The Cave
The Cave (2025) is an interactive installation inspired by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
Using color filters and a remotely controlled flashlight, the installation invites you to experience the story of Prometheus,
a figure from Greek mythology, from different perspectives.
How we perceive the world is only a fraction of the whole;
this installation challenges you to question your own view.
Makers:
Chenoa de Boer: Audio & Technology
Fadi Lemqaddem: Light & Technology
Ilsu Smits: Product Designer
Isis Buskermolen: Design & Story
Xena Gijzen: Animation & Story
Meaning of The Cave
The Cave draws directly from Plato’s story, the Allegory of the Cave, illustrating how limited our senses are in experiencing “reality.”
In the allegory of the cave, people are chained and can see only the shadows on the wall, a distorted reflection of a world they have never fully perceived.Plato’s story is inspired by the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mortals.This “fire” allowed people to become more than just passive viewers, it opened up their ability to perceive, create, and shape their own future.
Using color filters and RGB projections, the installation physically transforms these metaphors into a rich, interactive experience.
As a visitor, you put on a pair of tinted glasses and enter a space where everyone sees their own unique version of their surroundings. Some details become visible while others disappear. This highlights how our perception is subjective, influenced by our senses, context, and point of view, and questions whether we can ever find a single, universal reality.
Red filter
What you see approximately with each filter
Green filter
Green filter
Blue filter
The proces and technical approach
The Cave brings this concept to life through a combination of interactive media, color filtering, custom lighting, and multichannel audio.
Programs used:
Adobe Creative Cloud, Blender, Touchdesigner and Arduino.
Color Filters:
To appreciate what’s happening during the experience, it's helpful to know how color filters and projections work. We use RGB lighting to create different perspectives.
Blue light emits blue; red emits red; but when blue and red combine, they form magenta.
The color filter adds a new layer to this, blocking certain colors of light while allowing others to pass through.
For example, a green filter will block blue and red, letting you see only green. Or secondary colors that contain blue, like yellow and cyan.
Using this principle, we can project a large film on all the walls of the room, but depending on your filter, you will see only a small part of the whole.
Technical Flashlight:
In the experience we also have a flashlight that is involved in the story (the symbolic fire).
The flashlight only gives out one of the three primary colors. Because of this only one person is able to effectively use/see the flashlight to reveal the unlit words somewhere in the room. As the story progresses, the flashlight changes colors.
This is done remotely. Inside the flashlight there is an esp32 connected to a 7 ring led circle. Through esp-now we change the color of the flashlight when needed for the story.
Sound Design:
For the audio, we aimed to recreate the sound of a large, echoing cave. Using Touch Designer, we built a simple but flexible audio setup. The system allows switching between live input and pre-recorded audio, which is routed through an Audio VST CHOP with a delay plugin to add a spacious, echo-like effect.
We also added a separate background sound layer for ambient textures, which plays alongside the main signal. The result is an immersive sound environment with depth and atmosphere.