Opinion | Hong Kong airport’s digital art is lost on passengers arriving for quarantine, and the departing hordes
- Hong Kong International Airport has some new ‘multimedia features … to enhance the ambience’ – fake nature scenes such as a cascading waterfall
- The digital experience includes ‘Totems of Joy’, whatever they are, for departing passengers. For the many quitting the city, ‘Totems of Sadness’ are in order
It’s a relatable scene for many: standing in a long queue at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) waiting to be herded onto a bus for a ride to a quarantine hotel.
To keep my mind off the impending incarceration, I mull over the amount of money the government must be spending each day on fighting the virus instead of living with it. Big bucks on infrastructure, software, isolation and testing facilities, subsidies, people, plastic suits – millions that could be used to help treat severe cases of the virus or improve housing for the elderly.
Then I see it, a cascading waterfall. Have I been transported to a tropical oasis? No, I am still standing in that queue.
I later discover that the sensory overload of fake nature is part of the airport’s “Journey of Discovery” – “different multimedia features are set up in three zones of the airport to enhance the ambience of the terminal”.
The “Instagram-worthy” art also encourages visitors to “interact with their surroundings by touching the digital form of waterfall, pebbles, water lilies, and animals such as turtles and frogs …” Oh wait, you can’t do that at the moment. Get back in that queue.