Blipverts!

Earlier this evening I was fast-forwarding through some TV commercials on my PVR when a particularly dumb one caught my eye (CGI animals were dancing to Singing In the Rain because General Electric is soooo environmental). What caught my eye was a sudden flurry of images at the end. I backed up and tried to slow-mo through it. Turns out it was GE's new One Second Theater. This is advertising aimed at people watching on their PVRs! 30 frames of info displayed in one second that you have to watch in super slow motion to actually read. A few years ago I saw a TV commercial that could only be perceived during fast-forward. Now that was funny.

One Second Theater reminded me of Max Headroom, a fictional character (played by Matt Frewer) from the mid-Eighties that 'hosted' a music video show and later appeared in the short-lived but subversive sci-fi TV show Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, set in the year 2004(!) where television is society. The first episode revolved around blipverts, ultra-compressed commercials that are over before the viewer can change channels, that eventually cause the viewer's brain to seize.

Hmmmm.

Listening to: Paranoimia (featuring Max Headroom) by Art of Noise from In Visible Silence.