The human hand is a fascinating piece of nature's ingenuity. Over years, hand gestures have led to the creation of many art forms like hand-shadows. Hand gestures or Mudras also form an integral part of Asian dance forms like Bharatnatyam(India) and Sri-NuanSri-Nuan(Thailand). Hand gestures also form a complex language in contemporary music styles like Rapping. Seacrits in a box is an attempt to create another art form by correlating different hand gestures to sea critters found in the deep ocean. Thus, the user will be able to use different hand gestures in order to create a sea critter that corresponds to this gesture.

Background
-Hand Shadows by Henry Bursill
-Gap:Sound of Color http://www.blind.com/work/gap-sound-of-color-bw
-Philip Worthington's Shadow Monsters http://www.worthersoriginal.com/viki/#page=shadowmonsters
-Java Neural Network Framework

Audience
General audience

User Scenario
1) The user comes to a black box on a table. In front of the table, there is a projection of deep sea water on the floor.
2) There are critters of the deep swimming in the sea
3) The user puts his hand in the black box and creates a shape with the hand. These shapes are pre-determined.
4) The computer recognizes the shape(using neural networks) and create a critter corresponding to the shape in the sea projection

Implementation
- Projections
- Black box with an embedded camera
- Processing
- Java


Conclusion
The beauty of Computer generated art lies in its simplicity