What would the city look like if billboards weren't for profit? What would a city look like that used that space for public art, vertical gardens, or poetry?
Free the Billboards is a project that facilitates a reimagination of public, visual space (currently dominated by corporate messaging), through two different types of interaction with the community:

PART ONE: ONLINE COMPONENT

I have created an online forum for people to submit pictures of what they would rather see in their communities instead of outdoor advertising (www.freethebillboards.tumblr.com). By using an old-fashioned optical illusion called forced perspective, (see http://www.thechobble.com/2011/02/angle-makes-perspective-pics.html for some awesome ones!) we can superimpose images we would rather see onto billboards, and then share them.

PART TWO: STREET ART COMPONENT

I will be attaching viewmasters to stands to create “viewing stations” that will be placed around Portland across the street from billboards. I am creating custom reels for the viewmasters—each with 7 different images. The images in the reel will be photographs of the billboard across the street, but I will replace the ad with the pictures people submitted on the website. Therefore, each viewing station will be a collective imagining of what could be in that billboard space- and will be a little portal into a different possible world!

I have created a lo-fi version of the viewmaster out of a box and transparency (see picture of what it's like to look through)!

If this project gains enough momentum, there will be sufficient support to take political action. I am writing a petition to the mayor of Portland to instate a ban on outdoor advertising, as has been done successfully in Maine, Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and most recently in Houston and Sao Paulo, Brazil! To dream even bigger, I would ask that the boards be turned over to the artists, writers, dreamers, in our communities. Let us decide what we want to look at!