London Gatwick Airport has unveiled its new Yangtze River interactive soundscape experience for passengers crossing its Skybridge in the North Terminal.
Designed in partnership with HSBC and WWF, A Living River takes more than 100 hours of authentic sounds from 35 locations on the Chinese river, and then transmits them through 160 speakers along the 590ft walkway. The soundscape is programed to react to the time of day, the weather on the river and even responds to the movements of individual travelers, providing each passenger with a unique sound experience. Photographs of the 3,900-mile Yangtze River have been spread along the Skybridge to complement the experience.
Guy Stephenson, chief commercial officer, London Gatwick, said, “This truly unique soundscape perfectly illustrates Gatwick’s ambition to deliver innovative and memorable experiences for our passengers to enjoy.
“We take extra pride that we are achieving this by working with a major global business such as HSBC to promote their water program, in partnership with WWF.
“Gatwick Airport will hit the 40 million passenger mark soon after opening this spectacular experience, meaning we will have a record breaking number of customers who will now be able to enjoy it.”
Nick Ryan, the sound designer for A Living River, said, “I believe that sound, and the act of listening, can entirely transform our sense of place and thus, ourselves. I wanted to design a highly immersive audio installation that could ‘relocate’ listeners, for an instant, to the banks of the Yangtze River, with a tangible, first person sensory experience of its pace, beauty and diversity. Using ground breaking technical and creative approaches to audio, and audio technology, we’ve created a spellbinding journey down an evolving, responsive and living river.”