Stories of racial profiling and violence against unarmed civilians make headlines with regularity. And while these cases are hot topics for a news cycle, the media and the public quickly move on to the next sensational story without truly acknowledging the lives lost, or making any real progress towards change.

The truth is: While racial injustice keeps killing, society keeps looking away.

To make everyone look back, we created the first music video to demand your attention.

Visitors to Chains.tidal.com are compelled to look into victims of brutality and confront the shocking facts of each person’s story. Facial recognition software, activated through a webcam, stops the music if the viewer looks away.

Users could interact with the experience by physically facing the screen, symbolizing the notion of “facing up” to racial injustice. We made this possible by accessing the user’s webcam and processing what we could see using web-based face and eye tracking technologies, CLM Trackr & JS Feat.

Originally we developed our own eye gaze algorithms which were very accurate under ‘lab conditions’. However, this didn’t translate well to the real world as regular webcams, different lighting conditions and skin tones prevented the accuracy we needed to calculate eye gaze direction.

To respect the sensitive subject matter, we moved to another solution, picking a library called “clmtrackr”. We then based the solution on head orientation which gave us a good compromise, producing a more fluid sound experience for a wider audience.

The experience took two months to develop and went live on October 15th.

In only four days, the video received 500,000 views with an average dwell time of 2’33”. This interactive experience caught the eyes of the media. It was featured on CBS, NBC, Rolling Stone, Fast Company, The Guardian, Forbes, Contagious, PSFK, Spin, Billboard, Creativity and other news outlets from more than 100 countries. All with positive critics:

“Usher Targets police brutality with powerful interactive video”- The Guardian

“The song is well produced but it’s the video that makes this project stand out”- Forbes

“One Hell of an interactive experience” – NBC News

“Confronts racial injustice like you’ve never seen” – The Huffington Post

“Powerful” – Spin

“Devastating”-  Rolling Stone

“No words could do the video justice” - Billboard

The project earned more than 500 million earned impressions.

Don’t Look Away and its innovative use of an existing technology opens the door for a new way of doing awareness campaigns.

In exchange for exclusive content, people are obliged to not only look into an issue which is really hard to look at, but to also engage with it. And that is the first step towards real actions of change.

This world’s first music video to demand people’s attention was able to make a serious issue, involving deaths and racial injustice, part of the world’s Pop Culture conversation. Inspiring change in people’s behaviour and society as a whole.

Chains was launched exclusively at Chains.tidal.com, meaning that for four days, everyone had to look in the eyes and story of victims in order to hear the song.

The emotional impact of this interactive video sparked a positive response among world acclaimed influencers from the sports, movie and music industries.

First, we activated Usher’s close friends like Jay Z and Beyoncé. Spontaneously, others followed the example, sharing the microsite on social media and helping make this serious issue part of the world’s pop culture conversation.

Don’t Look Away became the digital spotlight to promote concerts (like TIDAL x 1020, with proceeds benefiting groups that promote social impact and change); demonstrations, social and art events (like Miami’s Art Basel). An educational hub, talks at universities and conferences (like 92Y) fueled the social debate focused on revealing and breaking the chains of social injustice.

“As artists we have to use our platform to spread awareness and inspire action.” Usher

In the past, artists like Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye and Nina Simone have used music to echo the reality of racial injustice. Following their steps, musician and social activist Usher, produced the song Chains: an anthem to advocate for unarmed victims of violence.

He then challenged us to launch it using today’s modern tools and activate society in any way possible.