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2001
Video on LED Billboard
2 of 4 images of
Celebrate Difference
Flash animation 1000 x 1592px, H.264
Colour, no sound
02:32
11 June 2001
Leicester Square, London UK
Celebrate Difference
is the first work by the artist displayed on a commercial digital billboard; and the first of the artist's works displayed by media owner Clear Channel.
The screen was an early, experimental digital system installed on the outside of Home nightclub at 1 Leicester Square, London WC2H 7NA, 1998-99 with an audience of c.250,000 people a day.
Firrell recalled,
25 years ago I made my first public artwork with Clear Channel for an experimental digital screen in London’s Leicester Square. The screen was 4 storeys high and the technology was so primitive a man had an office inside the screen itself to ensure the lights stayed on. The little room was sweltering hot and the noise was deafening from hundreds of fans cooling the early light-emitting panels.
The opening of
Celebrate Difference
included a performance in Leicester Square featuring an artificial picket-fenced garden, a drag queen, a 'muscle mary', and the artist (to the right of the photograph).
