There's a new Great Wall in China.  Meet GreenPix, the worlds largest light emitting diode (LED) wall. The wall is a whopping 60 by 33 meters - a perfect fit for the ballroom in my basement ;)  When I first saw this, I was thinking of the screens in New York City that are used as dynamic billboards.  Turns out, advertising wasn't the idea behind this monstrosity as Arup, one of the engineering groups behind the wall explains:

The GreenPix - Zero Energy Media Wall is a major new focus for the digital artist community.  The futuristic LED lighting system is capable of displaying moving images on a screen made up of 2,000 individually programmable LED colour nodes.

So, as I see it, something this big would have some major impact on China's power grid.  Turns out, I'm wrong again.  Go figure.  It's for Chinese contemporary artists to display their work.  A 1930 square meter wall and they are using it for art instead of ads.  That takes guts.

To top it all off, this wall apparently draws absolutely no energy from China's grid.  It all comes from photovolatic arrays, or solar panels on the building.  Arup claims that the solar panels collect twice as much energy as the wall consumes.

GreenPix is a definite must-see for anyone traveling to the Olympic Games next month.

~Steve

Image © Simone Giostra & Partners Inc/Arup/Zhou Ruogu Architecture Photography

Installé en façade du centre Xicui à Pékin, il diffusera, durant les JO, des créations vidéos provenant d´artistes du monde entier.