Sunday, July 16, 2006

Found character


This faceless individual looks like a character out of some story by Bilal or Moebius or Ditko...but it's actually a real life concept created by an advertising agency for "nomadic media" presentations. Can you imagine walking down the street and running into this guy? I don't think the response will be as pleasant or benign as the inventors suppose.

This particular fellow is described as "The Projector" -- sounds even more like a Ditko character, don't you think? -- but the company's trade is sending people out into the streets wearing backpack-mounted LCD screens. Intellectually, I realize this is nothing more than a logical high-tech extension of the standard "guy wearing a sandwich board handing out flyers to passersby"...but emotionally, it strikes me as creepy on a dozen different levels. Imagine taking a job as a mobile TV stand. Or imagine stepping outside for some air and not being able to escape walking TV sets heading toward you.

The image comes from here but I found it thanks to a post here.

3 comments:

  1. Okay, I checked your links and I'm confused as well as creeped out. I can understand the "monitor-men" with the back-mounted videoscreens (not like them, but understand them) but who the heck is this "Projector" guy? Does he shine his images on nearby surfaces? On me?

    So much noise, so little signal...

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  2. There are a couple of related images but no further information about this concept on the Pixman site...but I'm almost entirely certain that the Projector goes around confronting evildoers, tormenting them with projected images of their past misdeeds, until they beg for mercy and/or kill themselves from horror at their criminal acts being exposed.

    Well, either that, or it's something they've come up with for situations where they can't use a lot of people with monitors on their backs or they need the image to be larger, i.e. projected onto the side of a building. But the Steve Ditko thing sounds a lot more appealing somehow.

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  3. I'd like to say something insightful, but the only word that comes to mind is: zentai.

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