Kangbashi District, in Ordos in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, was once known as “the empty city” because it lay mostly uninhabited until a complete overhaul took place in 2004.
A metropolis of lavish apartments, office towers, sports fields, museums, and theatres were built, and the area soon became a tourist destination, internationally known for its Kangbashi Fountain Square.
Every evening at 8–9pm, tourists and locals gather to witness the dazzling fountain show that takes place, reflected in the Ulan Mulan Lake that runs through the city.
The fountain itself consists of 2,970 sub-fountain nozzles and 1,678 underwater lights reaching up to 230m, the highest known fountain in Asia. Music plays in sync with lighting and projections, bringing this opulent district to life.
This year, to celebrate the National Day festival, the show’s organisers enlisted the help of Digital Projection to achieve a dream-like, water curtain projection show.
To bring the spectacle to life, 28 M-Vision Lasers (21000-WU) were introduced to the installation to cast content onto a vast ‘screen’ of water, created by multiple water jets measuring 200m long and 20m tall.
Mark Wadsworth vice president of global marketing, Digital Projection attributes the ColorBoost and Red Laser technology as one of the many reasons why the M-Vision Lasers were selected for the project: “The customer needed the very best and reliable projectors to display content onto the waterfall like curtain,” he says. “The intelligent colour processing delivers the most realistic and saturated colours, something very important for a unique project of this complexity and grandeur”.
The M-Vision Laser projector – boasting 21,000 lumens output and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio – has been designed so that the optical components are 100% protected from the outside world, from light source to lens, something that was critically important in an outdoor environment like this.
For maximum reliability and durability, liquid cooling and radiators are used to remove energy to the exterior environment, allowing the complete optical system to be comprehensively protected against all types of airborne ingress that would otherwise cause image degradation over time.
“It’s fantastic to see the M-Vision laser performing well in such demanding conditions as these,” concludes Wadsworth. “It shows how reliable and high performing these projectors are even in the most challenging of applications. It’s a pleasure to see that the M-Vision lasers were chosen for such a complex and impressive install.”
