“I see a darkness”
– Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Despite being quite the visionary, Will Oldham probably wasn’t thinking about LG OLED TVs when he sang that beautiful song from 1999, but LG may as well have been thinking about Will Oldham when it created the OLED TV, which is all about that darkness. Its OLED TVs boast “perfect blacks” due to how it handles light pollution, which is to eliminate it altogether through self-lighting pixels that take the place of backlit panels. The result is an infinite contrast ratio that produces crisp, clean pictures that would be impossible to replicate even on high-end LCD TVs.
But light pollution isn’t just a problem in the TV industry. You energy-hogging city dwellers probably forgot that there are such things as “stars” in the night sky, because 80% of Americans (and one-third of the Earth’s population) can no longer clearly see them due to how much light we use. But there have been movements in recent years to combat this increased light pollution, from the International Dark-Sky Association to World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour to the Lights Out Stars On campaign, the latter of which saw Reykjavik residents in 2006 turning off all lights in the capital area for half an hour to make the aurora borealis visible once again.
On July 20, 2016, the Lights Out Stars On campaign returned with a concert at Harpa Concert Hall to further spread the word about light pollution. Three Icelandic musicians — Ásgeir, GusGus, and Ólafur Arnalds — performed music in front of a massive installation of 40 LG OLED TVs with a combined 330,000,000 OLED pixels. The TVs displayed footage of the aurora (what else?), allowing the audience to witness what LG calls “the Perfect Colour of Nature.” I think this is what we call having your cake and eating it too.
Watch the video below to see clips from the performance, and buy 40 LG OLED TVs to see the aurora borealis for yourself.
More about: Ásgeir, GusGus, Ólafur Arnalds
