LA Weekly

A little billboard liberation going on (on a blank one, I should add - thanks heavens no one upset the marketing plans of Hancock or Bud Light). On Sunset neat Malo and Further.

All photos by Mark Mauer.

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From here.

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Timothy Norris spotted this nice piece on the Northeast corner of Pico and La Cienega.

Timothy writes, "Not the best time of day for the shot, but dig the work."

Also, 101 FM has been turned into 101 PM.

Photo by Timothy Norris

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Wired got someone from Clear Channel on the line to confirm that their annoying electronic billboard was not hacked.

Clear Channel's Tony Alwin is unhappy about the hacking rumors. "The advertisement was bought under the assumption that it was art that was in an art show," he says. "Any claims about hacking into our systems is false. It's a lie, even."

I don't particularly care one way or the other. It looked cool, and for a while the seething low-level hatred people have of companies like Clear Channel came to the surface as tons of people cheered Skull Phone for the "hack."

And as I said before: the idea's out there now. Someone will try it, and someone will eventually succeed at it.

And hey - there's plenty of non-elctro billboards out there ready to be liberated. I"m pretty sure this one I snapped last July was unsanctioned by CBS and Toyota.

(Original post here)

And while Murakami may have dug the Revok/Auger work on his LACMA billboard...

We're pretty sure that Paramount and Miramax were none too thrilled with Augor's work above.

Above photo by Shelley Leopold. Toyota photo by Mark Mauer

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Curbed.la is claiming that Skullphone didn't hack Clear Channel billboards, but actually bought space on them, just like strip clubs and Disney movies do.

And while that's kind of sad, it's also kind of funny: The guy got his money's worth in publicity. Also, the idea's now floating out there. Someone is going to to hack into these huge glowing horror shows. If it's going to be you, let us know when you do it, ok?

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UPDATE: Curbed.la is claiming that Skullphone didn't hack Clear channels billboards, but actually bought time on them.

And while that's kind of sad, it's also kind of funny: The guy got his money's worth. Also, the idea is now floating out there. Someone is going to try to hack into these huge glowing horror shows. If it's going to be you, let us know when you do it.
-Mauer

Supertouchblog has amazing images of last week's Skullphone Haxxors hack of a dozen Clear Channel electronic billboards around L.A. Seems the 18-year-old artist figured out a way to insert his brilliant image into the scrolling billboards. Here are a few of the photos swiped from Supertouch, which has the rest.

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Somehow, I doubt that Paul Thomas Anderson is going to love this so much that he'll grab it to hang in his house the way Murakmai did with Augor and Revok's piece a couple of weeks ago.

Shelley Leopold got this picture of an excellent billboard liberation project done by Augor at Melrose and Mansfield. The There Will Be Blood imagery just barely survives with the logo, fire and Daniel Day-Lewis facing away, watching Augor's letters come to life.

If you want to see it in person, better get there fast. With the Oscars coming up, the studios probably won't find this in the least bit amusing.

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By Shelley Leopold

n the early morning hours in mid-December, an amazing masterpiece of epic pink proportions appeared above the Melrose strip. Not MOCA's Murakami billboard itself, but rather a young curator's fantasy art show: "Murakami/AUGER/REVOK." The spectacle lasted two days, and then it was gone. For most of us who missed it entirely, the billboard became art-opening gossip - already a mythic achievement - and yet another coup pulled off by a couple of L.A.'s most prolific and talented AWR/MSK writers.

Luckily, REVOK carried his camera that day, and L.A. Weekly received the photo; we were wowed. So, it turns out, was Murakami, whose Kaikai Kiki studio found the evidence via the Internet and had the billboard surreptitiously removed. Murakami buffing billboards all the way from Japan? On the contrary, according to his representatives, he found it "so wonderful, he had to have it for his collection." Our billboard is now on its way to Tokyo.

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