By WINDA BENEDETTI SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Audiophiles, prepare to bow down.
You are about to enter the Sky Church, and if ever there was a place to become one with the music, this is it.
Imagine an immense room with a soaring cathedral ceiling, a room designed to be a homage to guitar god Jimi Hendrix's vision of a gathering place -- a grand hall by day and a live performance venue by night.
The main attraction inside this dome of devotion -- the altar, so to speak -- is a video screen. A really, really big one. In fact, at 40 feet high and 70 feet wide, it is the world's largest.
The screen, which has been split into narrow panels, is programmed to display music videos. But they're not like your usual MTV fare. Instead, the screen fills with giant kaleidoscopic images, geometric shapes shifting, turning, whirling.
It's like looking at the coolest, not to mention largest, screen saver ever programmed.
As the human eyeballs struggle to take in the enormity of the images, a customized audio system delivers a colossal onslaught of music through more than 50 speakers spread throughout the room.
The sound grabs you by the guts and shakes you to the core.
As if that weren't enough fireworks for one room, at the top of the Sky Church hang 18 panels. Each delivers a montage of 10 different rock 'n' roll images. They fade in and fade out.
Ninety robotic lights stand at the ready to enhance the atmosphere. Glowing time capsules will be sunken into Sky Church's translucent flooring, each filled with objects donated by the bands that perform in the room.
"The purpose of Sky Church," says curatorial director Chris Bruce, "is to immerse you in music."
