Airborne Experience

 World War II military operation Market Garden through 60 speakers.

Client: Tinker Imagineers
Services: Music and sound design
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About the Airborne Experience

In the underground Airborne Experience you literally walk through the story of the Battle of Arnhem, step by step. You follow in the footsteps of a British parachutist and go on a mission…

In the Airborne Experience, history comes to life through a three dimensional sound-field and compelling music, realistic reconstructions and life-size film fragments as you walk through the successive chapters of the Battle of Arnhem. Suddenly you are between the fierce fighting in the Arnhem streets of the 1940s. The sound of a ravaging war: shots, strikes, English cries, German orders, the fear of people in hiding.

Photo’s by Mike Bink

About the (music and sounddesign) process

After some discussions with the team (Tinker Imagineers and Rapenburg Plaza) we designed a speaker placement plan for an area of ​​approximately 625 square meter. With some strategic adjustments we ended up with 60 speakers. (floor, ceiling, wall)

Our multi-speaker playing field was ready! Now it was time to focus on the content so we made use of high quality recordings of airplanes, tanks, machine guns, pistols, rifles, etc and we also recorded  high quality foley ourselves, for the many refinements. The soldiers’ voices are voiced by talented English and/or German speaking voice actors who have spoken over 300 sentences together!

For the spatial placement of all these sounds we used Spatgris, a multichannel sound spatialization plug-in and Ableton.

The music we have written for the experience is compelling and enhances the atmosphere and emotion at appropriate moments, in combination with the three-dimensional sounddesign a magical scene is created.

Sections of the Airborne Experience:

About the ‘Introduction room’

In addition to the Experience, there is also an exhibition and an introduction room in the museum. In this room, the story of Market Garden is told through a video mapping on the wall and on a scale model. The visitor receives an audio guide that tells the story in his language. The sound effects can be heard in the room and are sometimes supplemented by the audio guide. For example, you sometimes hear walkie-talkie sounds and flying bullets on the audio guide while planes and screaming soldiers can be heard over the speakers in the introduction space. This makes the introduction room a mini experience in itself.

About the opening

The Airborne Museum opened its doors to the public on Monday 1 June. Reserving a ticket due to the limited number of visitors per hour is handy!

Watch the trailer of the renewal below. But don’t forget to experience it live! Soaring bullets and bombs, Dakotas flying overhead, passing tanks and jeeps, a smile and a tear, supported by soundscapes and piano, take you back to the ‘Battle of Arnhem’

Photo’s by Mike Bink

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