Thom Yorke thanks the 1,500 who made King Cnut on Brighton seafront

About 1,500 women, men and children stood in formation on the Brighton and Hove seafront on Saturday morning, making a picture of King Cnut facing the sea that was big enough to be photographed from above. The king was the one holding back the tide on Stanley Donwood's sleeve for The Eraser, Thom Yorke's 2006 solo album, and Yorke made the piece with Donwood. He called it “The Eraser King Cnut in Brighton for Earth350”.

Yorke put out the call on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, on 20 November, asking for 2,000 people at Nov 27th @ 11am.. (that's a Saturday morning at a civilised hour errr right..????)⁵ Volunteers signed up through 350.org and were told to wear black and dress warmly. It would go ahead in rain or storm, because the weather was part of the work.

It was Brighton's part of 350 Earth, which 350.org, the climate campaign, billed as the first planet-wide art show, with crowds in more than a dozen places making pictures in the week before the talks in Cancun. On 14 November Yorke had written that the plan was to make images visible from the skies to remind those in Cancun that we are running out of time⁷.

On Tuesday he thanked the 1,500 for standing in the cold. The talks, COP16, are now under way, and in the same post Yorke turned to David Cameron, writing that our current prime minister who once made such positive noises to us and to me personally about his party's commitment to tackling climate change will not be attending⁶.