SubscribeMost VJ’s at the moment are “stuck inside the square”, their visuals in clubland are a small patch of light and motion floating in the larger environment. The sound and the lighting rig are everywhere, omnipresent, but the visuals are only visible in a small part of the audiences field of view. Future advances in display technology like flexible OLED’s will allow VJ’s and other video performers to break out of the 4×3 rectangle into three dimensional shapes and create a true immersive environment.
There are of course exceptions, check out some of Inside-Us-All’s screen installations including a wrap around circular screen at Synergy Project.
Still, these are expensive, difficult to rig and only practical at the largest clubs and events. Flexible transparent OLED screens will make installing video displays on curved or geometrical shapes possible… so here’s a roundup of the current state of this technology:
“The current state of OLED research” from Digital TV Design Line
A rollup flexible OLED prototype from Universal Display Corporation.
Transparent OLED’s on the way from Gizmodo.
My estimate: in three-five years transparent flexible OLED sheets will come within reach of installation in large clubs and venues, and in five-eight years VJ’s will be able to afford to buy large sheets at the current price of a 3000 lumen projector ($2500US).
The implications of this for future VJ applications are that they will need to support multiple outputs and at higher resolutions or with arbitrary masks on outputs….
Technorati Tags: Immersive Displays
i had been following developments with digital paper but hadn’t come across this before. very cool! i think phase 2 could happen even sooner than you think.
Left by fjordseeker on February 23rd, 2006