Near-Transparent LED Panels Create Faux Water Feature At Guilin, China Exhibition Hall

October 4, 2024 by Dave Haynes

The flowery descriptions and misuse of holographic and invisible are a bit much, but this installation using super-thin mesh-like display panels made by the Chinese company Muxwave is nonetheless interesting.

There was a point when big video walls started replacing things like high-maintenance water features in the lobbies of commercial buildings, and now we have faux water features that use LED instead of running water.

This is the lobby of the exhibition hall in Lingqu Park, Guilin, Guangxi, China, which celebrates the beauty of Guilin’s landscape. Guilin is the region in China that has all those amazing limestone hills that tower over the landscape.

The project uses four floor-to-ceiling panels in a half-circle, with the light reflected and amplified by a shiny, round ceiling feature.

The faux waterfalls in a lobby video wall thing has been done numerous times, but this is quite different in how it is free-standing and not LEDs on a wall.

To be holographic, a display needs volume and can’t be flat, as is the case with these products. I’d describe them as hologram-ish, but even that’s a reach. I do like how Muxwave describes visuals as floating, which is accurate when the creative works with that possibility.

They are 85%-95% transparent – the finer the pitch, the lower the transparency. The screen-like LED mesh arrays are not invisible, but just as is the case with conventional LEDs, the further you step back from a screen, the less you will see of the structure that holds these things together.