In Light Years Apart by Christie Neptune (2021-2025), Fula, an interdimensional being, travels between two dimensions to escape the violence of othering. Her flight or fight, a precarious event negotiated in real-time by the viewer, retools the paradigms of visibility to draw focus to deep-rooted prejudice at the core of digital surveillance. Utilizing edited film sequences, AI-powered biometric technology, the World Wide Web, and the body, Light Years Apart posits multiple trajectories within a branching narrative structure, drawing a distinction and, conversely, muddying the boundaries between my subject’s interiority and the enclosure of white racial framing. To see Fula (the body’s sensitization to the joys, subjectivity, and desires of my subject’s presence) necessitates labor—the transcendent process of conscious reorientation within the labyrinth scheme of cinematic spectatorship.

Light Years Apart, written and directed by filmmaker and Backslash Artist, Christie Neptune, starring Ronis Aba, Nia Simone, and Zipporah Wilson, was made possible with contributions from Creative Technologist and Backslash fellow, Heidi Minghao He; Choreographer, Kyle Marshall; and Director of Photography, Daniele Sarti, through production support from Backslash at Cornell Tech.

Artist Statement

Will the precarity of white myths buckle under the aegis of counter-politics? More precisely, can instruments of domination yield reparative justice within the matrices of cultural representation and visual culture? My focus here examines the tactics, cultural politics, and legacy of digital surveillance (a progeny of domination)—artificial intelligence (AI)-powered biometric technology, closed-circuit television (CCTV), and the enduring strategies of algorithmic governance that regulate and control behavior in the public sphere. These devices are tied seamlessly to the prosaic of our day-to-day and are integral to our movement in and around space. Light Years Apart examines the substructure grounding the mechanics of this system, particularly the choreography of politics threaded between identity, movement, and access. This dynamic, though ubiquitous, is predicated upon the collection, correctness, and, conversely, the incorrectness of data. The latter, an unintended outcome of programming, draws focus to the culture of politics situated at the root of surveillance. So much is implied here, and it is this malfunction, or rather dysfunction, that I question. What exactly is the incorrectness of data? And how does it inform the varying processes of identification and classification in contemporary models of surveillance? Are we to cast it aside as a mere error, the technological malfunction of bits and parts, or is this symptomatic of a more sinister plot? To the latter, Black feminist theorist and author Audre Lorde would argue “yes.” If she were alive today to witness–the digitalization of identity relations, the emergent practice of data colonialism, and the algorithmic absorption of racism–she’d remind us that tools will perform as designed. However, is this proposition addressed to the tool itself or the politics that govern the design (ideology and aesthetic values) and function (performance) of tools?

Historically, biometric technologies have been formidable devices in the production and preservation of systemic oppression. It colors and restricts the representation and visibility of blackness within the white racial frame [1], a coded scheme of racial branding that others. African and African diasporic studies professor and author Simone Browne highlights this conundrum. In Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, she examines the inherent relations between black fungibility and methods of surveillance, drawing deep connections between its biometric past and biometric present. In Browne’s analysis, racial framing structures the context of what is surveilled. The two are profoundly connected. They reflect a culture of politics deeply rooted within chattel slavery and supremacist frameworks of domination. And under the auspices of white racial framing, contemporary models of biometric surveillance perpetuate the same ethos. This is especially true in matters of public safety and law enforcement, where minorities experience higher rates of error than their white counterparts.

In a 2019 facial recognition study conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), it was reported that African American and Asian populations experienced elevated rates of false positives with facial recognition technology utilized in domestic law enforcement [2]. International legal scholar E. Tendayi Achiume defines this as techno-racism [3], an unintended outcome in biometric technology that further exacerbates systemic racial bias. In an interview with the United Nations Human Rights Council, Achiume argues that “technology is not neutral or objective. It is fundamentally shaped by the racial, ethnic, gender, and other inequalities prevalent in society, and typically makes these inequalities worse” (Karimi 2021). However, this assertion draws attention to the centrality of politics within the design and function of tools, rather than the tool itself. Like Lorde and Simone, Achiume asserts that tools will perform as designed. Technology, a vital instrument of domination, when marked by white racial politics, compounds racial disparities in programming culture, data, industry, and the public sector. The racial paradigms of invisibility and, conversely, hyper-visibility in biometric technology (a matter that dictates who is watched, how they are framed, and what they are labeled as) are linked to the history and legacy of white supremacy.

