False Positive juxtaposes three perspectives on a narrative to explore how they overlap and diverge from the themes of surveillance, vision, documentation, and the physical or digital legacies of oneself.

The cellphone screen alternates between a map and camera as the user experiments with these two ways of seeing the path ahead. Throughout this cycle, the computer screen remains focused on the user, but lags behind the cellphone’s real-time feed.

Overlaying the visual components is audio of a one-sided phone call in which the voice begins by recounting a dream and ends by reflecting on systems of measurement.

What ties together these three perspectives is what sets them apart: each perspective is constructed through binaries that tell, and complicate, the narrative. Do we believe the lush forest or the snowy tundra, abstract dreams or an irrefutable map, silence or noise, subjective vision or objective data, delineable emotions or untraceable data, physical distancing or digital distancing?

As the narrative is constructed through varying methods of image-making, the relationship between technology and storytelling becomes clearer. But does our data empower us to tell our own stories, or is it a tool through which we are documented? Have we ever been prompted to ask if we like our data? Do we like what it does, the look and feel of it, or what it lets us believe? And when the narrative ends, are we free to choose what it leaves us with?