Have you ever been in a situation in which you want to dance but there is no one in the dance floor to dance with? Thanks to the Shadow Revolution, this will never happen again. We provide the community with a shadow that is always willing to dance as long as you dance next to her. Of course you cannot see her, but her shadow will be there and you or your shadow will be able to interact with her whenever and however you like.

The center piece of the shadow revolution is a wheel: It is a single strip of clear acrylic whose diameter is roughly 1.5 meter. The wheel can spin at a variable speed and a secondary smaller wheel is geared up together with the larger wheel so that they can spin at a different but coordinated speed. The smaller wheel incorporates a strong halogen light which is only visible at certain times in order to generate a strobe effect. The light is directed to the surface of the acrylic sheet on which a series of anamorphic images have been applied. Each one of these image spaces will depict the silhouette of the dancer in a slightly deformed way, so that when the light hits the screen, a proper shadow will be casted on the wall as a result of an anamorphic process. Lights are be set up so that the shadow of the dancer is to be casted just right next the shadow dancer, so that they can dance together without being disturbed by humans.

Technical Specifications

The wheel is made up of a long sheet of clear acrylic fashioned into a circle, whose surface is covered of a series of distorted images, just like this one: that will be projected on the wall in order represent a full-size shadow dancer, just like this one:

The principle is that of a flip book, only slightly more complex:

  • The shadow is projected by means of an alternative strobe light – because we are attempting at reinventing the cinema – that only illuminates the wheel at specific periods of time in order to create the proper shadow sequence.
  • There strobe light consists of a 250 Watts halogen light inserted into the tire of a smaller bike wheel whose external surface has been tampered with a series of holes. The strobe wheel is connected to the larger acrylic wheel by means of a complex gearing system allowing for the halogen light to be visible only when the shadow is at the proper position to be casted on the wall.
  • The light is then expanded through a magnifying lens and subsequently forwarded through a combination of mirrors in order to create an angle that allows for the silhouette of a full-size dancer to appear on the wall whenever the light hits any of the distorted images lying on the acrylic wheel.
  • The wheels rotate via an electric motor that receives input from a small and beautiful Arduino device ( http://www.arduino.cc - made by an amazing italiano), which is hooked up to an equalizer in order to determine the speed at which the wheels should spin. The Arduino will also be receiving input from the “Dance Floor” in order to determine when does the wheel have to spin.

Piece by piece, the art piece is as follows:

  • A bicycle frame that everything is attached to.
  • A large acrylic clear sheet shaped into a wheel of about 1.5 meter diameter.
  • A smaller bike wheel which incorporates a high luminosity light inside the tire, in which a series of holes and large rivets have been strategically located in order to produce a strobe light effect whenever the wheel spins.
  • A low-speed variable AC motor taken from a 12 Amps drill, which has been inserted into the bottom bracket hole of the bike frame.
  • A structural support made up of a combination of bike parts that gives both stability and mobility to these two wheels as they are both centrally rotated from the motor by means of a complex gearing mechanisms constructed largely from old bike parts.
    • Attached to the rear fork of the bike frame is a simple wheel- hub with a chain-ring attached by old bike spokes cut and welded to the proper size.
    • Attached to the front of this chain-ring is a large disc-brake and aluminum structural spokes that spread out to the plexiglass outer edge.
    • Attached to the other rear fork are the clamp prongs grab wheel hub with freewheel and cassette giving us the ability to take advantage of a 3:1 torque ratio (14 tooth cassette wheel and a 42 tooth chain-ring above).
  • An Arduino setup that takes the music and the dance floor as an input in order to output a proper set of instructions to the AC motor.
  • Lots of semi-transparent sheet displaying a series of distorted shadow forms which can be applied to the surface of the acrylic sheet - but which can be subsequently extracted to be replaced by a different set of shadows .e.g. were the identity of the shadow dancer to change.