Meet Your Shadow
'Meet your Shadow' was my year-long project for my Digital Arts Honours in 2025. I made an interactive motion capture and projection experience exploring my theme of shadows and self. The experience was about 9-10 mins depending on the participant.
For the best experience, please use headphones.
A bit more about the project...
What was the set-up?
Guests would enter a dark room with the project's title projected on a canvas in front of them. Cardboard sheets blocked light from entering through the glass windows and door, and a white material was draped over the windows attached via velcro, to make the blank white canvas.
The participant was instructed to stand in the middle of the room behind a black line on the floor and face the projected image. An "X" mark was placed on the floor to direct the participant to relocate to when prompted.
There was a projector planted high up on the wall behind them and a camera attached to the wall in front of them, just below the top projected image. Two speakers were placed behind the participant to have a surround sound experience and second projector was right behind the participant on the floor. My laptop and any cables connections were placed behind the participant, which was cornered off with a black fabric screen.
What is the message?
The title "Meet Your Shadow" serves as an introductory message to your digital shadow initially. Towards the end of the presentation, it is an introduction to your actual shadow. The whole narrative is meant to serve as a metaphor about how your shadow follows you everywhere, does everything you do and sees everything you do. You can treat it like it is a separate entity that is part of you, therefore it is something or someone you can talk to. It knows you and only roots the best for you.
What was my inspiration?
In February 2025, I had the privilege to take part in "Team Labs: Borderless" in Tokyo, Japan. This is an interactive digital art museum that allows guests to change the ever shifting art pieces projected onto the walls. I loved the encouragement to play and touch the walls and watch how the visuals react to your interaction.
The second part of my inspiration was the want to do something new and different within my department. Motion capture was not anything new from a technology stand point, but it was new within the department.
The final part of my inspiration was the connection between shadows and self. During certain periods of my life, I found comfort to talk to myself out loud. I could explore and work through my feelings with myself as the subject. I wondered if I could project that experience onto your physical shadow. It is an entity that is both separate and part of you. It is with you always but has a different perspective upon your own life.
My final thoughts...
I found this project to be very challenging as I was exploring a type of digital interaction that none of my lecturers had experience in, nor had any student touched on the topic either. I was learning, researching and developing my project on my own and a field of interest completely new to me. I made use of an application called "Cyan Puppets" that is a free motion capture software. Almost half of my production time was troubleshooting and learning Cyan Puppets, while the other half was recording animation using the software and using Unity to make the interactive part of the experience.
Overall, I am proud of my final product considering that this was entirely new to me and have gained a new skill-set involving not only motion capture, but curating an experience. With every step to the final product, I always considered the experience and the tone I was going to set for my guests. I made sure the guests would not see the calibration part of the set-up and that little to no external factors affected their experience, things like light and sound.