Friday, April 18, 2014
Los Angeles will soon have the
tallest building on the West Coast, the Wilshire Grand Hotel, with a digital
skin of LED graphics, visible for miles in all directions. What does it
mean to express ideas – artistic or commercial – on a large scale? What do
these large images do to public space?
Los Angeles has a long and tortured relationship to images on buildings. The City of Los Angeles is still negotiating the why, where and how of public visual expression. With a new Mural Ordinance in place, what are the limits of "free expression?" With a comprehensive sign ordinance stuck endlessly in committee, will more than a thousand un-permitted billboards be grandfathered to resolve litigation? How do we sort out the issues of free speech, art, commercial messaging, graffiti, architectural lighting, guerilla actions and billboard "takeovers?"
And how much longer will the public confuse the Hollywood sign with advertising - or is it?
Los Angeles has a long and tortured relationship to images on buildings. The City of Los Angeles is still negotiating the why, where and how of public visual expression. With a new Mural Ordinance in place, what are the limits of "free expression?" With a comprehensive sign ordinance stuck endlessly in committee, will more than a thousand un-permitted billboards be grandfathered to resolve litigation? How do we sort out the issues of free speech, art, commercial messaging, graffiti, architectural lighting, guerilla actions and billboard "takeovers?"
And how much longer will the public confuse the Hollywood sign with advertising - or is it?
Our panelists bring very different
visions to WUF:
- David Agnew, President of StandardVision, a company that
produces innovative turn-key LED media facades and architectural
advertising solutions and is designing the LED displays for the Wilshire
Grand Hotel in Downtown LA.
- Vincent Bertoni, currently Pasadena's Director of Planning and
Community Development, helped craft LA's pending sign ordinance as LA's
top Deputy Planning Director.
- Jordan Seiler, guerilla artist and activist, is president of
PublicAdCampaign, known for "ad takeovers" of billboards as
canvases for art. He speaks widely on outdoor advertising and its
relationship to public space.
- Moderator Meredith Drake
Reitan, Assistant Dean of The Graduate
School of USC is the author ofRhetoric Of Representation: Planning
Los Angeles’ Civic Space, 1909 - 2009.
