Google Shadow Art: AI-Powered Hand Gesture Game for Lunar New Year
Google launched Shadow Art, an AI-powered web app, on February 5, 2019, to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year and the transition from the Year of the Dog to the Year of the Pig. The app uses TensorFlow.js to recognize hand gestures via the user's camera, matching them to zodiac animal silhouettes. It aims to raise awareness about shadow puppetry, an intangible cultural heritage. The article also reviews Speak News, a paid iOS app ($5.99) that reads news aloud via RSS feeds and integrates with Siri, and highlights six georeferenced audio apps by artist Halsey Burgund (Hotel Dreamy, re~verse, Bog People, Unreserved, From Here to Where, Patient Translations), which collect and share voice recordings from users on themes like dreams, medical histories, and travel, with location data used in installations.
Key facts
- Google Shadow Art launched on February 5, 2019, for the Chinese Lunar New Year.
- The app uses TensorFlow.js to recognize hand gestures via the user's camera.
- Users reproduce hand gestures to reveal zodiac animal silhouettes.
- Shadow Art aims to preserve shadow puppetry as intangible cultural heritage.
- Speak News is a paid iOS app ($5.99) that reads news via RSS feeds and integrates with Siri.
- Halsey Burgund created six audio apps: Hotel Dreamy, re~verse, Bog People, Unreserved, From Here to Where, Patient Translations.
- Burgund's apps collect voice recordings from users on dreams, medical histories, and travel.
- The recordings are georeferenced and used in Burgund's installations.
Entities
Artists
- Halsey Burgund
- Simona Caraceni
Institutions
- Artribune
- Harvard
Locations
- Buffalo
- Denver
- Harvard