I finally managed to port across most of the relevant links from another site to the Resources page of this site. I’ve still got some stuff to add in time, but that will do for now. It is a very distracting task becuase you end up re-visiting sites you haven’t been to for a while, cleaning out dead links and finding new gems.
Links are the back bone of the web so if you have any suggestions for things to add let me know.
Not very techy or ‘VJ’ but I have to make a note of this product somewhere: Some time ago we did a service where we wanted to have people write on the pillars in the church. To do this we had to wrap the pillars with clingfilm to ensure that the pen didn’t go through onto the paintwork and then wrap paper round. It was time consuming, and just a lot of hassle although it did work.
| At the planning meeting for this month’s Deeper we decided to do something similar (draw a vine on the pillar and have people write on it or stick notes to it). By chance a couple of days later I caught a product on BBC’s Dragon’s Den which looked like it might be worth getting hold of.
It is called Magic Whiteboard, and is a roll of statically charged plastic sheets (60cmx80cm – the size of a flip chart sheet). The sheets stick to the wall due to the static, when I say stick the best way I can describe it is like when you start to hang wallpaper and can slide it around on the wall. We tested it on a pillar for three weeks with no problem. Next, as well as being able to write on this without the pen coming through in any way you can also stick paper onto the Magic Whiteboard material. The main thing I was unsure about from the web site and video demonstrations was how it would work onto the curved stone surface of a church pillar rather than a smooth plaster or wall-paper finish in an office setting. We had no problem at all, we put up a test sheet in a corner of the church and left it for three weeks with the heating coming and going and there was no loss of ’stick’. A fantastic product worth trying out, the only negative I would say is that it seems a little expensive but we found it worth it and have started coming up with more ways of using this. Now, if only the sister product Magic Blackout came in sizes big enough for stained glass windows… |
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One of the things that often limits what I want to do with visuals during worship is lack of equipment. Most of what I use has been picked up over time and is second hand, ebay or borrowed. So it was a luxury to have two new projectors donated and be able to use them for the first time at this month’s Deeper service.
This presents a new problem of what to do with them. The first use was obvious because we have been working on using two areas to present from to get away from the focus being ‘up front’. So some of the ‘talky bits’ in this service came from a side area, so we set up a projector to back project right behind the speaker as well as sending the same signal to the main church projector at the front (because of viewing angles for those down the same side of church as the speaker), as shown:
That still left me with one spare projector, which as an experiment we tried out pointing all the way from the back of church to the wall and rafters at the front.
This worked exceptionally well although some of the videos used in this way didn’t really work. It’s difficult to tell from this photo, but only the bottom middle section of the image/video used was clear with the rest being lost in perspective along the wall and among the dark rafters. As the service went on I tried a few different loops but I think what worked best in this situation (and therefore possibly for other times when projecting in difficult situations):
Ultimately, during the closing worship set, I used a video showing different faces of Jesus from art and movies. One of these faces fitted the space between the main window and the rafters perfectly so I froze the image and left it for the rest of the service (see photo above).
It is always hard to get feedback from those present so I have no idea if anyone there noticed, liked it or found it distracting – but I liked it. I liked having additional outputs to send visuals to and especially to have the large ‘canvas’ of the architecture of the building to ‘paint’ onto.
Over on my personal blog I posted about an exhibition I had a video installation in. This is the first time that I’ve done something purely as an art exhibit and not part of a service or event. It was an interesting process to go through to have to let go of a piece and leave it running in the hope that people will ‘get it’.
The exhibition was themed on ‘Grace’ and was called ‘Stations of Grace’. The work I put in was created earlier this year for our Good Friday Labyrinth at St Silas. Because of the layout of the labyrinth the approach to the video was controlled and the conditions were ideal for what I was trying to present. However as part of an exhibition where people are viewing different art work in various media and where the approach was different and the projection area smaller I had my doubts over how it would work.
Mixing video during an event (live VJing) is vulnerable in one way, but you are in control of what goes up, what works or doesn’t work, you carry the can. However, this was vulnerable in a different way because I had to put the work on – set is up and leave it.
Life through the Cross:
The video itself is reasonably simple, a slow motion loop showing street scenes around Glasgow with the outline of a cross (the proportions and orientation of which are taken from Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross. Inside this outline (through the cross) the image is clear and normal. Outwith the cross only the outlines of the image are shown in a monochrome effect. This in itself works, I think, as the view ‘through the cross’ represents ‘life to the full’ (John 10:10) while outwith the cross it is ‘a poor reflection as in a mirror’ 1 Cor 13:12). However, what makes this an installation is that it is front projected onto a screen with a split in it. Therefore the viewer should be standing between the projector and the screen (this didn’t really work in this installation) by doing so their silhouette appears on the image. Lastly the viewer should pass throug the opening in the screen to move on – therefore going through the cross to move on. Again, this didn’t always work in the exhibition becuase some people went around which is a much more natural thing to do.
As an installation it seems to have been well received, it fitted the theme of the exhibition well and was very different from the other works presented which were mostly paintings. I’m glad I got involved because this piece had the interactive and there for ‘installation’ element. Most of the videos I create don’t have that extra dimension to them so I’m not sure whether I would be involved in something like this again.
Is it art if you just have a video looping?
