Imagine Peace Tower

Friðarsúlan - Imagen Peace Tower

 

Since 1981 Yoko Ono has been working on a interactive art work called the WISH TREE. The WISH TREE is a art work where people are invited to write down their personal wishes for peace and tie them them to a tree branch. Over the years Yoko has collected over a million wishes.1

 

In 1967 John Lennon invited Yoko Ono to his house, and asked her if she could build a light house that she had been thinking about making. At the time Yoko Ono, did not know how to build it or how it would look like. She says that it was just a conceptual idea in the beginning.

 

The years passed and in 2006, on October the 9th Yoko Ono had decided on the location for the light tower, or as it is called The Imagine Peace Tower. Constructions started that same day and a year later on the 9th of October it was unveiled.

 

Imagine Peace Tower stands on Viðey Island, in Kollafjörður Bay in Reykjavík Iceland.

 

The Tower consists of 15 searchlights with prisms that act as mirrors, reflecting the column of light vertically into the sky from a 10-metre wide wishing well. It often reaches cloudbase and indeed can be seen penetrating the cloud cover. On a clear night it appears to reach an altitude of at least 4000m.

 

Buried underneath the light tower are upward of 500,000 written wishes that Ono gathered over the years in another project, called "Wish Trees". Ono plans to have the tower lit every year from 9th of October, Lennon's birthday, through 8th of December, the date John was shot. Iceland was selected for the project because of its beauty and its eco-friendly use of geothermal energy.2

 

Hereyou can see the Imagine Peace Tower live and read more about the project.