A Syracuse University professor isn’t disappointed in his students after a billboard they designed and displayed in the city of Syracuse drew a complaint. Instead, he calls it a learning experience.

A group of students designed a billboard in assistant professor Yasser Aggour’s APH 563: ‘Nontraditional Modes’ class. The billboard depicted a woman seductively posed in lingerie with the words, ‘Keep your eyes on the road.’ Sometime before Sunday afternoon, Lamar Outdoor Advertising took the billboard down from its location on the corner of East Washington and South McBride streets after its allotted four-week display.

The removal coincided with a complaint that local resident Karen Buchanan registered with The Post-Standard.

Buchanan said the constant bombardment of similar images on television, in shopping malls and elsewhere has desensitized people, according to a Jan. 8 article published in The Post-Standard. Buchanan drives past the billboard daily, she said in the article.

‘It’s terrible,’ she told The Post-Standard. ‘But it’s hard to be heard because so many people just think you’re being extreme or prudish. This one just caught my attention because it was the opposite of what it was telling me to do.’

Fernando Perez, a senior in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, helped create the billboard. He said his class was given an open-ended assignment: to come up with something to put on a billboard. Perez said the design was intended to demonstrate the dangerous aspects of roadside advertising.

‘My billboard belongs where every and any billboard belongs,’ he said in an email. ‘The community wanted my billboard down as much as I want them all down — the obvious redundancy was intentional and meant to open people’s eyes to the potential dangers that come with roadside advertisements.’

Perez said billboards are meant to grab people’s attention and stay fresh in drivers’ minds to advertise something. He said he wanted to utilize the same means used by contemporary ad designers to open people’s minds to how distracting billboards can be.

Aggour, a professor of art, design and transmedia, said he didn’t have a problem with the design when he first saw it. He wasn’t upset with the small controversy either.

‘It was mildly erotic, I’m aware,’ he said. ‘I think in terms of what the message is and how the text and the images worked together, it’s probably open enough to interpretation that I can see how the intent isn’t quite as precise as these students probably wanted it to be.’

Aggour said he views the situation as a learning experience. Public dissatisfaction and censorship are just a part of art in the public sphere, he said.

‘It’s just a good lesson to understand what making public art is all about,’ Aggour said. ‘You have to engage with the idea that if you want to show art in the world, you have to understand that the world is going to have a say in it. I think that’s a useful lesson.’

Richard Ruch, vice president and general manager of Lamar Advertising’s Syracuse branch, denies any connection between the complaint and taking the billboard down. The billboard was past its display date, he said.

‘A couple days after the campaign was over, we just took it down,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing different. We actually do it from time to time. Posters run over until we get something to follow it. Once we had the new copy, we put it up.’

Ruch said he didn’t receive any complaints about the billboard and calls the timing a coincidence. He saw the design before it was put up and allowed it to proceed, he said. If there is a complaint after the company puts a billboard up, Ruch said he would review the design again.

It’s not the first time an SU billboard has raised eyebrows. Last year, several designs, especially a want ad soliciting a ‘Sugar Daddy,’ received some scrutiny, according to an April 21 article published by The Post-Standard. But even with the edgy content, Aggour said he’s not worried about the billboards harming the university’s reputation or image.

‘I think they have the potential (to harm SU) if there’s a deviant message behind it,’ said Aggour, who has neither censored a design nor received a direct complaint. ‘But in the greater scheme of things, I don’t think it’s going to make a huge influence in the perception of Syracuse.’

lefulton@syr.edu 

Published on January 18, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Lorne: lefulton@syr.edu