Data Mining is a new large-scale light, film and sound installation commissioned by Things That Go On Things for Wigan Council and funded by the UK Government. The free public work was developed especially for Wigan and premiered at All Saints Parish Church, Wigan. It was shown for three nights from 20th – 22nd November 2025 as part of Light Night Wigan.
Data Mining takes a creative and elemental journey through the industrial and geological heritage of Wigan and Leigh as the area makes a transition towards a greener future. It takes the idea of a subterranean world of memories connected to a re-wilding surface. A place where deep time, captured in the geology of an area perforated with mine shafts and underground galleries, combines with a parallel world of scanned and virtual copies.
Data Mining mines for traces of memory and identity and seeks out poignant moments enmeshed in the fabric of objects and places.
The film was projected at scale onto an 8m high semi-transparent screen set up in the centre of the church nave and set to run continuously throughout the night. A coloured lighting sequence programmed to complement the colours of the projections illuminating the church’s interior.
Background research and information about the project
Data Mining was developed over two years in response to our visits and research into the area’s rich history and through conversations with the local community and the cultural team at Wigan Council. Wigan’s Cultural Manifesto ‘The Fire Within’ was also a source of inspiration with its rich seam of ideas and ambitions to share and reveal the stories that lie within the sites of Wigan’s historical past.
The process for developing the final film involved capturing point data from 3D laser scans of two key sites in the Wigan area and combining this with real film footage of the sites, along with point cloud data captured of smaller artefacts held within the Wigan Museum collection and Wigan and Leigh Archives.
Working with the surveyors OR3D, the first site captured was the museum stores at Wigan – a vast warehouse housing an eclectic collection of artefacts, each representing a different facet of the area’s rich cultural, industrial and geological heritage. Whilst many of the artefacts are stored away in crates, some of the newer acquisitions and larger objects are grouped together, creating a terrain of extraordinary juxtapositions. We explored this complex landscape using the point cloud data captured from the scans along with our 4k film and drone footage undertaken at night – the space illuminated by the spotlight of the drone passing slowly above, as if surveying an archaeological site or alien terrain.
The second site we captured was the Lancashire Mining Museum in Astley Green – specifically the headgear and the engine house. The 98ft high lattice steel headgear is Lancashire’s last surviving example, and its structure dominates the skyline and can be seen for many miles.
Alongside this, we undertook films and photogrammetry of a number of artefacts drawn from the Wigan Museum Stores and Wigan and Leigh Archive, some of which related directly to the area’s mining heritage and geology. These included pieces of cannel coal, John Milton’s Death mask and archival images of miners at work at Astley Colliery.
These assets were used to construct a virtual mine drawing on archival plans and imagery of the mines as a source of inspiration. A specially composed soundscape was created for the final film, incorporating sounds from our site visit field recordings.
Wigan Museum Stores
Lancashire Mining Museum at Astley Green
Archival images of Astley Colliery. Image courtesy of Wigan & Leigh Archives
With thanks to Lancashire Coal Mining Museum at Astley, Wigan Museum, Wigan and Leigh Archives, Wigan and Leigh College, Wigan Council, Wigan Youth Zone, OR3D, Geology Superstore, Bill and Glynda, Ken and Christine, and all the parishioners and the bellringers of All Saints Parish Church, organist Karl Greenall, and Evan Wilson, Joan Livesey, Sylvia Travers at Haigh Hall and Dbn Audile.Credits: AV hire technical support for Light Night Wigan: Dbn Audile. 3D laser scan and drone footage inside Museum Stores: OR3D.
