Ken Jacobs’ two-and-three-dimensional shadow play, “ ‘Slow Is Beauty’—Rodin,” was performed over several weekends in the fall of 1974 in a loft at the Idea Warehouse on Reade Street in New York City. The central aim of Jacobs is to make “depth recognition an esthetic event as.is done in dance and sculpture, to tune the audience into the sensuality of depth intervals.”

The traditional shadow play is done by backlighting puppets, hands, or actors who perform behind a translucent screen, curtain, or panel. The effect is flat and two-dimensional. To achieve a three-dimensional effect, Jacobs uses two opposingly polarized sources of light, each of which causes the object before it to cast a shadow. The audience thus sees two separate shadows, which may overlap to some extent, for one object. When the viewer puts on a pair of polarized glasses with eyepieces of opposing polarities, he sees only one image with each eye.