Update: here’s a video we found on youtube (which doesn’t seem top-secret)
Are we one step close to a Blade Runner-style dystopian future in which giant blimps float over our city-scapes broadcasting advertising? Well, that might be a bit extreme, but we certainly are a at the point where modern science as seen fit to bestow on us the joys of the floating soap bubble advertisement. No really. Someone has made a machine which somehow creates long lasting gigantic soap bubbles which can be formed into set shapes. Seriously…
Picture the Manhattan skyline filled with Nike swooshes. Or the golden arches of McDonald’s gently drifting over Los Angeles.
A special-effects entrepreneur from Alabama has come up with a way to fill the sky with foamy clouds as big as 4 feet across and shaped like corporate logos – Flogos, as he calls them.
Francisco Guerra, who’s also a former magician, developed a machine that produces tiny bubbles filled with air and a little helium, forms the foam into shapes and pumps them into the sky.
The Walt Disney Co. will use one of the machines next month to send clouds shaped like Mickey Mouse heads into the air at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Guerra said.
“It’s a shock factor when you look up and there’s a logo over your head,” said Guerra, whose company, SnowMasters Inc., makes machines that churn out fake snow and foam for Hollywood movies and special events.
A single Flogo can travel as far as 30 miles and as high as 20,000 feet, Guerra says, and a machine can produce one every 15 seconds. Guerra says he could put a half-dozen machines together and fill the sky with almost any shape a company orders.
Imagine a line of drifting Flogos shaped like the Honda logo leading to a car dealership and you get the idea.
You can find out more about this company and how these things work here.
So can anything be done about floating bubble billboards? From the article I quoted above, it looks like the F.A.A. might try to regulate them as some sort of an air hazard. Otherwise, I doubt any municipality has any laws against such a thing on the books. I guess this image might be something to watch out for if this catches on…
One Comment
Errr — but you know that advertising is a good thing, right? I am not sure what is with this instinctive kneejerk reaction against advertising by some, but what you are talking about is, alas, a matter of taste. Regulating taste is generally not a very good idea. The economics on the other hand are a matter of fact. Advertising creates the incentive for a HUGE amount of production, even in artistic arenas which I suppose you might be more sympathetic toward. We need advertising. Your efforts seem to be calculated to destroy culture and living standards…… not cool. Not cool. :)