"'When a beautiful girl walks up to you, and she's wearing the TV commercial on her chest,' says Hollander, 'you just can't get away from it.'"
Animated media and clothing will invariably merge -- this is just the start. I foresee contact lenses with customized video loops; clothing that ripples and flashes with movie clips and commercials (think of the "flicker cladding" in Rudy Rucker's Ware novels); accessories that automatically adopt the wearer's mood and broadcast them to passersby.
You think that car with the thumping bass stereo is annoying? Wait until flatscreens become flat (and durable) enough to be molded to the bodies of cars. In time, every available surface will writhe with video imagery of every conceivable variety. The work of hackers and digital graffiti artists will proliferate.
It's possible that the written word will begin to decline in importance; people will rely increasingly on ubiquitous televised "e-glyphs" to conduct business. Nonverbal communication will become more dynamic and expansive; entire dialogues will take the form of rapidly changing footage projected onto clothing and even skin in much the same way that online conversation is (arguably) facilitated by the use of animated "smilies."
We may even begin to think differently. William Burroughs feared the power of words because they were, at best, artificial stand-ins for real experience. A predominantly visual vocabulary will have massive ramifications for linguistics and aesthetics as we know them.
If a beautiful woman with a TV emblazoned on her chest ever approaches me, you can be sure I'll tell her this.
No comments:
Post a Comment