Give me a room full of automated lights and a console, and I’m happy as a clam, which is appropriate considering one piece of entertainment technology that’s sparked my interest as of late. What could that be, you ask? Water screens. Something about the addition of a water screen to an architectural install or a room full of gorgeous lighting makes me tingle more than I already would be. I’ve had enough experience with them to tell you that there’s something about water screens that makes the event in which they’re installed seem posh, beautiful, and expensive.
Prina Water Screens is a guilty pleasure of mine. Their site is full of gorgeous photos of their screens at a variety of events and installs, and honestly, when properly used, it’s near impossible to make their water screens look bad. I attended Lighting Dimensions International recently and had the opportunity to stand next to a Prina Water Screen during the demo. While it can’t replace the crystal clear image you get on a standard projector screen, it does add ambiance, beauty, and depth. Truthfully, there’s no good way to have an entire screen worth of droplets to fall so that you get the entire projected image. Water falls, spaces are made, and you lose some of your image. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s not something you would want to watch a movie on or use to give a power point presentation. It’s also much harder to see in a room with the lights on than the image seen on a normal screen. Despite all that, however, it’s not something you should write off. Water screens have their time and place, and they can be effective and stunning when properly used. Were I rich, I’d have a couple hanging around looking good for the hell of it.
How do these tingle-creating water screens work? The screen is created when thousands of droplets line up next to one another as they fall to the ground from a pipe to a trough mounted on the floor. You have gaps in your image is because you can’t just have a flawless sheet of perfect clear water. If that were the case, there would be nothing for the image from the projector to reflect off of. The light would go through the sheet of water and reflect on whatever was behind it. The droplets of water create more surface area and texture for the image and the light to reflect off of, allowing you to see the image.
I’m also a big fan of large-scale water screen, water curtain, and water effects created by Aquatic Show. For large scale screens, a series of pumps and fountains is installed in existing or man-made bodies of water. Installing a water screen in a body of water allows the screen to be enormous, as there is no water loss to consider because any water used simply falls back into the lake from which it came. Projects that use screens or effects of this size are Disney, Sea World, and The Bellagio in Las Vegas. These large-scale water screens and effects make for amazing shows, especially when you add light and video.
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A prototype of a 3D water screen has been created by a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. The screen is created by 50 stainless steel needles that drop up to 50 drops of water a second. There are three layers of needles, one behind the other. The water flow is computer controlled and precise. Each layer of the screen can display it’s own image, allowing you to interact with each screen 
individually and in real time. Alternating images are projected in rapid pulses from a projector to give each layer it’s own image and allow you the luxury of moving along the X and Y axis should you use the screen to play a game. This technology has huge potential. Should the 3D water screen be built on a larger scale and available for rental and use, it would change the way we design a space and possibly even the way we design and interact with video games. I also can’t help but think that if we used three layers of water screen in close proximity to one another, we would get a better solid image on the screen from the projector. The drops on the second screen would fill in gaps created by the first screen, and the drops form the third screen would fill in gaps from the first two screens. It would decrease the number of gaps in the image without decreasing the reflective surface area.
At the moment, I don’t think water screens are entirely practical, but with the 3D water screen and the ability to see through one screen to the next, I think they may be in the future. At the moment, I’m happy to enjoy their beauty and the aesthetic they bring to a room.
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