Air NZ will incorporate sleep-inducing artwork aboard aircraft next year. Image: Delta

Air New Zealand plans to introduce two new artistic in-flight videos, designed to induce sleep and relax passengers on long-haul journeys.

The first video - Delta - by AUT University lecturer and artist Clinton Watkins, features a continuous slow shot along a New Zealand east coast road and a gentle abstract soundtrack that incorporates inaudible, low frequency sound waves.

Inspiration for the sleep-encouraging films was derived from AUT University CoLab creative technologies centre artist and curator Dr Melissa Laing.

“We [CoLab] commissioned innovative New Zealand content for an environment which doesn’t normally have artworks made for it,” Dr Laing said.

“We wanted the selected artwork to engage with the passengers’ in-flight experience - we all have our own subjective idea of flight which could be to do with business, migration, diaspora, family or holiday.”

Air New Zealand will include the two new videos as part of its in-flight entertainment programme for international flights from mid-January 2013.

Dr Liang obtained funding from Creative New Zealand to organise the project, which has led to a series of digital artworks, New Terrains, being displayed on an oversized screen at Auckland’s Aotea Centre.

The second artwork - Pioneer City Welcome Video - by Wellington artist Bronwyn Holloway-Smith and animator/filmmaker Simon Ward is a mock in-flight welcome video to a colony on Mars called Pioneer City.