Chocolate Nation

Yummy multi-speaker sound design

About the installation

Chocolate Nation, in the centre of Antwerp, is the largest museum dedicated to Belgian chocolate in the world. It is an innovative experience museum of over 4.000 m2. Walvisnest was responsible for the audio design that makes the chocolate factory machinery come to life.

This life-size factory puffs, growls and comes to life through 24 strategically placed speakers as if a real machine is running.

About the process

After several meetings with Gijs Leijdekkers, experience designer at Tinker Imagineers, we started the preparations for the recording of sounds for the chocolate factory. We choose former grain factory Maassilo in Rotterdam as our ‘hunting area’ and with the recorded material gathered we made the first sketch.

This sketch gradually transformed into a real and living cast iron machine and ready for the final but challenging stage; mixing the sounds for 24 speakers at Chocolate Nation in Antwerpen.