A New Generation of Advertising

This is a photo I took when I was in Dubai this summer. When first looking at it (in person or in a photo) it appears to be a Six-Flags type theme park half-covered by a billboard of descriptions in front. However what most people don't know is that the entire display in this picture is not the actual theme park and there is no typical billboard to advertise it. All of those rides and fake people and fake mountains that this photo shows is the essence of the actual advertisement (not in the typical sense where seeing a little bit of the actual park is a marketing scheme alone). All these rides are not real (think along the lines of a 3-D billboard) and the extravagance and sophistication of this display really illustrates the lavishness and wonder not only that this park is going to offer but of what the whole city of Dubai is. For those of you who don't know, Dubai is one of the richest and over-the-top countries in the world. Nothing there is "typical" or "average" and no one seeks to be. The detail and astonishment that this "advertisement" attains is what makes Dubai so extraordinary - every new development is bigger and better than the next, and no one is afraid to out-do one another. What's most interesting about this picture I think is the type of medium it uses, which would be a physical display, and how it can be argued both as transparent or the complete opposite. At first glance you don't even realize theres a message behind it or that its even at ad. But at the same time, the display is very in your face which makes it far from being transparent.