Yule Heibel on 2008-05-26
Only 10% artistic content sounds pretty mingy...
This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 26 May 2008, by Yule Heibel.
File this under "life imitates art"? There's a fascinating battle happening in LA over whether or not Sonny Astani, businessman and developer, should be permitted to install a new kind of LED-generated image, 12 stories above the street and 14 stories tall, on the side of his 33-story condo building currently under construction in downtown LA.
The inspiration? Opening scenes in Blade Runner of downtown LA, showing "a skyscraper-sized advertisement portraying a Japanese woman smiling before popping a snack into her mouth. Astani says an image, such as that of a flying sea gull, could now even travel from one building to the next."
I have to admit this sounds really cool, but I can see why many factions in LA would oppose this, too. We're all familiar with the really bright illuminated advertisements -- even Victoria has a small version of one, installed outside the arena on Blanshard at Caledonia. It's bright, too bright. But Astani proposes a much more modulated, artistic, and dimmed level of lighting. If the images could look as subtle -- yet powerful -- as Blade Runner's, it could work, but there's no garantee, that if permitted, subsequent developers would follow in that "artistic" style.
Another aspect is this: the proposal, if it's art, also calls into question just how intrusive public art should be in public space. Does it have a right to be so intrusive as to be impossible to ignore? Can I, as a citizen, be obliged to register public art -- and admittedly, it would be impossible not to register this project?
Is part of what captures my attention/ imagination regarding this project its uncanny fusion of subtlety and assault, packaged as visual stimulus?
Another question: is this an art form that expresses a corporate and anti-pedestrian city ("...neighborhood anchored by Staples Center and L.A. Live, the hotel and entertainment complex that includes the recently opened Nokia Theatre"), fitting for LA where people don't walk anyway (but just wait: it'll show up soon enough on the very v
astani advertising billboards outdoor_installations public_art public_space los_angeles
Astani's proposal is only the latest controversial effort to
bring massive advertising and colorful light shows to the neighborhood
anchored by Staples Center and L.A. Live, the hotel and entertainment
complex that includes the recently opened Nokia Theatre.
Civic boosters promised two years ago that L.A. Live would transform
Figueroa's entertainment district into Times Square West -- a
California counterpart to the bright lights and in-your-face
advertising seen at Broadway and 42nd Street in Manhattan.
In November, the City
Council approved Fig Central, a hotel and condominium complex
across from Staples Center that will have at least one 330-foot-long
band of animated advertising. And at least seven more electronic
signs are planned for the rest of L.A. Live, according to city
officials.
The courtyard outside Nokia Theatre has 12 LED signs -- enormous
screens that intersperse concert footage with advertisements
for mobile phones and Coca-Cola. The theater is adorned with
more screens and billboards, a fact that disappoints some neighbors.
he argues that his LED displays should
not be considered billboards.
To make the images less blinding, the signs would have a brightness
of only 1,200 candelas at night -- roughly one-sixth the intensity
of the signs found at L.A. Live, Astani said. And because the
movements of his LED sign would be slower than the images on
a television screen, Astani contends, his 14-story sign would
be graceful, not gaudy.
"We don't want to create a monster," Astani said. "If
this is bright or intrusive, we cannot sell the condominiums.
It will have to be so unique and unobtrusive that people will
be proud to live behind it."
Yule Heibel on 2008-05-26
Only 10% artistic content sounds pretty mingy...
Source: LA Times dot com
Date: 01.27.2008
By: David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Public Stiky Notes
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