We love video screens and they are visible everywhere throughout our day. They are in our pockets, on our wrists, in our homes, at our schools, essential to our workplaces and taking over our cars. Wherever you look there is usually a screen somewhere in your field of vision or very close by. Screens help us tell stories, create culture, inform each other and be entertained. They are windows into worlds we enjoy looking through and getting lost in.
It is easy to see the trend that screens are being built to be larger, brighter and with more definition. For the Church this means that there will be more options for creatives and technicians to tell stories by taking advantage of the newest screen technologies.
Environmental screens, not environmental projection
Instead of environmental projection which is the projection of images on existing architecture, large screens will be erected and used to hide architecture and create perfectly flat and seamless canvases to project on.
The photos below are from the 2015 Google I/O conference. The venue consists of a wraparound screen that can be turned on and off to transform the space into beautiful scenic environments and display information with utmost clarity.
Now you see it, now you don’t
Another screen that will be popular in the future are transparent ones. These are created using very fine netting material that is transparent under normal lighting conditions and reflective when projecting on. Transparent screens will be perfect for displaying visuals in front and around worship leaders, teachers and artists. This type of screen will add a new dimension to church stages for visual worship leaders to explore and create.
Screens anywhere and everywhere
It would be a lot easier to change a screen size to fit an environment than to change the size of an environment to fit a screen. This problem will be solved with screens that can be easily manipulated to fit any room, surface and unique architectural condition. In the future LED stripes will be smarter, cheaper and easier to arrange to create flexible video screens that can be hung, wrapped and expanded to fill any size space. These high-tech tools will provide an endless playground for church stage designers to install screens in places that are currently impossible.
Cover image source: Future Church Beck