Computers as the New Stain Glass Windows
By Frances Forde Plude
As Suzanne reflects below, messages throughout church history have taken many different media forms: preaching, stain glass windows, statues, and music. Now we have a video and computer culture, along with changing musical tastes.
A key challenge is to integrate new forms of expression into church life and worship – sort of digitizing our stain glass environment. Suzanne gives practical reflections below. I would like to share with you the work of a colleague who is pioneering the digital dimension of worship today. And his prophetic vision springs from his work as a biblical scholar.
Tom Boomershine was an inner-city minister running youth programs in New York City and Chicago in the 60s and was later a professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. Tom initiated a graduate program there called MARC – a Master of Arts in Religious Communication. Graduates of that program are infusing media into worship throughout the U.S.
Tom explains: “I founded the Network of Biblical Storytellers and have been involved in media research and production since the mid 70s. As part of that work I was the chief consultant for the American Bible Society’s multimedia translation project which in the early nineties produced MTV-style videos.”
Electronic Culture is the Dominant Global Culture Now
Boomershine has written that print-based and oral cultures of the past exist within today’s environment but the new digital culture has clear characteristics:
learning by participation and interactivity rather than reflection
the centrality of experience as a way of knowing
multimedia (film, video, music) are dominant communication events
networks are the characteristic form of social organization
there is rapid technological change
images on screens are a central element of communication
women’s roles (and, therefore, men’s roles) are changing
teamwork is a primary mode of production
Doesn’t all this sound like the environment in which folks minister?
You can find Boomershine on the web. He and others at Lumicon Digital Productions earlier designed digital resources correlated with the lectionary for worship in local churches. He says one of their goals was “to provide resources at a relatively low cost so small and medium size churches could have high quality resources for contemporary worship.”
Tom Boomershine has been an inspiration to me personally as I try to re-think what being church means in an electronic culture.
By Suzanne Nelson
When the art of stain glass windows first appeared in churches in the 10th and 11th centuries, do you think everyone completely understood the biblical truths they attempted to convey? Do you think when the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris celebrated liturgies everyone thought the stain glass windows conveyed exactly what they were seeking? Why did this art form decline in the 16th century and not have a resurgence until the 19th and 20th? Was it because the artists were less skilled, or the materials defective, or the culture changed?
Art that lasts does not teach everything all at once. Even today the windows of the great cathedrals, with each subtle shift of sunlight, reveal new facets of mysteries for our contemplation. Over time, as new methods of adding color and connecting pieces of glass were developed, there were both successful and unsuccessful experiments. Sometimes a new medium must develop its own rules of expression.
Today we see various attempts to project art images on screens or walls in the worship space. The purpose is usually to illustrate the scripture readings of the day or set the tone for the liturgical season. Is this medium effective? What artistic rules govern its use? How do we know which images to choose and what projection methods to use?
We are still discerning the capabilities of this medium, still drafting guidelines for its use, still attempting to assess the effects of various types of projected art. Artists and scientists are still working together on new combinations of aesthetics and technology. The use of the computer to project images in church is a work in progress.
Some Practical Tips
Here are a few tips for getting into this emerging field.
Know where the center of your congregation is. They may be able to be stretched a little toward iconography, for example, or moved a bit away from the ethnocentric.
Let a representative committee, whose members are knowledgeable about art, review as many different sources of visuals as possible before choosing a certain line.
Surf the internet. There are many collections of images available for projection. Some are free. Some sets of pictures are arranged according to lectionary themes.
Choose high quality art. Technically, be sure it projects well in various types of light and on various surfaces. Spiritually it should open the viewer to the transcendent and leave something more to be said, something more to contemplate.
Use this medium only if it adds to worship and does not distract – causing the congregation to wonder if the equipment will work, or whether the next picture will be better than the last.
Assign someone to keep up with this field. New ways of using this medium are emerging every day.
Great cathedrals and precious stain glass art were not created in a day. Nor were all of them perfect.
But they did evolve and they inspire us still. Computer-projected religious art is a new medium. Its greatness will emerge as time and skill and prayerful gazes are put into it.