The Spark
Lydia Lee, an Exhibition & Experience Design MA student, arrived with a motorized octagonal lantern and a narration: a young woman from a farming village in Toisan who, on the night of the Mid-Autumn festival, agrees to cross to Gaam San under a merchant's daughter's name. The question was how to make shadows move with the story.
In Process
One session ran through the whole history of moving shadow: procession, the strobe zoetrope, fixed apertures, concentric multiplane rings, depth from paper tone. Each technique was simulated with real geometry before anything was cut.
The Craft
The turn: drop the strobe and let the light do the stopping. A core of NeoPixels follows each moving cutout and hands off to the next, so the pictures never stop and nothing flickers. Two identities printed in cyan and magenta ink share every frame; red light shows one, green the other, blue neither.
Outcome
In progress. Her lantern has been rebuilt in Blender at her dimensions and rendered with real light transport, cut files for the walk cycle and village ring are ready, and the living record tracks every decision, formula and next step.
Process — 7 frames
