Winston Churchill once said, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see”. People used to understand this as a call to not repeat the mistakes in history, which isn’t necessarily wrong. But today, with the emergence of technology, we can see another meaning: with so much already being done and new ideas becoming scarce, innovation may be something forgotten in the past.
Let’s take a look at one of the oldest sources of entertainment: shadowgraphy, most commonly known as hand shadows. But the focus of entertainment shifted to radios, televisions, and now, the internet. This art got lost. Even if we tried to bring it back, it wouldn’t be as appealing as the internet is to kids today. But a project by Aria Xiying Bao and Yubo Zhao called Narratron attempts to bring shadowgraphy back in an innovative and appealing way.
A bridge to the past
Narratron’s concept revolves around the seamless integration of AI into shadowgraphy. With a design reminiscent of vintage movie projectors, the device houses a speaker, a microcontroller, and a plethora of other electrical components in a minimalist way. Additionally, the projector creates an interactive storytelling experience, leveraging models such as GPT-3.5 for text generation, Stable Diffusion for image generation, and Teachable Machine for shadow recognition.
After pressing the camera shutter, a tutorial starts followed by a prompt that asks for the user to create their first hand shadow. From there, underlying algorithms will recognize the user’s hand shadow, interpreting and implementing them within the ongoing story being generated. Narratron will also display images and audio to accompany the narrative. If the user wants to add something, the device will blend it into the narration.
In a world where innovation often means creating something entirely new, which is a really hard thing to do, Narratron takes a different route. It embraces the art of rediscovery. Reviving a timeless form of entertainment through the infusion of cutting-edge technology. As children of the digital age, we often overlook the beauty of simple and traditional forms of creativity. While we can’t expect future generations to be different, what we can do instead is reinvent and adapt past concepts.
YouTube: Narratron demonstration clip
Photo credit: Images shown are owned by Aria Xiying Bao and were used with permission.
Source: Creative Applications
