Video display scroll part of student art project set to begin May 18th

What looked like an error message scrolled across Salesforce Tower’s 100-foot screen over the weekend.

“The video can not play … Not,” read the video display atop San Francisco’s tallest skyscraper.

But don’t worry, Salesforce Tower isn’t on the fritz. The message was a student art project, and a joke that perhaps flew over the head of some.

Footage of the seeming error message was captured by Brandi Valenza and posted by a friend of hers to Reddit, Sunday.

Though it seems to suggest the video display atop Salesforce Tower, which sometimes shows dancers, was experiencing computer difficulties, a spokesperson for Boston Properties, which manages the building, confirmed it was part of a student screening project.

Jim Campbell, the artist behind the 11,000 LED, six-story tall display, was testing out the California College of the Arts video.

“The video was working,” said Helen Han, marketing director for Boston Properties. “The mock-up shows the ‘video cannot play’ as part of the art piece.”

While some online believed the art project to be a real error display, the hint was probably the “not” at the end of the message.

The four student video pieces from California College for the Arts will run on Salesforce Tower’s six-stories-tall screen on May 18th, Han said.

joe@sfexaminer.com

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