Look away now.

"As the tagline on a poster raising awareness about domestic violence, that's not bad. But it was the poster itself that was truly attention grabbing, for it brought the issue of being watched (or not) to life.

If you didn't catch Jung von Matt's award winning ambient poster earlier in the year, here's another opportunity to do so.


The poster, placed in a bus shelter in Berlin, was a one-time installation sponsored by Amnesty International. When a person in the shelter was looking at the poster, he saw, along with the words, a photograph of an amiable couple: a stocky, professional looking man in a blue oxford cloth shirt, his arm around the shoulders of his girlfriend or wife. If no one in the shelter was paying attention to the poster, the image switched: now the man was raising his fist against the woman as she leaned away and protected her face. There was a slight lag in the switch, so viewers could notice that the poster was changing its image.

Designed by the Hamburg-based firm Jung von Matt, which bills itself as being in the business of "attention warfare", the ad worked via a camera attached to a computer outfitted with face-tracking software with a working range of about 16 feet. A Potsdam company called Vis-à-pix created the technology. Jung von Matt described the ad as the first of its kind, and it won a silver prize at the 2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival and a gold prize at the New York Festivals International Advertising Awards.

The technology has since improved, according to Vis-à-pix. As new posters can even identify the sex of onlookers. So look out for the likes of Lynx wanting to join the party.