Test patterns refers to a television test signal, typically broadcast at times when the transmitter is active—most recognizable as bright strips of color shown on the TV screen when an image is not playing. In this video, what Hershman Leeson refers to as a “factional docudrama,” a “test pattern man” personifies popular television media, with the test pattern signal chroma-keyed over his silhouette. When an interviewer asks him about his memories of the Kennedy assassination, which is shown in reenactment, he references the vapid content on other channels that day. By representing popular memory of historical events within the dramatized context of popular television, Herhman Leeson comments on the ways that popular media shapes identity construction at both a personal and social scale, and the flattening of historical events into content. Featuring Timothy Leary.