Magic Sandpit // 2023

A tourable interactive installation of vibrant projected imagery

The Magic Sandpit is an interactive installation of projected imagery onto sand, encouraging all ages to explore colourful imagery through physical play.

This installation designed to provide multi-sensory experiences for pre-school and early years children. Commissioned by The Library Presents to tour Cambridgeshire’s libraries, it projects images onto sand in layers and as the sand is played with, a depth sensor detects the changes made to the surface of the sand, allowing the children to create amazing colourful, tactile creations as well as dig around to find hidden designs. The sandpit has been constructed to look like a wishing well and is safe for children to use.

The Sandpit was contructed and developed as an R&D project in Autumn/Winter 2022, working closely with local craftspeople in King’s Lynn to ensure the structure was safe and engaging. The content was developed by Collusion’s Savannah Andrews using Tagtool software, creating colour mixes and animated characters that could be projected in layers at different depths onto the sand. The Sandpit was tested as part of a two week residency at Wisbech Library from 17 January to 01 February 2023. As part of the development of the Sandpit, a group of students from the College of West Anglia took part in user testing, providing feedback as part of a work experience activity.

The Magic Sandpit is an adaption of an original concept, the Augmented Reality Sandbox by Oliver Kreylos, UC Davis. This was extended and adapted by TellArt Terraform table for a 2018 installation in the V&A museum. Both these applications focus on terrain modelling and environment science.

Resources

See our Digital Magic Sandpit Padlet for further inspiration and ideal hardware and software to use.