"It was a hyper-learning experience," he said.
"Bin Laden was a hyper-paranoid guy who went to extreme lengths to hide himself.
His entry this year was a hyper-realistic painting of his son Tom, aged 17, hovering between boyhood and manhood.
The new dynamism was partly what had drawn Burtynsky to the city: Lagos, he told me, was "a hyper-crucible of globalism".
It was a hyper-pumped, sports-bar anthem about looking at women from the back, strained with torrid metaphors and a bit of hip-hop slang.
Instead of massive armies colliding at Manassas, Fredericksburg, Antietam or Chickamauga, the guerrilla war was a hyper-local, hyper-personal affair.
Once upon a time, it was a hyper-local focus that constituted the beauty of the often unpolished, old-school college radio show.
The company under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer was a hyper-competitive, cutthroat organization focussed on getting as many people as possible to run Microsoft software on personal computers.
And a quartet of young designers had a different take on what once was a hyper-feminine fabric produced traditionally as craftsmanship by female hands in areas of Italy and Flanders.
Or, if it wasn't, the reporters in the press gallery above would see Johnson bending closer and talking in a very low voice - and they would see the other senator's face change, as the threat was pounded in, along with Johnson's determination to carry it out.' His was a hyper-obsessional personality.
There have been a few sparks of genius at the Comedy Central roasts over the years, such as Norm Macdonald's deadpan recitation of antiquated joke-book one-liners during the Bob Saget roast, in 2008, or Bill Hader, at the roast of James Franco, in 2013, playing a character called the President of Hollywood, who was a hyper-obscene version of the superproducer Robert Evans.
