Moon Theater is an interactive shadow-play installation exhibited during the Glow festival in Santa Monica. The festival took place against an unique backdrop of the historic Santa Monica pier and the Pacific ocean. An estimated number of 200,000 people attended the event. We conceived the project with the unique opportunities offered by a large scale public festival in mind.

Moon Theater is designed to address issues of scale and social performance in a public setting. In the context of Glow, it is realized as an opportunity for communication and expression between members of a large crowd. Moon Theater aims to empower the participants with a broadened capacity for visual communication. The moon is defined as an urban screen. It is perceived as a unifying element; a common symbol for people across great distances. The piece successfully sustained a community around itself throughout the night, transforming strangers into collaborative performers.

The software component of this project is written in Processing. It uses custom hand tracking code by Andres Colubri.

Creators: Michael Kontopoulos and Nova Jiang
Special thanks:
Andres Colubri
Frank Chang
Jacob Tonski
Paul Yarin
Kinetic Lighting