Olympic Animation Causes Seizures
Flash on 2012 London Games Website Causes Epileptic Fits
Jun 11, 2007
(Source: news.sky.com)
The 2012 London Summer Olympics aren't coming for another 5 years, but planners are already getting a rough ride from critics.
First, there was widespread condemnation for the event's logo, which was designed by Wolff Olins and cost organizers £400,000 after development, research and widespread consumer testing. Planners hailed it as "dynamic" and "vibrant," but others claimed it looked more like a "toileting monkey" or a "broken swastika."
Other wags quipped that it resembled cartoon character Lisa Simpson performing an intimate act on another person.
Now the event's website designers find themselves in hot water after an epileptics' advocacy group claimed that Flash animation on the official site was causing seizures in susceptible viewers. The offending footage showed a diver plunging into a pool.
"We now know of eight cases of which seizures have occurred," Graham Harding, an expert on epileptic photo sensitivity, told the BBC. "What it appears has happened is that the flash rate of the diving sequence contravenes the OFCOM guidelines."
Leeds-based charity Epilepsy Action claimed that at least 22 people reported suffering seizures after seeing the sequence, either online or on television when the sequence was broadcast last Monday. At least one person claimed to have thrown up after viewing the film, and another five individuals reported getting migraine headaches. One man claimed his epileptic girlfriend is currently being treated in hospital after viewing the animation.
"We have just been notified of the problem and we have taken immediate steps to remove the animation from the website," said a spokeswoman for the London 2012 Games. "We will now re-edit the film."
That same spokeswoman denied the already-controversial logo was not partially responsible for causing the seizures.
"The concerns are not about the design of the London 2012 logo," she said.
Nearly 50,000 people have signed an online petition to demand that the Olympics committee dump the offending logo. However, petition organizer Jonathan Ellis closed it after realizing "the logo is here to stay."
Ellis continued: "There is little point in damaging the reputation of our Olympic Games, that was never the intention. The protest has been effectively made. If anybody else wants to take up the gauntlet, of course that is their right."
London mayor Ken Livingstone has demanded that the company which produced the offending film be not be paid "a penny" for its "catastrophic mistake."
"Who would you go to a firm like that again to ask them to do that work?" Livingstone told the BBC. "I mean, this is a pretty basic thing."
The Games of the XXX Olympiad will run from July 27th to Auguest 12th, 2012. It will be quickly followed by the Paralympic Games, which run from August 29th to September 9th.
Fun fact: London is the first city to host the modern Olympic Games three times. It hosted the Olympics in 1908, and again in 1948.
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