Ross Ashton, one of the worldwide gurus of the genre of large format projection is also a fan of the PT-DZ21K projector.He recently used a single PT-DZ21K machine to cover the whole front of All Souls Church, Cheriton near Folkestone in Kent, UK, with his giant video artwork ’Spiritus’ for the 2013 Cheriton Lights Festival.
The Panasonic PT-DZ21K was supplied by Creative Technology, a leading UK video and AV rental operation. Fitted with a 1.3 lens the projector was located 25 metres away, pointing out of an office window across the road from the church – this was the optimum projection position.
The advantages of the PT-DZ21K in a situation like this include the fact it can be run off a 13 Amp socket and needs no special power supply. Compared to other projectors of its output, it’s very compact (about half the size of its competitor products) and a two-person lift that is straightforward to install and extremely bright.
Other neat features include hot spot control, lens setting memories, user-friendly edge-blending and keystone correction from the on-board Geometry Manager Pro software and colour matching.
Ashton was commissioned to produce “Spiritus’ by production company Strange Cargo and collaborated with sound artist Karen Monid who composed a special accompanying soundscape.
All Souls Church, which stands at the end of Cheriton High Street and was consecrated in 1895, (it is a fairly conventional parish church of its era) with the slightly unusual feature of four stunning stained glass windows depicting the four Archangels: Gabriel, Michael, Uriel and Raphael.
Ashton and Monid took these windows and the vivid colours of the peacock feathers making up the Archangels’ wings as the starting point of their concept, and created a two-centre piece which works both inside and outside the church with Monid’s soundscape tying the two zones together.
