The murmur on the moors
Strange things happen all the time on northern England’s Lancashire moors, and here to keep the Pendle witches company is “The Singing Ringing Tree”, a musical sculpture in tuned, galvanised-steel pipes that twists and howls in the wind.
It brings to mind the wind organ that Dali wanted to build on a hill in Quermanco, Spain. Still waiting for that one to materialise. It might yet.
The resident curlews and merlins must wonder what to make of their moaning new neighbour, a panopticon devised by the London duo Tonlin Liu — Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu, who met in Hong Kong and set about “dismantling current mythology and inventing their own”, in Austria, Indonesia and here in Thailand, as well as in England and Hong Kong, as it says on their website.
The Singing Tree was officially unveiled at the end of 2006 atop Crown Point, south of Burnley, where I was born. The Cliviger wind turbines are whirling far to the east, and to the north is Pendle Hill with its famous nick.
At the launch, local MP Kitty Ussher predicted it would become “a major landmark, boosting Burnley’s tourist sector and economy”.
“It is a true symbol of Burnley’s emergence and regeneration,” she said, referring to the tired old milltown’s artsier ambitions.
That’s what the investors are counting on. The East Lancashire Regional Park initiative — comprised of the Northwest Regional Development Agency, the Lancashire Economic Partnership, the Northern Way, Arts Council England North West and Lancashire County Council — now has four panopticons around the county, the others being “Atom” in Wycoller, “Halo” in Rossendale and Blackburn’s “Colourfields”. They’re touted as “21st-century landmarks”.
You can follow a rural walking trail from one to the other. At the Singing Tree, you’re standing on the property of Sir Simon Towneley, Lancashire’s former Lord Lieutenant. He’s part of the celebrated family that owns (or is it owned?) Towneley Hall, the local manor nearby that’s now an art gallery. Sir Simon and his son Peregrine (and there’s a name for the nobility) “secured additional funding” for Burnley’s panopticon, according to the local newspaper.
Several videos of the tree sculpture have popped up on YouTube — a more or less official one from MidPennineArts, another by RailMon and a third in which ColonelWalterKurtz has added music, so it has the title “Singing ringing tree plays a decent tune for a change”.
The tree’s location as seen on Google Earth, with Burnley in the background:
