Overview

Undersight was a twelve-hour performance by artist Cassils that used powerful light beams and Morse code to transmit words into the night sky. Created with lighting artist Christopher Kuhl and curated by Renata Azevedo Moreira for Toronto's Nuit Blanche, the performance broadcast words being quietly removed from US government documents and websites: diversity, equity, climate change, gender, and other terms now flagged by federal agencies. The work was about the erasure of language and the communities it represents.

What We Built

Heroic served as Digital Director and Producing Partner. We built the Undersight app for iOS and Android: a free tool that used a phone's camera to detect Morse code light pulses and translate them on screen in real time. Anyone across the city could point their phone at the light beams and read the messages as they appeared. We developed the camera detection algorithms and the full translation interface.

Coverage

The performance was covered by Artforum and CBC, which called it one of the standout works of Nuit Blanche Toronto 2025.