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Church sign a billboard? No, it's art
2007-01-14
When people talk about seeing holy signs, they don't usually mean "Your Ad HERE" on the side of a church. That 50-foot message, visible to thousands of commuters on a nearby freeway, was projected Wednesday evening on a dark portion of the bell tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The sign was gone within hours, but the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese was not amused. "A church tower is different from a billboard. If it wasn't, we would have been selling ad space 2,000 years ago," spokesman Tod Tamberg said. However, the sign wasn't really trolling for advertisers. It was a guerrilla art piece by James Cui, who included a telephone in the projected image. "I'm flattered you noticed," the 28-year-old Highland Park graphic artist told the Los Angeles Times. "I hoped I was hitting a lot of people with it." Cui uses a laptop computer and a video projector powered by a portable generator to cast his images on blank walls. His projections on other walls visible from freeways, which have included short film clips, have gotten some official attention. "The first time was election night and a CHP cop stopped and asked if I had anything with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on it. I had some old stuff from his movie 'Pumping Iron,' and I put it up," Cui said. That patrolman laughed, he said, but another California Highway Patrol officer was unhappy with Cui's projection of a film clip of a topless woman with a black "censored" bar covering her eyes. "He was upset. He gave me a warning," Cui said. The city also isn't thrilled, since municipal law prohibits continuous, full-motion video signs. A violation is a misdemeanor worth up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. "What he put up is the equivalent to an advertising sign and not a work of art," said Dave Keim, head of code enforcement for the Department of Building and Safety. "To us, anything that attracts the attention of the public is a 'sign' and you need a permit."
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