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Picture Palace 

A Design Innovation

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​What follows is the story behind the making of Picture Palace - how it came to exist, and why.​

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In 2025, I set out to make something that didn't exist - an experience/object for adults that was beautiful enough to display and alive enough to play with.  I had z-e-r-o understanding of product design. I spent a year solving the lighting, the form, the friction, the utility. I wanted to reintroduce animation for adults in a playful and beautiful experience for the home. The one thing i did not want is clunky, obsolete  kinetic object which somehow an adult simply just forgets after time. Furthermore, the digital  and screen-aspect of animation was not fulfilling anymore, so I was forced by my own need to create a tactile, luminous analog archive that functions just as well as a lamp. First, I started experimenting with various kinds of  illumination and at the same time- jjust by chance- a visual of  old French cinematic technique from the 1900's  called Ombro cinema visited me....and that was the starting point.

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The starting point was simple: illumination and transparent acetate film. At some point while working with both, it became clear they could sit together - that light passing through film could become something alive. Around the same time Ombro cinema came into the picture and was understood properly. It works on a simple principle: a still image, when viewed through a moving grid, appears to animate. Any image, coded with the same animation interference, should come to life- any image! No electricity, no screen - just optics. Applied here to a small, handheld device, still very much in progress at the time.​​​​​​​​​ The idea was that it could live quietly on a shelf as a lit, framed piece of art - roughly the size of a small photograph. And the moment someone picked it up and moved any of the slides, it would become something else entirely: the image would come to life.

That was the magic. And that was what this was always reaching for.

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​​​Lighting was the first real difficulty. It needed to be thin, and completely cool to the touch - because people would hold this in their hands. That combination is harder to find than it sounds. Then the shape, weight, and thickness had to work both ways: comfortable to hold during play, settled enough to leave alone on a surface.

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​​​​​​​​​The slide was its own problem. How much resistance was right? How little movement should it take before the image responded? The answer turned out to be almost none -  the moment the slide shifts even slightly, the hidden optical system inside reacts, and still artwork begins to move. Figuring that out took the longest. 

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Once it did, the rest followed.​

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​Working with transparent acetate also opened something unexpected.  Layering the sheets revealed new possibilities - multi-layered techniques and visual conceptions that are still being explored.​​​​​​ Some will find their way into future work entirely. But even within Picture Palace, this layering left its mark: several collections carry more than one story inside them, image upon image, depth upon depth, they create their own a small little world.

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​​​​​​By then, the object had become something larger than a device - an experience that cannot be easily categorized. And as it grew, people arrived on their own: fabricators, carpenters, craftspeople, each skilled in exactly what was needed. The solitude of working alone gave way to something else - disciplined, skilled hands joining a process that had, until then, been entirely one person's.