Your attention please, can all passengers at Brussels’ Zaventem Airport please head to terminal B to bear witness to an impressive kinetic installation.
ACTLD was commissioned by Flanders Tourism, Toerisme Vlaanderen to design, specify and supervise the production of a new kinetic sculpture which runs above the Brussels airport’s main travelator – spanning the entirety of the jetway to the baggage reclaim hall. It was a challenge to keep this installation flexible to a space that has a lot of safety constrains to respect. These environment constraints have directly impacted the design of different modular faceted elements that are forming the whole sculpture.
The animated installation sits 70-metres long and boasts a combination of more than 30,000 individually addressable low and medium resolution LED’s and panoramic video panels in the ceiling, fitted above a kinetic fabric. A continual loop of content runs on the display, and despite its unpredictable and demanding environment, the project showcases a glimpse of what passengers, arriving into the Brussels airport’s main international terminal, can expect from the region and recommended destinations to visit as they walk through.
While the kinetic fabric, in a similar way to prismatic lenses, refracts a light source placed inside its fibers in a number of different ways according to the weave. The video server, supplied by Create, driving the installation to communicate with MediaMaster 5 via ArKaos Pro Kling- Net; resulting in the entire mapped canvas dictating the content during a continual loop. Lucenti, a native-Belgian company, manufactured the LED strips and panels, along with additional Kling-Net chips supplied and embedded in the strips, courtesy of ArKaos Pro.
Interestingly, the entire installation can be viewed from up to 200-metres away and is frequently attracting passengers and passers-by heading towards the destined baggage area, having exited their planes. The timing of the video loop is optimized for both the eager hot-footed travelers and the average ‘business pace’ walk down the travelator – allowing the airport’s two million plus monthly passengers – to successfully arrive at their desired destination and admire next-generation technology all the same. Highly visible, the installation adds a welcoming sense of entertainment and anticipation to an already energized and fast-moving space in Brussels. So, sit back and enjoy your flight!
