By Paul Weiser
What's the strange fascination which draws our eyes to moving pictures - whether video or cinema? Once we understand that, we can determine why these displays appear in such unlikely, unsuitable places.
But first, what is it about moving pictures? Though many can vegetate successfully while watching even the largest television (so it's not attention hyper- concentrating on a small, hypnotic point), few people can successfully ignore a video screen, even a small one with no appreciable sound, when it's in their field of vision. While it's possible to distract a person so drawn with a conflicting stimulus - an attractive person of the opposite sex, for example, or a kick in the shin - when attention wanders again it fixates on the screen.
Content is not the issue - cartoons, even repetitive CNN will do. The reason we fixate is that we evolved to fixate on threats... and flat moving pictures, with no perceptible depth but vivid apparent motion, trigger that attention-for-survival response without providing any resolution by relative motion ("The sabertooth is going away - freeze!" or "The sabertooth is moving toward us - run!") The video screen doesn't even move laterally - it just sits there demanding attention we're genetically unable to withhold.
Does the technological perversion of flat, moving pictures explain - in itself - why we have cinema-sized video screens at live sports events or in church these days? It can't be the information (even commercials) on them, the preacher's voice or the scoreboard provides that. No, all these moving-picture-walls provide is an illusion of attention that leads their promoters to think the audience or congregation is taking it all in.
And of course it's techy, therefore fashionable for both promoters and attendees who'd feel insulted if the church or stadium lacked giant screens. But message? That requires depth, not scratching a prehistoric itch.
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