Saturday, May. 23, 2015 – Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015

Shadow Monsters, an interactive installation by New York-based British artist Philip Worthington, invites Museum visitors to take part in a fully immersive art experience. Participants create their own shadow plays as their silhouettes are recast in fantastic forms.

Essentially a digital version of a traditional shadow-puppet theater, Shadow Monsters turns a childhood game of imagination into a reality. People's hands become mouths with razor-sharp teeth; tongues, eyes, and fins appear from every appendage; and birds and dinosaurs squawk throughout the Museum's vast Cullinan Hall—all thanks to vision-recognition software that augments visitors' gestures with sound and animation.

Describing his idea for the Shadow Monsters project, Worthington (born 1977) said, “Looking back to my own childhood, I remembered the feeling of casting huge shapes in the light of my father’s slide projector, creating monsters and silly animals. I enjoy working with simple, intuitive things; playful feelings that touch us on a very basic level.”