Shadow: Light and Dark

by Joe Lindley & Roger Whitham

What is Shadowplay?

Shadowplay is the title of a series of installations at venues including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Bordeaux Museum of Contemporary Art, and several high-profile arts festivals (including Light Up Lancaster 2024). Each edition of Shadowplay invites an audience to encounter and explore the emerging medium of generative AI, creating fleeting, shared moments of expression.

Behind Shadowplay is an ongoing design research project based at Lancaster University to explore Generative AI as a new creative material, and put this material in the hands of both the public and creative practitioners from a range of disciplines. We believe everyone needs to learn how to be creative with AI – how to make it do what we want, and how to use it as part of our craft? This work is part of Design Research Works, a project that demonstrates how design can play a key role in understanding emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence. You can read more about our research in two recent papers.

How does it work?

Shadowplay: Light and Dark creates approximately 50 images each second using an AI image generator called Stable Diffusion. Each image is based on the camera feeds captured in the gallery space, combined with text and pixel prompts controlled by the touchscreen. Behind the scenes we are using computers equipped with powerful Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to run the AI image model and produce the two video streams you see in the space.

Collaborate with us

Shadowplay is just one of the things we do. It uses a custom-made piece of software we have developed called PromptTank that allows tactile and intuitive creation of AI imagery in real-time. Using PromptTank we’re collaborating with artists, bands, community groups, educators, and theatre makers to explore and research new ways to use AI. If you feel inspired, want to develop a concept, or just want to hear more about this project, then please do get in touch.

Joe: [email protected]

Roger: [email protected]

Acknowledgements

This version of Shadowplay was created by Joe Lindley and Roger Whitham from ImaginationLancaster, a design-led research centre at Lancaster University.

We are very grateful for extensive advice and support from the Lancaster University School of Arts technical support team: Simon Attwood, Mark Bentele, Beth Pete and Alex Flahive.

This work is supported by UK Research and Innovation grant MR/T019220/1 as part of Design Research Works designresearch.works

Special thanks to George Harris and Julie Brown for bringing this work to Light Up Lancaster.