The Singing Posters pays homage to Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, written in 1955 and published in 1956. At the same time, Ruppersberg conceived the work as a pedagogic exercise upon learning that his students at UCLA were not familiar with the poem. Following Ginsberg’s breath-length structure of the poem, Ruppersberg converted it to its phonetic form, printing the phoneticized poem on poster-size boards using colors and typeface families that were reminiscent of street posters in LA. The Colby Poster Printing Company designed and printed many of such posters between 1948 and 2012, and also produced Ruppersberg’s posters for this work. The phonetic transcription of the words invites spectators to read them out loud in order to decipher their meaning, thus also underlining Ruppersberg’s interest in oral traditions.