Part of the Times Square Arts At the Crossroads programme – which includes installations and performances on the public plazas of Times Square – the Soundwalk Collective is hosting Jungle-Ized: A Conversation With Nature – a month-long interactive multi-sensory art installation that will transport more than half a million visitors daily from NYC’s iconic square into the heart of the Amazon.

Based in New York and Berlin, the international sound collective is working in partnership with David de Rothschild, The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC), Times Square Arts and CXA+ART – and microphone and headphone specialise, Audio-Technica. Key to the even’s making and presentation are Audio-Technica’s 40 Series Broadcast & Production microphones and M-Series headphones.

The immersive installation includes a participatory audio experience and an interactive video, to ‘encourage a conversation with nature and to heighten awareness of the environmental impact of climate change.’

The soundscape began with Audio-Technica’s BP4027 and BP4029 stereo shotgun microphones (based on models developed for use in the Sydney Games in 2000) and AT4050ST large-diaphragm stereo condenser microphones, which were taken into the Peruvian Amazon by Soundwalk Collective to record the voices of Shipibo shamans and narration by Amazon experts Jeremy Narby and Daniel Pinchbeck, guiding visitors along a jungle tour and into a conversation with nature. The composition features additional Amazon rainforest sound environments recorded by sound artist Francisco Lópe.

Visitors are invited to take self-guided audio tours of the Amazon by downloading the Jungle-Ized mobile app, available via Times Square’s free Wi-Fi service. From noon to midnight throughout April 2016, they can also borrow a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M70x headphones from the official Jungle-Ized kiosk, to begin the journey through a virtual soundscape that superimposes the Amazon ecosystem upon an eight-square block area of Times Square.

This audio experience will be accompanied by a video, directed by Stephan Crasneanscki of Soundwalk Collective, which will be shown every night in April from 11:57pm to midnight on the square’s electronic billboards as part of Times Square Arts’ and Times Square Advertising Coalition’s Midnight Moment programme. The Jungle-Ized film will invite spectators to take part in a simple collective action in celebration of Earth Month, revealing the hidden energy that exists in one of the most biodiverse environments in the world, bringing the animals, the air, the trees, and the tribal inhabitants of the Amazon to New York City.

Filmed with Nikon D750 and Nikkor lenses, the video was shot along the longitudinal 73^rd Meridian West that connects Times Square with the Peruvian Amazon. Visitors will be encouraged to view the video through their phones by enabling a negative viewing function on any iOS device, inverting the colours to reveal a ‘positive’ version of the film.

‘The Amazon jungle has many layers of sound, from the leafcutter ants on the ground to the sudden downpours from the sky, so it was essential that the microphones we provided captured every single sound with clarity,’ says Sohichiro Matsumoto, Global Creative Director at Audio-Technica. ‘The BP4027 and BP4029 microphones provided have the capability to both accurately pinpoint sound at long distance while also capturing wider stereo soundscapes.

‘Our ATH-M70x headphones are perfectly designed to deliver this audio experience to participants thanks to their ability to provide excellent sound isolation, coupled with a driver that accurately reproduces extreme low and high frequencies – from 5Hz to 40kHz – making them ideally suited to the rich and varied soundscape of the Peruvian Amazon.’

‘Godard once said, “the positive is in the projector, and the negative is in the camera” – we have reversed this concept, showing the negative image and the missing sound in order to remind us all that life in every shape and form is a given,’ a Soundwalk Collective spokesperson adds. ‘And after, you have to live and make your destiny. Nature was given to you as a positive and life has no meaning if you don’t take care of it with duty. When we take these headphones off, or see the real colour of Nature in the screens around us, hopefully we will also understand our immediate responsibilities.’

‘With unique insight, the artist here has taken the urban jungle metaphor  – which expresses so many of the challenge of an intensely urban and Darwinian place like Times Square – and turned it into a joyous celebration of something wholly different,’ says Tim Tompkins, President of the Times Square Alliance. ‘By drawing in the sounds of a true jungle, this allows New Yorkers and visitors to experience a new jungle that is unique to Times Square.’

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