required the scenic build and technical specifications to be 100% in sync. The scenic build took three weeks and the technology needed to be installed in phases as cables and processors needed to be installed before the subfloors were sealed up. The lighting for facial recognition was challenging and we needed dozens of faces, of various skin tones, in the installation to train and optimize the system to be as accurate as possible.
In general, we are often using technology in ways that it was not intended to be used. While experimentation is a key aspect to our work, it is equally important to have a very comprehensive and experienced understanding to make use of such experimentation as well as a rigorous and disciplined plan ahead of production.
While all the above is happening, we hope that there is zero knowledge on the audience-participant side that there is so much complexity. The experience of the work, if we have achieved what we set out for, feels simple and organic, even minimal.
Can you tell us about the relationship you want or aim to have with the viewer? What is the underlying approach to this relationship?
We try to involve the audience and bring them more into a participant role rather than a passive viewer. With our background in experiential art and native tongue being large scale installations that merge performance, immersive environments and technology, we consider how every touchpoint and moment of the experience will feel to the audience. We imagine, we test, we tweak, until the feeling is right. In the end, while there is a physical, audio, haptic elements, what they leave with is an experience and a memory, of which they were involved in the making of. The audience becomes a collaborator and basically completes the work.
Tell us a secret about your work. Even a small one.
We try really hard not to, but as we love what we do and are also a married couple, we are sometimes talking about work while we’re falling asleep.