Apple Watch Face References Afrofuturism

Apple, in January 2022, doled out a new Apple Watch face called Unity Lights.In Apple’s own words, the Watch face is inspired by Afrofuturism. What is Afrofuturism? You may ask.

Simply put, Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, philosophy of science and philosophy of history that explores the developing intersection of African diaspora culture with technology and self-empowerment.

Another way to think of Afrofuturism is that it is a place-holder term for articulating the agency, optimism and utopia of peoples of African descent as they move and permeate all corners of the world. It is a 21st-century proposal. That is to say, it acknowledges, as a central premise, that African-ness and Blackness is, and has always been, a story of journeys.

It is an attempt to re-frame the nature, temperament and disposition of Blackness. In many settings, the African-Diasporic movement is often associated with the tragic displacement enforced by slavery. Yet, it is important to remind us that Africa has been on the move way before slavery. Movement was the norm, not an aberration. And Africans carried their culture, their technologies, their knowledge, their disposition to wherever they went.

Thus, Afrofuturism should not be understood as waiting on the future. If anything, it is being aware that the 21st century is a volatile negotiation between the past and present by which history is re-imagined and the future re-aligned.

Pan-Africanism

The watch face references the Pan-African colours — red, green and black — first introduced in 1920 by Marcus Garvey. These colours have also made their way into some National flags, and many black movements (think of the official flag of Biafra).

At the core of Pan-Africanism is the idea that peoples of African descent have common interests and should be unified. Historically, Pan-Africanism has often taken the shape of a political or cultural movement. There are many varieties of Pan-Africanism. It ranges from its most narrow political proposal that all peoples of African descent should have and live under one nation, to a more fluid version which, in the 21st century, takes the form of Trans-Africanism (I have written about this extensively in my essay. titled “Transcending “Africa”).

What should be evident, however, are the connecting threads between Pan-Africanism and Afrofuturism: unity, collaboration and self-empowerment.

This also explains the connection Apple makes with the Pan-African colours and Afrofuturism. Apple, being a tech company, assumes a sense of responsibility, if not a vested interest, in representing Afrofuturism in their platform.

Apple’s Position

What does this say about Apple as a tech company? My thoughts here are ambivalent. On one hand, I recognize that Apple sees the need to step up and align itself with one of the most progressive ideologies of the century. This is commendable, not for Afrofuturism, but for Apple as an American, capitalist company. Afrofuturism is steering the course of time; it does not need Apple to thrive. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder: is there a hint of commodification or re-appropriation here? I mean, we’ve seen this before.

Do you recall how the world applauded Marvel Comics for giving us “Wakanda” — a fictitious, mouth-watering African nation — in their blockbuster movie packed with almost all-black casts? The Black Panther movie was heralded as one of the greatest acknowledgement of Blackness in popular culture — but in exchange for all the dollars that poured into the coffers of Marvel Studios and Disney. Yet, the real expense is not monetary, but the fact that many were sedated with a cosmetic version of progress while indolent to the opportunity to dig deeper: the Black Panther character was inspired by the Black Panthers movement. There is a documentary on Netflix about this movement. It didn’t get as much viewership as “Wakanda”.

The point of raising these questions is not to prompt hasty conclusions, but rather to spark curiosity and healthy scepticism. I am entrenched — I would even say deeply — in the Apple ecosystem. Apple as a company gets many things right when strictly speaking of its consumer products. Nonetheless, it is a business whose fundamental aim is to convert almost, if not all, of its offerings into monetary gains for its shareholders. This article is less about criticizing Apple than it is about arming consumers with thoughts tangential to what readily meets the eye.

Implementation of the Unity Lights Watch Face

I commend Apple’s approach to the implementation of the watch Face. To start with, I appreciate the name and the word combination of “Unity” and “Lights”. Together, these words form a union pointing to hope, optimism and freshness. If read as a caption, Unity qualifies Lights. You conjure an image of a gathering of people responding to a call to “put your lights up in the air”. As a sentence, It could also mean “unity lights”. That is, unity ignites.

As for the implementation, the hour and minute hand take on the form of a strip-light. As they move, they light up the entire clockwise region in saturated green, red and faint yellow. The anti-clockwise part is thrown into deep black. The second hand is yellow. As it moves, it animates the colours within their respective regions.

The region of Opacity

The dark area — the anti-clockwise — is quite interesting. Here, I think of the region of opacity. The disparity between transparency and opacity is a philosophical argument well articulated by the French-Martiniquan critic, Edouard Glissant. In his seminal work, Poetics of Relation, “Glissant demands the “right to opacity,” indicating the oppressed — which have historically been constructed as the Other — can and should be allowed to be opaque, to not be completely understood, and to simply exist as different”.

In other words, the right to opacity, or the region of opacity is intrinsic to Afrofuturism or any ideology which considers African/Black realities.

I am not sure how much of this line of thought went into the design of the Unity Lights watch face. Notwithstanding, one cannot talk about light without inferring its counterpart, darkness. Yet in the African/Black reality, darkness is not necessarily antithetical to lightness, it also connotes opacity — that which intentionally renders itself ungraspable, unmeasurable, incomprehensible. There is life, and there are beginnings in the region of opacity.

Emeka Okereke

For Careful Optimist.