Shadowplay at the V&A

This year’s V&A Digital Design Weekend was an unforgettable experience: three action-packed days of sharing Shadowplay and building our 1,000 Titles gallery with an imaginative, curious, and wonderfully engaged audience. We hosted two exciting Shadowplay experiences.

Shadowplay Classic invites “performers” to cast shadows in front of a light source, which are captured and fed into a computer. The resulting images are processed by an AI system before a final image is displayed for everyone to see. A “DJ” uses our bespoke interactive interface, PromptTank, to adjust aesthetic parameters and settings—such as the strength of AI image generation—over the players’ live feed.

Shadowplay: 1000 Images was created especially for this event. We curated 1,000 unique titles for artworks that are yet to exist. Participants select a title of their choice and bring it to life. After scanning the title card to load unique prompts into PromptTank, participants choose from a variety of materials, such as cardboard, plastic shapes, and natural objects, to create a composition. This composition is captured by the computer and processed through the AI system, controlled via PromptTank, and the resulting image is displayed on a screen in front of the participant. They have five minutes to complete their masterpiece, working with one of our team to bring their vision to life, which is then saved to our digital gallery. Each card is printed only once, so every participant claims a unique title that no one else will have.

Beyond the fun of performing and creating visually compelling imagery, Shadowplay allows users to explore the dynamics of power and control between human and non-human actors and to contemplate questions of ownership and agency in art-making.

Thursday

On Thursday, the day began with an arduous journey, featuring a lady sprinting down a broken tube escalator with my suitcase full of 1,000 postcards and three boxes of materials, many hours of travel, and Joe and I getting distracted by aesthetic unpacking.

Friday: Opening Night

On Friday the serious work of setting up began. Roger joined us (after catching a heroic 5:40am train!) and we spent a long day getting everything in place, doing lots of testing and fixing bugs.

Myself, Roger and Joe tested Shadowplay: 1000 images by creating this joint artwork.

The Peach Who Saved a Raindrop

At 6pm the doors opened and we welcomed the public into our space. Straight away, visitors began bringing some of our 1,000 imaginary artworks to life, and it was incredible to watch the gallery start to take shape through their creativity. Alongside the gallery, we also ran Shadowplay Classic, our full-body interactive experience that encouraged performance, dancing, and joyful movement. The energy of the opening night set the tone for the rest of the weekend — curious, experimental, and full of unexpected surprises.

Saturday: Growing the Gallery

Day two saw fantastic attendance, with many people drawn in by the intrigue of Shadowplay. The 1,000 Titles gallery grew steadily throughout the day, each new contribution a testament to how much can be created in just a few minutes of playful prompt crafting. The collection quickly filled with strange, surreal, and beautiful works.

Sunday: Final Day and Reflections

The final day was both inspiring and bittersweet. Watching the gallery grow in real time, from surreal stories to playful creations, was one of the highlights of the weekend.

I've been involved in previous Shadowplay events. But this one felt extra special, as I had the privilege of naming the 1,000 titles that underpin the whole experience. Each title, and its prompts, was inspired by the visual language of the V&A museum. At first, I thought I could mass generate them, but in practice it became a much more analogue, time-consuming process. Even after many 2am ideation sessions, I came to love the flow and challenge of creating them. The final list feels personal, and that sense of ownership is exactly what we hoped participants would also experience.

Using AI can sometimes feel removed from the self,passive, with the output dictated entirely by the system. In 1,000 Titles, participants are co-authors. We act as mediators between human imagination and AI, ensuring the system doesn’t overwhelm the participant’s artistic voice. Their choices, ideas, and physical interactions all shape the final work. Each title is unique, printed only once, and permanently claimed by the artwork it inspires.

“Shadowplay shows that AI doesn’t have to be distant or mechanical. By grounding it in physical action and real-time response, it creates a space where technology feels more like dialogue than automation” (Vladyslav Filon, 2025).

Behind the scenes, there was also some very clever technical work by Roger and Joe to make the whole system seamless. Each title card carried a QR code that loaded its unique prompt list into PromptTank. Once a work was generated, we captured a still image, and it is automatically uploaded it to the gallery. The postcard provided participants with a QR link to their exhibited piece. This blend of analogue prompts and digital infrastructure kept the experience fluid, immediate, and personal.

Closing Thoughts

By the end of Sunday, we were tired but exhilarated. The effort of transporting and setting everything up was real, but so too was the buzz of being there, working with such a brilliant audience, and watching the gallery of 1,000 Titles come alive.

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us, experimented, and brought their imagination into the process. You can still explore the evolving gallery online here.