I’m guessing many in our audience will have seen the incredibly impressive “WAVE” public art project installed at the SMTown COEX building in Seoul, South Korea, by the time you see this blog post. The imagery is just amazing as Samsung directly-emissive LED display panels form a giant three-sided sign that while the technology is decidedly 2-D in nature provides a 3-D experience of a wave crashing inside of a glass boundary. The public art was produced by d’strict, a digital-media-focused content creator.
First, let me address where you can see this amazing public art. CNN has a story posted with both a narrated video short and, if you scroll on down the page, a looping video of the display. The giant sign is almost 300 ft long. It includes the lengthy front and a display on either side providing the three-sided experience.
We’ve written recently about what can be accomplished with directly-emissive LED displays where each pixel is formed by red, green, and blue (RGB) emitters — either three LEDs packed close together or sometimes integrated into a single package. The technology has been driven forward by giant video displays for sports venues and is now rampant in public signage and will come to the home as mini and micro LED technology matures.
Still, the d’strict project may just be the most impressive usage of the technology that I have seen. The three-sided design makes the 2-D displays appear to project a 3-D image with the effect going right around the corner of the screen. The implementation does not utilize panels that meet in a sharp 90° intersection, but rather the panels that implement the corners have a gentle radius or bend.
Samsung has posted a time-lapsed video that shows the construction of the display. Watch that presentation and you will understand how the panels come together to form the massive display.
The one angle I don’t understand is that the effect is referred to as an anamorphic illusion. I’m no expert in art, be it digital or traditional media. I do understand how anamorphic technology was used to present images captured on standard film to be displayed in widescreen format. Perhaps one of our readers can explain the usage relative to the WAVE display and I can update this blog post.
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Maury Wright | Editor in Chief
Maury Wright is an electronics engineer turned technology journalist, who has focused specifically on the LED & Lighting industry for the past decade. Wright first wrote for LEDs Magazine as a contractor in 2010, and took over as Editor-in-Chief in 2012. He has broad experience in technology areas ranging from microprocessors to digital media to wireless networks that he gained over 30 years in the trade press. Wright has experience running global editorial operations, such as during his tenure as worldwide editorial director of EDN Magazine, and has been instrumental in launching publication websites going back to the earliest days of the Internet. Wright has won numerous industry awards, including multiple ASBPE national awards for B2B journalism excellence, and has received finalist recognition for LEDs Magazine in the FOLIO Eddie Awards. He received a BS in electrical engineering from Auburn University.
