Shadow lamps to connect friends by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu

The system called Teleshadow turns the image of one of your friends into shadow outlines, projected inside of a small decorative lamp, showing what your friends are up to at home. Creator Shunpei Yasuda aimes to create a real connection between live video and static images, and says he got the idea from actual Japanese history. The post-graduate student in Media Design at Keio University, says the paper walls that have been in japanese houses for ages preserve some privacy, while the shadows casted on paper by people movement act as a reminder of a person's presence. That's exactly what Teleshadow does : keeps some privacy, while permanently reinforcing this presence between rooms that might be cities away from each other. Mr. Yasuda exlains the traditional design of the lamp : "As this is a new media that fits our daily life, it was important to make it as a piece of furniture". The little invention is built out of a projector, set in the lamp's base, which receives input from the camera mounted in the friends house. After that, the software reduces image output to a point where the human body only appears to be a shadow. The number of friends a Teleshadow can support is four. Each of these four friends has a little card assigned. When one of the cards is inserted in the base of the lamp, it shows the friend corresponding to it. The Teleshadow, unlike live video streams sets an amount of privacy for the user by hiding some details, that a person would rather keep secret, according to Mr. Yasuda.

by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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