What kind of urban experiences can TV commercials present beyond what we may normally come across? This series of posts on the architecture and spaces of TV commercials began with cases where wholly new worlds are created, and now continues with ones that involve rather regular urban environments – but with a twist. In such cases, a TV commercial presents an urban environment which is either reinterpreted or readjusted in an uncommon way, while suggesting that the advertised product is the magic factor that made it all possible.
The first example is somewhat related to the previous post’s discussion on car commercials, but this time advertising the Esso oil company. In this commercial, cars rushing along urban roads are at the center of attention, but it suggests a totally alternative approach to what is actually driving the cars:
The second example uses the approach of visual metaphor to advertise a service which is supposed to make urban life much smoother and easier for customers using it. This is demonstrated by the addition of a highly unlikely structure into the dense fabric of a city, combining interiors and exteriors in a wide variety of contexts, all made to cater to the personal needs of customers and the fun they can have using it – as well as to the fun we can have watching it.
The following example presents a series of interventions that are neither too complex nor too absurd to actually happen in the physical world. But what does make them unlikely, in this sense, is that these interventions took place precisely because they were part of the production of a TV commercial. It presents urban environments that are undergoing a transformation, and where the advertised product is directly what is making it happen:
The final example presents a whole series of urban interventions that propose to extend the experience of a city’s physical space altogether. In this case, it would be easier to discuss the commercial after seeing it:
This commercial builds on the centuries-old tradition of illusionism in painting: paintings that are made to seem as if what is painted in them is actually physically right there. In the terms of The Virtual Space Theory, such paintings create virtual places that are an immediate extension of the physical places in which the paintings are located. In this commercial, illusionism is now implemented at the level of dynamic images, and their powerful effect is demonstrated in the various urban locations which they redefine.
The unlikelihood of such an attempt succeeding, however, serves precisely the point of this commercial: to propose that its advertised product somehow holds in it the magic that artists – and observers – have been seeking for centuries. It might be an unprecedented product, and it is surely a fun as well as unusual urban intervention, but whether such attempts can ever fully succeed is at the heart of the discussion of my book “The Architecture of Virtual Space”.
