Remember that jaw-dropping scene in “Now You See Me 2” where rain seemingly reverses direction? The Serena Anti-Gravity Humidifier turns that cinematic spectacle into everyday home decor. The device actually uses visual persistence technology to create a convincing illusion of water droplets climbing upward, defying gravity with every pulse of its synchronized LED system.
Designer Kexin Su and the team at LuXun Academy of Fine Arts spent months perfecting the synchronization between water flow and light timing. The challenge was maintaining the illusion while delivering practical humidification for modern living spaces. Their solution borrows liberally from Dyson’s design vocabulary: a circular aperture, minimal controls, premium metallic finishes. But where Dyson multiplies air, Serena bends perception. The transparent colored ring frames the ascending droplets like a gallery piece, while the compact base houses the miniature pump and strobe system that make the whole spectacle possible.
Designer: Kexin Su
The tech here hinges on visual persistence, which is basically your brain holding onto an image for about 1/16th of a second after seeing it. LED strobes flash in sync with falling water droplets, catching each one in nearly the same position as the last. Your brain stitches these snapshots together and interprets the result as water flowing upward or hanging motionless in air. Think about how movie projectors work at 24 frames per second, except here the timing tolerance is even tighter. If the strobe drifts even slightly out of phase with the droplet release, the whole illusion falls apart and you’re just watching normal gravity do its thing. The miniature pump has to maintain ridiculously consistent droplet size and timing while the LED controller stays locked within millisecond precision.
At 478mm tall and 260mm across, this thing commands attention. You’re not tucking it behind a bookshelf. The whole point is putting it somewhere visible where the illusion can do its work. You get burgundy or amber options for the transparent ring, and honestly, the color choice matters more than you’d think because it completely changes the mood when backlit. The control scheme strips down to a single button and four indicator dots, probably for different intensity modes or timing presets. Touch controls let you tweak both strobe speed and brightness, which means you can dial in how fast the water appears to climb or how subtle you want the effect. Slower intervals make for dreamier upward motion, while cranking the brightness turns it into more of a statement piece.
What might feel like an optical gimmick actually does something pretty remarkable – it makes the humidifier way more interesting. Most of us shove these things into corners or bedrooms where they can do their job without being seen. Serena flips that equation entirely. It wants to be your living room centerpiece, which takes real conviction in the concept. I’ve seen similar strobe effects at science museums and in art installations, but domesticating that technology into something you’d actually plug in at home represents a different kind of design challenge. The Dyson influence is unmistakable, from the bladeless aperture aesthetic to the premium metallic finish, but they’re applying that visual language to something genuinely novel rather than just iterating on existing fan technology… and the A’ Design Award given to this humidifier is just proof that it’s a clever idea with brilliant visual execution.
