Shadow zoo
Software & Hardware : Arduino, Light, Camera
Duration: Feb 2019 - May 2019
Project Type: Academic Research, Hands-on Installation
Personal Contribution: Research, Style & Music, Hand-making
Site: Espoo, Finland
Please check the web link here
Introduction
“Shadow Zoo” was an installation designed for ‘Embodied Interaction’, in which people can play with their hand movements, generating virtual creatures with hand shadows and enjoying watching the interactions among these “creatures” on the screen.
Team Members: Marchesi Lorenzo, Yachan Yuan, Yuvin Ha
Project Insight
Finnish may seem shy. In general, they do not like to interact much with strangers and may hesitate a little to interact with people. This is quite interesting when we observed Finnish interaction behavior. Finnish people only really talk when they've got something to say, and they don't mind the silence that comes when there is nothing to say (figure 1.0).
Based on this phenomenon, we came up with the idea of how people can communicate without speaking but instead, using their bodies' language as a dialogue. Our perspective was to use body gestures to form shadow animals as interactive objects, in which people would form potential relationships through their communication and interaction. Moreover, some different 'monsters' or cute creatures might be generated along with people's participation. (figure 2.0)



figure 1.0 Comic Finish Nightmare
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figure 2.0 Idea of shadow interaction
Installation Settings
The installation of Shadow Zoo was comprised of the following parts (figure 3.0).
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A hand shadow tutorial stacked in front of the installation works as gesture guidance.
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A fabric-covered box works for hiding the camera and capturing hand gestures.
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A pedal, developed with Processing and Arduino sensor, handles the video file to extract the hand shadows and creates a video-embedded object.
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figure 3.0 Installation settings
Participation
When the project was exhibited to the public, people felt highly interested in it and couldn't wait to try it. We were happy to see that people enjoyed the way of creating their own creatures and waited to witness how they interacted with other creatures.
Using words is the most obvious way to communicate, but it's not the only way. Other times, using alternate ways of communicating may be more fun and more effective. We believe that our project could provide more opportunities and fun in terms of communication, make it fun for people who feel shy and hesitate to talk with others.
Viewers are allowed to record their gestures by pressing a pedal with their feet in front of the projection, Once the recording is finished, their gestures will be projected onto the screen within 5 seconds. Every object has its own behavior and routine and can interact with other objects in this virtual world.