The Pepper’s Ghost Holographic Projector V.01.4 was developed as part of the STEAM educational course project called the “Illusionary Art Land”, a collaboration work between “Wawies” Wisnu, YANG Ching-wen (Bing Beng Club), Luyu and Yialin (Tur Ya Kar Elementary & Junior High School teachers) under the framework of The “New Taipei City Museum of Art 110th Annual Art STEAM Lesson Plan Development and Promotion Plan” from August 2021 to May 2022 in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Through the course, students explore basic projection principles of “Pepper’s Ghost illusion” based on the John Henry Pepper technique within the theatre performance of Charles Dickens’s “The Haunted Man” in 1862 to create “holographic ghostly image projection” and re-engineer the installation to enact their own Pepper’s Ghost.

The V.01.4 prototype is developed under several contexts to support a STEAM education course that focuses on the importance of technology as a crucial part of children’s education. The course emphasises making the students more familiar with technology, learning how it works, and eventually working with it rather than simply engaging it as a user. The first determining factor is developing the V.01.4 prototype as a science learning kit, where the students learn how the “Pepper’s Ghost illusion” technique actually works and eventually build a tool to re-enacting it that utilises the law of reflection to create a ghostly image as a reflection of an actual object through a transparent mirror.  The second factor is the need to design to be integrated with digital technology-based devices that are affordable and accessible easily to students in their daily lives, such as the Internet, smartphones, tablets, and other forms of digital devices. Where in this case, those devices are provided by their school as tools for students to learn how to design their own artwork or even make a simple animation as the source image to be projected by Pepper’s Ghost Holographic Projector V.01.4 in the form of a virtual ghostly character.

Driven by the first contexts, The V.01.4 prototype design is developed by re-examining the previous versions of Pepper’s Ghost Projector, especially the mini version of the V.01.3 projector prototype that was designated as an exhibition installation to present certain content. Thus, there was a need to customize the V.01.3 design to meet its development purposes as part of an educational course. The first idea is to bring the V.01.4 mechanism developed based on the V.01.3 design and reduce its mechanism to adopt John Pepper’s installation simplicity that was utilized within “The Haunted Man” performance production in 1862, which only implements a simple transparent screen to enact the ghostly figure illusion. The other thing is the connectivity or interaction between the illusion and the other actors or even the physical environment during the performance that emphasises the illusion’s ghostly appearance. So, besides implementing the transparent screen with a simple mechanism to enact the illusion, the V.01.4 prototype can also be used to present a physical object and the real environment behind the transparent screen.

Meanwhile, following the first context that focused on learning how the Pepper Ghost illusion mechanism works, the second context drives the development of  V.01.4 prototype design as an interactive learning kit in the form of a simple knock-down kit that is easy to build, a simplified version of the Do-It-Yourself installation, which is suitable to be built by students at different education stages whether individually or in-group and enriches them with experiences in design thinking, hands-on operation, as well as improves their problem-solving skills.

Those design contexts drive the V.01.4 development by enhancing and customizing the former V.01.3 prototype design, which is designed to be integrated with an iPad as a digital technology-based device that is affordable and accessible easily nowadays. Within the exploration process from August until November of 2021, the development of the Pepper’s Ghost Holographic Projector With Single Reflector V.01.4 model spread into several developments, such as:

• Following the idea of the Mini V.01.3 design, the V.01.4 is designed for a tablet computer with a 10″ display size as the source image or object. As well as keep using the 3/4 mm plexiglass as the transparent sheet reflector.
• The V.01.4 model is also designed with 2 compartments, which are the illusion mechanism compartment and the holographic projection with the physical object compartment. However, instead of using a flat mirror as the image converter, the V.01.4 model is designed without a mirror element in order to make the mechanism as simple as possible and keep the source image still hidden in the illusion mechanism compartment.
• The other customisation is replacing the stage for the physical object compartment. instead of using a stage to place a physical object, the wall on the projection compartment is being cut and the image will be projected in a hollow place where the audience can see the environment behind the V.01.4 projector box.
• The last customisation of Pepper’s Ghost Holographic Projector With Single Reflector V.01.4 model was designed in the form of a simple knock-down kit that is easy to build.

Those developments brought the first sketch idea of the V.01.4 projector design concept, which is influenced by a shoe box design where easy to find as a common thing in almost every household.

However, after reviewing and building the first prototype, several flawless were found in the construction process. The building process is considered too complicated and takes a lot of time. In other circumstances, since the parts are connected to each other with glue, it appears that the connections tend to be weak and easy to fall apart. It brings a new idea to make the projector box in the form of a simple knock-down as if a puzzle, where each part is connected through a pin and hole system. A system where it can be built easily and can be dismantled after use.