This project was an experiment with shadow puppets: players make shadow puppets on a tent, their shadows are recorded to create an animation, and the animation becomes a creature that walks around on the side of the tent via a projection.
In the handful of installs, testing went very well, and I plan to iterate on the concept.
Testing
The core interaction loop of 1. Make a shadow puppet 2. go inside tent look for shadow critter 3. find shadow (!!!) was very positive and satisfying.
Once understanding and interacting with the entire experience, reception was universally positive.
Also, made it through 6 or so hours at Whaaat festival before people started adding middle fingers, so that’s good.
Uptake
In unattended room, ~1/5 people figured out the mechanics of recording / adding shadows, without needing a prompt.
Once prompted, most people understood and enjoyed the interaction.
If I stealth-demoed the interaction (demonstrating by using it) uptake would be immediate. This would sort of daisy-chain so if people saw others using it, they would join in and explain it to one another.
So the primary outstanding bug for the interaction is this initial prompting for an untutored user.
Setting
Only a handful of people went into the physical tent, but those that did enjoyed it. There were a few instances of people hanging out and enjoying the vibe while occasionally walking outside to make new shadows.
Most people (3/4) crouched outside of the tent and looked in, so in more constrained installs, I could afford to translate this to a more consolidated installation. (eg. festival = tent, convention = …not tent)
Tech
Worked 95%. Need to dial in recording threshold.
People often confused setup timer for recording timer.
Updates / Changes
Priority fix is more direct and obvious prompts for shadow creation, eg:
“Make a shadow!” + Dancing Hands for invitation
“Get Ready! 3… 2… 1…”
“Recording!”
“Go find your shadow” OR Show generated shadow creation scittering away.
It would be cool to overlay UI + Light so it is integrated and pretty.
Make Interior Tent into an Exterior Tent Hub:
Projectors + Cameras could go inside the tent, so only exterior tech is the light. This would make for a cleaner overall presentation as well.
Some miscellaneous tech updates:
- Save more / all shadows for reuse and posterity
- Secondary UI for deleting naughty shadows
- Creature variety and behavior, eg. make centipedes and such