Visual Noise Another Attack on Quiet

Buddhist temples are no longer constructed in Bangkok. Commerce has become the God and he is worshipped in new commercial temples. Paragon is the latest and most pretentious of the temples of commerce where crowds enter in awe and stroll with reverence to worship at the shrines of world trade names. The worship of commerce also requires its local shrines in every corner of the city, the advertisements that engage our attention at every turn. Most recent is the transformation of the supporting cement pillars for express ways, skytrain, and flyovers to be display posters inciting us to worship of mobile telephones, skin lotions, and vitamin pills.
Noise is a message which we do not want, an unwanted sound is audio noise, an unwanted image is visual noise. Driving along the expressway our vision of sky, buildings, and trees is blocked by huge billboards, screaming at us the same trade names. Their repetition is monotonously boring, their function the enslavement of customer choice.
To counter the capture of visual space by advertisements there has appeared the phenomenon of graffiti, colourful, daring, creative, puzzling, diverse. Agreed, sometimes annoying too. But it shows that the human spirit cannot be tamed or limited to consumerism.

Not only in Bangkok: Letter to Nation, 30th March 2006

Hideous billboards are disfiguring Koh Samui
Many of the recent deleterious developments on Koh Samui are likely to be irreversible; however, there is one trend that is still not too late to reverse.
Billboards are sprouting like mushrooms and defacing the landscape beyond recognition. Soon, no stretch of the island's main and only ring road will be spared, as it appears anyone who likes can plant any size signage he or she wishes and in multiples of any number.
An enormous steel frame has been erected at the roadside in Bophut and only awaits what is sure to be a monstrosity of an advertisement of a magnitude completely out of proportion with its surroundings.
If whoever is in charge of Samui's zoning (to whatever extent that exists) is intent on turning the island into a metropolis, he or she is on the right track.
Why not, as other enlightened local governments have done around the world, ban all billboards, so visitors may enjoy what remains of the natural scenery?
Business Owner in Despair
Surat Thani