Visually Immersive Art in Worship Services
Many large churches have distinguished themselves by featuring dynamic video displays during their worship services. In fact, visual technology within church services is so broadly accepted nowadays that sanctuary construction decisions are made with visual projection in mind. Even in smaller congregations, visual liturgy, as it's often called, and the use of powerpoint, stills, loops, video clips and digital images is commonplace.
Recently, I read about the work of Camron Ware (no relation) in an issue of Sound & Video Contractor. I noticed the article Irving Bible Church Creates Immersive Worship Experiences with Hitaichi Projectors and it prompted me to check out Camron's A/V work. Amazing. Furthermore, I realized that as churches are adopting stills, videos, loops, etc., tech art and visual worship environments will become increasingly expected. We can also anticipate more experimental A/V work as creative Christians begin using new sight & sound expressions during worship services in an attempt to engage the iGeneration. Cameron's personal site is Visual Worshiper.
In late 2005, Wired Magazine did a piece they called graffiti hackers. Since that time, light graffiti,
as one example of emerging media, has grown in popularity in all kinds
of venues, both indoor and outdoor. Light images can be quite
powerful, probably for their unexpected appearance and certainly
because they evoke reaction from observers. Images and words (i.e.
scriptures) can also be projected on glass, walls, screens and on
people! Undoubtedly, we will see more of it in church.
So add to my list of predictions for the intersection of the Church & technology:
- Online High Definition Video Services
- Microblogging
- Visually Immersive Art in Worship Services
- Mobile Media (I'll write on this after the holidays)
If you are interested in more of this kind of thing, check out other examples of emerging media like the flickr group with over 4,000 members called camera toss that experiments with digital light patterns. There's also a Camera Toss blog. Searchable terms include: Lumasolator, Luma2solator, PrintBall, Visual Liturgy, Digital Signage, Kinetic photography, Lightgrafs, Tech Art.
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