Last Tuesday in Australia, the Sydney Opera House had advertisements projected onto the roof for a 25-minute interval, a controversial decision leading to a protest outside.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the hall with flashlights, booing and shouting “Shame” while they obscured the images with light. Many are of the opinion it is not okay to project advertisements such as this on monuments, including Shelby Bolton, an equestrian who rides horses herself. “It’s not okay to project images onto monuments at all,” she says, “Unless it’s for 4th of July or similar National Celebrations.”

Aforementioned advertisements were for the Everest horse racing tournament, including betting draws for the winners of the tournament. Betting was called off temporarily due to the uproar and controversy of the advertisements, and Everest has received a lot of bad PR because of this incident.

On the note of a larger subject, Shelby notes that large projections in public are mostly undue, but that “Transportation, commercials, and current events in the town are okay so long as the building owners agree to the projections.” In general, a more ad-ridden world could be a definite negative for many, people. However, the possibility of current event catch-ups and public service announcements through projection are exciting prospects.

In short, projections in general could be either good or bad, but the rally in Sydney certainly shows there’s a subset against projecting on monuments such as the Opera House.