But can the politics that govern the design and function of surveillance be altered to protect, resist, or critique? The burgeoning beginnings of CCTV, after all, were developed by African American inventors, Marie Van Brittan Brown, and her husband, Albert L. Brown [4], to protect against potential intruders. Though the function remains relatively the same, the ideology and aesthetic values embedded in its design have changed significantly. The differences in politics between CCTV today and its burgeoning beginnings in 1966 are unparalleled. This begs the question: can systems of surveillance be divorced from dominance, particularly the logic of white supremacist patriarchy, and absorbed into a counter system? If it is indeed possible, what is the potential of co-option, the integration of surveillance technology into artistic decolonial praxis, and how might an ethos of resistance reconfigure the axes of power and language in frameworks of digital surveillance?

Light Years Apart navigates the inherent paradox of this query to consider both the possibilities and limitations of co-option. Co-option is viewed as an algorithmic tactic of resistance within black artistic interventions into digital surveillance. It subverts and challenges the logic of white racial framing to foreground the humanness of its subjects. Algorithmic resistance, a concept introduced by culture and media sociologists Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré, are locally organized tactics of resistance in opposition to state platform dominance. It pivots power from an elite technocracy towards a framework of technological democratization, an epistemic piloted by a plurality of cultural perspectives and knowledge formations. The latter, a social output of resistance, is what philosopher and technology critic, Yuk Hui, defines as technodiversity—a formidable subversion of the vertical and unilateral distributions of power commensurate with frameworks of technological domination. In artistic practice as the nexus of art and technology, this framework is most palpable. Light Years Apart collides the optics of intersectionality (the interrelated dynamics of race, class, and gender) with tactics of algorithmic resistance in interactive mediated performance to reconfigure the paradigms of visibility in digital surveillance. Interactive mediated performances are participatory performances in artistic practice experienced through technology [5]. The spectator’s direct engagement within this framework is framed as a performance integral to meaning and the real-time organization of information across the screen. I am interested in the implications of this performance, particularly its role within the radicalization and neutralization of surveillance frameworks.

In Light Years Apart, tools are framed as plastic structures situated between diametrically opposed viewpoints: power and resistance. They can be utilized to both uphold and subvert the lynchpins of White supremacist patriarchal order. Within this framework, the frames of visibility are temporal art forms activated by the political, a generative apparatus wielded by the body. The body’s politicking—a constellation of ideas, beliefs, perspectives, and values—lends credence to meaning. As an extension of cinematic discourse—an architecture of control that orders the context and organization of what is seen—it shifts the dynamics of power and language in cultural representation and ruptures illusion. This undress is provocative, though esoteric, as the denouement of this work is left to the viewer. I am interested in the nuance and instability of this space, specifically the body’s role in the production and collapse of myth, design, and function. As the ‘(cybernetic) hot spot,’ a penetrative entity that advances comprehension and muddies boundaries in interactive mediated performance, how does the body’s conscious labored work reorient and shift the dynamics of power and language in frameworks of digital surveillance?

(1) The term, first introduced by American sociologist Joe Figian, works “to rationalize slavery and its attendant violence by framing, or I would say by branding, blackness as “bestial,” “alien,” and “rebellious,” among other markers of difference, in the white mind”(Simone 95). See Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.

(2) See Patrick Grother, Mei Ngan and Kayee Hanaoka in “Face Recognition Vendor Test, Part 3: Demographic Effects,” (December 2019), pg 2. See also Chad Boutin, “NIST Study Evaluates Effects of Race, Age, Sex on Face Recognition Software” in NIST, December 2019.

(3) See Faith Karimi, “People of color have a new enemy: techno-racism,” in CNN, May 9, 2021. See also “Emerging digital technologies entrench racial inequality, UN expert warns,” in United Nations, Special Procedures, Press Release, July 15, 2020.

(4) See Chris Gilliard. “A Black Woman Invented Home Security. Why Did It Go So Wrong” in Wired, November 14, 2021. See also Marie van Brittan Brown: Home Security System in MIT Lemelson Center.

