"Plato's [Al]legory of the Cave" has won Best in Show at the Expanded Play Gallery during Expanded 2026, the Conference on Animation and Interactive Art held as part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2026 in Linz, Austria, September 9–13.

The team includes Sam Chin from Responsive Environments, Cathy Fang from Fluid Interfaces, Ruipeng Wang from Critical Matter, and collaborators from Harvard GSD and MIT CSAIL.

The interactive installation extends Plato's Allegory of the Cave, featuring an LLM-controlled character who exists only as a shadow. A physical light switch invites interaction — flipping it on illuminates the stage and awakens the shadow man, whose singular goal is to turn off the light that defines his existence. Humans place objects in his path to obstruct him as the cycle repeats, and he discovers changes to his world that he cannot comprehend. The project was among 13 selected to exhibit at the Expanded Play Gallery.

The Expanded Conference focuses on academic papers in the field of Expanded Animation and Interactive Art that explore media expression at the intersection of art, technology, and society.