Assistant Professor, Semi Ryu

Department of Kinetic Imaging, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA.

e-mail: sryu2@vcu.edu

Abstract

“YONG-SHIN-GUD” is a virtual interactive puppet performance driven by sound input, such as storytelling and musical instruments. Inspired by the Korean Shaman ritual, “Gud”, this live puppetry consists of 3 components: the virtual world, the real space of the performance room, and a sound activated puppet, "Virtual Shaman," who mediates between the virtual and the real. This project explores the most intimate and spiraling connections inherent in human-computer interaction, based upon the yin/yang theory and the Shaman ritual. The artist’s flute playing and the audience’s storytelling motivate the puppet’s mouth and movements on screen with real time. The virtual puppet constantly speaks and sings back to the puppeteer, like continuous echoes and mirror reflections.

Interactive technology is an ongoing expression of human desire that has been continuously manifested from the days of primitive rituals to contemporary cyberspace. Revealing its hidden essence, historical presence and spiritual value would be the next paradigm of computer interactive art practice.

Body

1. From Linear to Spiral

This live puppetry produces a true form of interactive cycles based on an understanding of the yin/yang process. Yin and Yang continuously exchange their position side-by-side without hierarchy, like the puppet and the puppeteer do in my puppetry. Each component penetrates into the other side through a membrane and is transformed into its opponent in cycles. My puppetry applies this concept to ongoing real-time lip-sync process, as the real puppeteer becomes the virtual puppet and the virtual puppet becomes the real puppeteer in cycles.

For this process, Yong-Shin-Gud requires that the performer keep watching her puppet’s continuous response on screen. The puppet’s response gradually motivates her musical emotional state and story telling imagination. Her instrumental performance and storytelling is inspired by the dynamic inner dialogue between the puppet and herself. For this reason, the puppeteer should face her puppet on the screen while the audience is located between the puppeteer and her puppet. The audience is not only physically, but also spiritually, placed between this spiraling dialogue of the puppet and the puppeteer.

All symbols of becoming are spirals. It is the passage from one mode of being into another which represents cosmic rhythms of interaction and eternal becoming [2]. This can be seen in lunar structure, the phases of the moon and wave, and the movement in cycles shown at the yin/yang ritual. The following steps indicate the procedure of the spiraling ascension of binary relationships:

Spiraling sequence of binary relationships

1. Inter-coexistence: There are no other relationships other than coexistence in space and time [1].

2. Inter-action: There is a physical relationship rather than a logical one.

3. Inter-dependence: By increased interactions, interdependence is also increased and helps create harmony and cooperation.

4.Inter-penetration: Developed interdependence. This is the most active and creative relationship, because it already contains another potential for new change and harmony.

In this sequence, the interactive process gradually rises up to its highest level of inter-penetration. Each binary opposition penetrates through a membrane into the other side and is transformed into its opponent, like the virtual puppet and the real puppeteer do in my puppetry. This is the ultimate stage of shamanic ritual and yin/yang, which evokes our primitive vital function of transformation. Linear flow is entwined by the magnetic force of metamorphosis and finally spirals up to the sky. Such a magical phenomenon is accomplished by the presence of a mediator, the so-called “Shaman.” In Yong-Shin-Gud, the virtual sound- activated puppet is Shaman who mediates between the spiritual world and the mundane, and the virtual and the real. He evokes our repressed functions of the body and helps us to realize our forgotten selves. That’s why, when people talk with the virtual puppet, they often come up with freely improvised and imaginative storytelling that would not be revealed in their ordinary life.

2. From Physical to Spiritual

Interactive technology has primarily been utilized as a physical control device, following the tradition of Cartesian ideology, in which there is complete separation of mind from body with explicit hierarchy. It hasn’t sufficiently explored its gigantic potential as a true interactive medium. From the beginning, this tendency to focus on the physical side of interactive technology has ignored the mental and spiritual attributes of interaction. However, no event can occur without a physical and a mental dimension [3]. Every experience is molded and completed by both the physical and the mental interactive components. Without our mental transformative perceptions, our interactive experience can’t come true. Both the physical and the mental dimensions always come together to fully shape our complete experience of interaction. The physical motive initiates this action, then our mental process fills up the rest of the experience. Maintaining a balance between these two elements is important, but unfortunately, such balance is often neglected in today’s digital interactive art practice. Yong-Shin-Gud, however, demonstrates a different perspective in which the body is also a strong spiritual entity which has been continuously transformed into our binary reflections, seen as objects, images and puppets. The puppetry starts with a simple physical motivational element with which to interact, and then the whole interactive process becomes more and more powerful by the puppeteer’s increasing spiritual engagement with the puppet. This is the magical part of the puppetry, which goes back and forth between the physical motivation and our spiritual activation.

Figure 1. Virtual Shaman: Sound activated puppet

3. From Scenario to Improvisation

“Once upon a time, long time ago…”

This is the opening sentence given to audiences when they interact with the Virtual Shaman before and after the artist’s musical performance. It is the secret interface to open the door of spiritual communication and improvisation. Virtual Shaman is designed for the public, not only for the trained artist and the technician. It is a creative application of a simple technology which works perfectly in every environment. What the audience gets from this puppetry is not only the theory, but also the true interactive experience they can play with.

Everyone who enjoys puppetry can come to the microphone and be a storyteller, a puppeteer, and eventually his/her puppet. The dynamic dialogue between the puppet and the storyteller/puppeteer brings forth the energy of free imagination and improvisation in the storytelling. As in the Shaman ritual, such a spiraling interaction ultimately will erase the line between all the binary pairs, such as artist/audience, reality/virtuality, mundane/spirit and puppet/puppeteer. Yong-Shin-Gud, as a contemporary Shaman ritual, frees all those who are oppressed in our predominantly structure-oriented society.

References

[1] Bak, Jae–Joo. The Theory and Process of I Ching. Chong-Gae Sa, Seong-Nam, Korea, 1999, pp.300-301.

[2] Eliade, Mircea. Symbolism, the Sacred and the Arts. The crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1988, pp.4.

[3] Kim, Sang-il. Hanism as Korean mind: interpretation of Han Philosophy (John B. Cobb, Jr., “Process view on Yin and Yang”). Eastern Academy of Human Sciences, California, 1984, pp.45-47.