Retro Idea: Ad Art
A few years ago, when I was just discovering the wonders of browser extensions, I had an idea for a project where all online advertising would be replaced by a simple two-frame flashing GIF. It would simply be one pixel, switching between black and white, stretched to the size of the ad it replaced. Ads used a lot more screen real-estate back then, and the idea was to call attention to the subversiveness of advertising. The Adblock extension had an option to switch from blocking ads to simply hiding them (preserving the structure of the page better). I figured that it would be relatively easy to use the hide function to replace ads how I wanted, but since I had no coding experience back then, I simply shared the idea on Adblock forums and left it. Today, I was happy to find that somebody’s realized a similar idea. Based off of Adblock Plus, Add Art replaces online advertising with art, cycling through contemporary art every two weeks.
