Extropian trend in advertising
Originally published in Adobo Magazine July 2006

The extropian principle is a transhumanist movement which attempts to integrate technology and the human being. The movement first appeared during the 90s in blogs over the Internet as in Dave’s Diary or Max More’s webpages; and is now being spoken about in universities around the world. It first appeared in films like Crash by David Cronenberg in which by crashing cars it brought the human body closer to the machine. The trend in films became more apparent with the Matrix trilogy for example, where the human brain interfaces directly with a machine. Today in Stanford there is a neuroscientist trying to implant an electrode inside his brain to understand how the brain physically processes the act of consciousness so it could be replicated into a machine.

What I noticed in this year’s Cannes Lion winners is a certain Extropian trend in advertising which attempts to blend man and the machine.

Technology is a cold and lifeless thing which makes our lives easier. A computer chip only processes codes of 0s and 1s; a barcode is just a 2D representation of the same binary system, a car is a system of pistons and valves with seats and wheels. Many of this year’s Cannes Lion winners were about technology, but they did not show how technology made our life better – which is its primary function - but how technology transforms our experience of life by serving an aesthetic function, a pleasing design, a spectacular performance, or an emotional experience.

The harsh lines of a binary code are turned into colored balls bouncing down a San Francisco street; Design Barcode, the Titanium winner, transforms those little bits of information visible on any packaged product into a creative branding device; Audi Emotions (silver lion) shows the RS4’s pistons and valves being replaced by a cybernetic human heart, capillary system and eye; Sony Bravia, a double gold Lion winner, is not there to sell a new LCD television, but a new chip that transforms our way of experiencing color.

The two Bravia films (Balls 60’s and 150’s) are actually what caught most my attention. Why? Because there is no story and it is all execution. The films are a pure aesthetic experience. Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig fired 250 000 colored balls bouncing down a San Francisco street, a frog leaps out of a gutter, a dog watches the balls flow by, a filled trash can falls to the ground…. Each time either version played, the Cannes audience would fall quiet mesmerized by the hypnotic flow of these colored balls. That alone made the point come across without even the help of a storyline: experiencing color.

I kept thinking that the more a product is cold and technological (in this instance it’s a computer chip), the more its representation needed to be humane. In the Bravia films there are no special effects. All the balls are real. Music also played an extremely important role. With the acoustic version of José González’s Heartbeats (originally performed by The Knife), we could hear the guitarists hand slide over the frets. In my opinion it is the human touch that makes us relate to the technology. Technology is not shown as making our lives better; technology is integrated as part of the human experience.

Microsoft Xbox’s Jump Rope (Silver Lion) was about sharing a technological experience we call a computer game. Jump Rope is a 1 minute hand-held sequence shot with kids in a playground successively Double-Dutch jump roping. The film is performance based and about multi-ethnic community sharing. It shows how technology can bring about a sense of community by sharing a gaming experience over the Internet. A similar perspective was given with Microsoft Xbox’s Water Balloons (short-list) in which a water balloon fight escalates over an entire city with The Teddy Bears’ Picnic as background music.

Toyota’s Humanity (silver lion) is another example of an extropian trend in advertising. It shows actual people simulating the functions of the windshield wipers, the airbags or the headrest of a car. This film actually transforms a car into a human being and ends with the slogan: human touch. Another “human” car was found in Honda Choir (gold lion), directed by Antoine Bardou-Jaquet (who previously shot the incredible Honda Cog commercial). In the film, a choir simulates the sounds of a Honda as its engine starts or as it rolls over a pebbled road. With Honda, a car feels human, or should we say, a car is human?

With Nike’s Run Barefoot (silver lion), the technological shoe is integrated to the human body like a transparent interface which can’t even be felt anymore. It is like running barefoot on a sandy beach.

Technology today is now as transparent as a Nike shoe, it feels human like a Honda or a Toyota, its mechanisms are organic like an Audi, it brings a sense of community sharing like an Xbox, and it changes our way of experiencing color like a Sony Bravia. In the end we can now say: technology is about being human.