on that audio spotlight thing

[solarbird]

Gawker headlines its story, "Schizophrenia is The New Ad Gimmick." Advertising Age's headline is Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad. Basically, it's a speaker, but it's a small speaker that emits ultrasonic sound that sets up resonance in the air to turn a section of air column into a speaker. This is not the same as some people are saying (that it bounces off your skull to create voices in your cranium. It's not.

The spooky weird effect comes from the sound seeming to appear from the void (more or less - it kind of is) instead of from a physical and identifiable source. This is extremely counterintuitive as all animals past the sponge have evolved to identify sound sources, and in this case, the actual direct sound source is invisible. It's also strange in that it's low-distortion, unlike what you'd get from a speaker set up somewhere above you turned 'way up, and isn't echoing off much of anything else (say, other buildings) because it's highly focused and directional. All of this is highly counter-intuitive, and, basically, strange.

My important takeaways - or at least as many as I can have not having actually played with one: 1) It's not actually beaming things directly into your head. Calm down. But 2) it's still creepy, and it'll feel kinda like it's in your head because there's no observable sound source, and all your instinctive sound-processing cues will be broken. And 3) I don't like it, any more than I'd like ads with bullhorns, even if it is a smaller area of effect. There's too much damn noise already. I could see some good uses (active noise cancellation) but I already hate and despise the TVs (and in particular their sound - you can't just not hear it the same way you can turn around and not see it) in places like Albertsons, which is why I don't go there if I can avoid it. So the ad uses make me think, "Feck off, assholes" and that I'm likely to boycott products advertised with it.

Comments

[blues-kun.livejournal.com]

Do not want.

Next time I'm forced to go to Albertson's, I'm taking a universal remote with me.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Those are such staggeringly useful devices. I greatly enjoy being able to switch off the blaring "advertorial" television sets that are being installed on the ferries, now. Sometimes one can simply change the channel to something less bothersome, like the CBC, and turn the volume way down at the same time...

[gamera-spinning.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarification. =)

[jessie-c.livejournal.com]

It would also make it difficult to seak out and "accidentally" step on the speaker.

[solarbird]

Actually, the actual physical emitter in question has been stolen - from a top the billboard where it's mounted - twice.

[kissare.livejournal.com]

Well that's a pretty clear statement - I hope it's really, really expensive for them to replace each time... no better way to make a point than by affecting their pocketbook.

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

This finally made its way to Slashdot: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/1846234 (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/1846234).