(5) See Philip Auslander. “2. Live performance in a mediatized culture” in Liveness: performance in a mediatized culture. The term mediated performance was initially introduced in theatre criticism in the 90’s to describe the mediation of live and recorded performance through technology. See also Claire Bishop. “Activated Spectatorship” in Installation Art: A Critical History. (Interactive) mediated performance is comparable to activated spectatorship, a “politicised aesthetic practice”—introduced by British art historian and cultural critic Claire Bishop—that foregrounds the viewer’s inclusion in art made politically. In Bishop’s framework, the viewer’s role is political. It works to modify the “operations of power, authority, and exclusion” pertinent to organizations of the state. Like activated spectatorship, interactive mediated performance addresses the political implications of the viewer’s participation with respect to artistic discourse. However, this happening is mediated in real-time through varying technological devices: the screen, the computer, the camera, the speaker, AI, etc., and can be experienced interchangeably in isolation or as part of a collective.

In negotiating power and resistance, can tools of domination be co-opted to postulate a new cultural politics of difference? Tools of domination can speak to a host of things, from the grammatical syntax of language to the school-to-prison pipelines of mass imprisonment. Under the umbrella of this particular phrase, the possibilities are endless and dynamic, no less. However, this paper, Co-opting The Master’s Tools: A Black Techno-Intervention in Mediated Performance, closely considers the tools of digital surveillance (a progeny of domination): artificial intelligence (AI)-powered biometric technology, closed-circuit television (CCTV), and the enduring strategies of algorithmic governance wielded by the state to regulate and control behavior. Can these devices be divorced from power and absorbed into new frameworks of understanding that resist, protect, and empower, and how might that look in representational practice?

Read the full essay here.

(Left Image). Patent (#3,482,037) design of the first closed-circuit television (CCTV) developed by African American inventor, Marie Van Brittan Brown in 1966. Brittan Brown’s invention received a patent in 1969. The patent included “four peepholes, a sliding camera, television monitors, and two-way microphones. These items created a closed-circuit television system for surveillance also known as CCTV,” (Lemelson-MIT). Image courtesy of Lemelson MIT Program. Sourced from: https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/marie-van-brittan-brown

(Middle Image). Bill Spinhoven, I/Eye (1993-2011), a site-specific interactive installation of variable dimensions. Montevideo Gallery exhibition. In I/Eye (1993), the spectator’s movement is tracked in real-time by a black and white rendering of the artist’s eye. This provocation, framed as an artistic intervention into digital surveillance, muddies the observer and observed dichotomy in spectatorship. Image courtesy of the Netherlands Media Art Institute; Wikipedia.

(Right Image). Lynn Hershman Leeson, “CyberRoberta” (1996), the plastic clone of Tillie from the Dollie Clone Series (1995-1996). 17 ¾ x 17 ¾ x 7 ⅞ inches. CCTV cameras installed in the eyes of CybeRoberta capture and stream live footage online. Hershmann Leeson’s intervention into digital surveillance calls into question the digitalization of gender-based biases and the culture of replication in emergent technologies. Image courtesy of Hyperallergic; the artist; Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York; and Altman Siegel, San Francisco. Image sourced from: https://hyperallergic.com/664541/lynn-hershman-leeson-in-all-her-cyborg-glory/

Collaborator Statement

I am the creative technologist for Light Years Apart, iterating across multiple tools and ultimately building the website for the final version of the interactive film. My primary goal was to ensure that technology seamlessly supported — rather than overshadowed — the artistic vision. I approached the technical side as a form of ambience, integrating interactive elements so subtly that the audience could fully immerse themselves in the story without sensing the underlying systems.

At first, I experimented with existing interactive tools such as Isadora and TouchDesigner. Later, to ensure the work’s stability, longevity, and coherence, I transitioned to a fully custom-built web experience. I am also proud of the extra steps taken to support diversity and inclusiveness, including iterations on the computer vision model, refinements to the rendering infrastructure to protect audience identity, and thoughtful system design for neurodiverse users. The project embodies the philosophy of calm technology, where interaction feels ambient and human, and technology itself disappears into the emotional fabric of the story. In this work, technology exists not as a spectacle but as a quiet enabler of artistic expression and storytelling.

This was a long and challenging project. I am proud that, despite numerous obstacles — including the pandemic — we were able to build a high-quality, enduring piece rather than settling for a temporary or incomplete version. Collaborating with the artist and witnessing the evolution of the work from concept to realization has been a deeply rewarding learning experience, strengthening my belief in the delicate harmony between art and technology.