The Operature

The Operature is an interactive installation of narrative-poetic movements engaging themes of forensics, anatomy and 21stcentury embodiment. The work incorporates a range of historical and contemporary contexts of observation and anatomical analysis including early modern surgical theaters, Francis Glessner Lee’s Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, and The Stud File, a methodical archive of personal evidence documenting the sexual exploits of Samuel Steward, a 20th century tattoo artist, gay pornographer, and friend of Gertrude Stein. In this iteration, 12 disks with biological symbols can be scanned by a webcam to access visual-textual movements as well as qr codes and augmented reality markers that can be examined with a smartphone. The Operature is a multi-modal project of the collective Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality (ATOM-r) with several large-scale manifestations including a 2-hour live performance and a 25-screen installation. This scaled-down version will include artifacts drawn from the larger body of work. (Source: ELO Conference 2014)