Client
DMJX - School project
Type
Interactive Storytelling
Date & Duration
March 2026, 1 week
Tools
Touchdesigner
MadMapper
Adobe Photoshop
Link
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Description
An interactive installation for H.C. Andersen's The Snow Queen - bringing the story's emotions to life through abstract visuals and projection mapping.
Breaking down The Snow Queen into emotions, environments, symbols and sensory elements rather than narrative structure.
Collecting references around ice, translucency, frozen spaces and dreamlike environments to define the visual atmosphere.
Testing how lace curtains, translucent materials and reflective surfaces could transform the space into an immersive environment.
Building the physical installation using translucent plastic, lace curtains and a handmade “ice mirror”.
Projection mapping a beating heart onto the mirror, referencing Kaj’s frozen heart from the fairytale.
Testing the interactive installation and how projections changes around the visitor’s body.
Spending hours in touchdesinger making videos inspired by emotions, memories and dream sequences
The final installation
This project was created as a group school project in collaboration with H.C. Andersen's House. The installation retells The Snow Queen not through narrative, but through emotion, translating the coldness, chaos and frozen heart of the story into a sensory physical space. We built the visuals in TouchDesigner, creating abstract videos representing the feelings of the fairytale rather than its plot. The videos were projected onto a handmade "ice mirror" - white cardboard assembled to resemble a frozen surface, alongside plastic sheeting and white lace curtains, giving the space a dreamlike, wintry atmosphere. Using MadMapper, we projection mapped a video of a beating heart onto the mirror, referencing Kaj, whose heart turns to ice in the story. The installation is motion-triggered and interactive: when a visitor sits in the chair and remains still for three seconds, the projections activate. Surrounding them in ice and chaos. The stillness required to trigger it mirrors the emotional paralysis of the story itself.