Children's Museum Tucson
Color Shadow Theatre
Tall Ship Productions designed and installed the Color Shadow Theatre lighting system for Children's Museum Tucson's Playing with Light gallery. Fixture placement was planned with museum staff; the museum provided the room's seating, branding, and other gallery elements.
The Challenge
The museum needed a durable, kid-friendly light exhibit that makes additive color mixing visible and playful for visitors up to about age 10 — strong enough for a busy downtown gallery, simple to experience without staff coaching, and smart enough to invite people in when the room is empty, then hand control to visitors when someone steps into the space.
The Process
- Step 1Designed and installed a ceiling-mounted RGB lighting system of three ColorKey moving-head fixtures, coordinating placement with museum staff so beams land cleanly on the gallery wall beneath the museum logo.
- Step 2Built custom DMX control software on a Raspberry Pi with a presence sensor — the system runs an attract mode when the room is empty, then shifts into interactive mode when visitors arrive.
- Step 3Commissioned the exhibit on site so red, green, and blue beams mix correctly and cast cyan, magenta, and yellow shadows during play.
The Result
Installed in June 2026, the Color Shadow Theatre turns the Playing with Light gallery into a hands-on stage for light science. Kids and families step into overlapping colored beams, see themselves cast in secondary-color shadows, and discover how color mixes — with the system quietly managing attract vs. interactive modes in the background.