Asbury United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma has chosen an ArKaos PRO
Stadium Server running ArKaos MediaMaster 4.0 software to handle the
environmental projection mapping at their church. Lighting Director, Tim Ottley,
uses it to present some stunning visual backdrops across their 300ft wide/30-60ft
tall walls to enhance both modern and traditional services.

This Christmas season sees the interior of the church awash with imagery, produced
by Jason Yang of Invisible Element, based on the Christmas story and depicted in
colourful visuals reminiscent of stained glass. Advent is a season of anticipation and
Ottley’s theme is to present a beautiful and welcoming environment as the
congregation enters each week in the build-up to Christmas.

“Our aim was to create a short video clip as an opening sequence to the services
over the five week period of Advent,’ he says. “We then break the video down into
pieces. We use these individually as static images on each sidewall to change the
appearance and mood of the room, and also transpose them in layers to build a
more detailed picture, for example, adding the Wise Men or Angels to the scenic
backdrop, which we can also run as a video sequence.

“We achieved this using MediaMaster to put each picture on its own surface and
layer them on top of each other. We can choose on a week-by-week basis which
picture we want as a welcoming image on each side of the room and, using the
“Output’ function, I can output the same image to two different places. I can then
replicate the output multiple times, having first removed the foreground detail and
edge-blended the background imagery, and merge the repeats so they blend
seamlessly into a backdrop that fills the space.

The ArKaos Stadium Server is controlled by a Jands Vista S3 lighting and media
controller: “We put the still images on one channel and the video clip on the other
and I can crossfade from one to the other directly from the lighting desk with
MediaMaster running in the background over Art-Net.’

Ottley created the surfaces and masking for each area of projection in the room
using MediaMaster’s video mapping function. “MediaMaster makes it easy to tinker
with the idiosyncrasies of a building as a projection surface, and once I had the
templates in place I simply use them as the basis for dropping in new images. It
makes the whole thing very fast and easy to use and I can achieve stunning and
very different effects in a very short time.’