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The Zen TV Experiment (1998)
- danboarder 11y agoThe idea in this article people pass mental control to the tv programming while watching is especially relevant and perhaps more so with new media platforms like instagram and facebook. Basically "zoning out". I don't think this started with tv though; it is just as easy to "get lost" in a good book or even when listening to the radio or just someone telling an engrossing story.
- VLM 11y agoI liked this article. I'd propose two more "TV experiments" to warp your TV reality. One is to watch an event (a football game, perhaps) not in silence as per experiment #1 but with a different coverage of the same event. I went thru a short football watching phase where I watched TV with the TV muted and the AM radio play by play turned up because the radio guys were selected for their high ability at play by play as opposed to looks and past athletic achievements on TV broadcasters which results in idiocy on TV coverage, yet I wanted to watch the field while hearing quality play by play. Now during the game, this is fine... its during the commercials that things get weird / trippy. Another perception altering "TV experiment" can be seen at moviesyncs.com. Its interesting that with the rise of mp3 singles that future generations will never experience starting up some pink floyd cds at the same time as watching 2001: a space odyssey. Both examples illuminate the "Illusion of knowing" as discussed in the linked article. You think you know what a good sports cast or movie is, but you can trivially do a remix where the sum of the parts is arguably better than the individual parts yet its total nonsense. Maybe other thing you think you "know" are also total nonsense or random remixes that just happen to sound good.