Interactive Shadow Play

We’ve seen a lot of exciting things going on with projectors lately - Rooftop Films, GRL’s projects, or this wild contraption - but, typically, the focal points have been the images themselves - rooftop films, . This clever exemption to what we’ve seen take people’s silhouettes and puts blasts them up on a wall center stage.

Big Shadow
As part of the campaign for Microsoft’s Blue Dragon, GT INC., our beloved friends from IMG SRC and Non-Grid inc. set up a clever as well as effective projection last winter: a gigantic shadow play all over a huge Shibuya wall next to a parking lot called Big Shadow.

When pedestrians moved past, their silhouettes were enhanced and deformed, and eventually the game’s mischevious little creatures would enlarge on the wall and play tricks on the crowd. For even more fun, users could add their creatures through a website and watch the results via live feed. Though GT INC.’s Koshi Uchiyama has mixed feelings: “To be honest, Tokyo is not a perfect place for interactive installation: equipment is very expensive and there are so many regulations. But with Big Shadow, we could create a pretty cool cityscape by combining the dragon’s animation-looking silhouette with the neon signs of Shibuya’s bawdy night. Tokyo’s, or perhaps I should say Shibuya’s power gave us exactly what we needed.”