Tim Etchells
Alphabet Billboard Cambridge
Alphabet Billboard Cambridge (ABC) is an interactive portrait of Cambridge and its surroundings, its people and their lives - designed for and displayed at the city's foremost arts space, the Junction.

This portrait unfolds in real time over a period of three years on an impressive 7.5-meter electronic billboard running along the southeast side of the Junction, to which participants, residents of the Cambridge area, send images taken with picture-messaging phones provided exclusively for the project.

Each week over a three-year period, one selected person in Cambridge takes part in the ABC project. Each participant is given a phone for the week to use to send pictures as often, or as sporadically as they wish, creating a photo-diary.

Participants take images documenting any aspect of their lives and surroundings - from personal life and people around them to landscapes, favourite places and their jobs - and send them to the billboard, live, in real time.

Participants are chosen on the basis of their jobs or hobbies by creating lists of occupations from A to Z and then recruiting participants accordingly: for example, Astronomer, Bookie, Cab Driver, Dentist, Electrician, and so on. Each year would see the completion of two alphabets - from Actor to Zoo Keeper, by a total of 52 participants annually.


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Visualisation

to view the ABC flash presentation.
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