London Gatwick Airport has unveiled a new soundscape experience, which brings to life one of the world’s largest rivers – the Yangtze in China. The installation, entitled ‘A Living River’, is located on Gatwick’s 180m long Skybridge walkway and provides departing and arriving passengers with the chance to experience the sights and sounds of the 6,300km river.
Gatwick’s new soundscape experience brings to life China’s Yangtze River. The installation is located on Gatwick’s 180m long Skybridge walkway.
The soundscape features more than 100 hours of authentic sounds taken directly from 35 locations on the river. Designed to offer a unique experience, the audio recreation is programmed to react to the time of day, the weather on the river, and movements of individual travellers.
The wall of colourful imagery, shot along the Yangtze, complements the sounds passengers hear as they travel from one side of China to the other – from the first bend of the Yangtze to the mouth near Shanghai – and showcases its beautiful wildlife and nature.
“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 programme, in partnership with WWF,” said Guy Stephenson, Gatwick Chief Commercial Officer.
The soundscape, which is the world’s largest in-airport sound experience, features more than 100 hours of authentic sounds taken directly from 35 locations on the river. It is programmed to react to the time of day, the weather on the river, and movements of individual travellers.
The installation’s sounds flow and ebb across the Skybridge, transmitted by 160 speakers and 80 different channels to immerse travellers in 3D sound.
Nick Ryan, ‘A Living River’ sound designer, 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’.”
HSBC and WWF have been working together since 2002 to help protect the Yangtze as part of the HSBC Water programme. The sound installation celebrates this partnership.
Gatwick has placed a focus on delivering a high level of passenger service, investing more than £1 billion (€1.4bn) in new and improved services for travellers, and has since pledged to spend a further £1 billion (€1.4bn).
