Sound installation for the light tunnel at Swarovski Kristallwelten

For the 2015 expansion of Swarovski Kristallwelten (Swarovski Crystal Worlds) in Wattens, Tyrol, I created the interactive sound installation for the light tunnel – the retail corridor that leads visitors into the new shop.

The tunnel

The corridor is a shortcut: it takes visitors directly to the shop inside the Giant, without the walk through the Chambers of Wonder. Even so, the few metres should feel like part of the Crystal Worlds rather than a plain hallway.

The architects at Snøhetta built it from light: around three kilometres of glowing fibres run along a faceted shell of triangular panels and wind together into a spiral towards the shop, so the space draws you forward. Half of the panels are perforated to absorb sound.

The sound

The material for the sound is the visitors themselves. I placed eight microphones in the corridor; their signals are processed in real time and sent to 24 loudspeakers hidden on both sides along the corridor. The sounds of people passing through come back with a long, spacious reverberation – the narrow tunnel sounds like a far larger room, and its walls seem to dissolve.

Underneath runs a continuous drone, and fragments of crystal-like sound appear on top. Both grow stronger the further you walk, following the light as it gets denser towards the shop.

Credits

Architecture: Snøhetta Studio Innsbruck · Curation and artistic direction: Carla Rumler, Creative Director Swarovski · Light planning: Lichttechnik Martin Klingler · Audio visual art: Matthias Kronlachner · Client: D. Swarovski Tourism Services · Planning 2012–2014, construction 2013–2015

More about the project: Snøhetta, ArchDaily, i-magazin and nextroom (German, with technical details).