Shadow Play

In 2O15, bit.studio developed an AI installation called ‘Shadow Play’ which won an award from Google Hack Fair Bangkok 2O15. A few years past, we have continuously upgrading the ‘Shadow Play’ and, in 2O18, we have been commissioned by Google to push it further.

Inspired by tradition and powered by AI, ‘Shadow Play’ is a series of interactive installations that celebrate the ancient art of Chinese shadow puppetry. The installations use AI and TensorFlow to create magical experiences transforming users’ hand shadows into digital characters and creatures in interactive shows.

These installations allow people to use their hands to create a shadow and morph the shadow into a different character based on the shape of the shadow. Once the character has been created, it will animate telling the story of the character and how it interacts with other characters. The input is very intuitive, so it is suitable for people of all ages.

We exhibit the installations at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2018 and Google Developer Days China 2018 both in Shanghai and, in the upcoming months, ‘Shadow Play’ will exhibit in many cities around the world.

We decided that we want to open source our work, so you can find the source code and all the technical details from here: https://github.com/thebitstudio/zodiac_google

COLLABORATION
Google
RELEASED
2018
AI/ML
Interactive Installation
Installation Design