“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artefacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new.
…Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be…The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity”.
– The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin, 1936
(1936! I wonder what he’d say if he saw the technological advances today)
1. Going (Digital) Native: The Necessity of Technology in Building Audiences
A lament that echoed in conversations with Pak Surjono, Pak Eddy, and Mbah Ledjar was the lack of young audiences to watch their performances. In order for the Wayang Kancil tradition to be sustained in the long run, it is crucial for practitioners to build new audiences.
It’s refreshing how open Mbah Ledjar in particular is to the idea of extending Wayang theatre through time and space with the use of multimedia technology. It seems that he prioritizes the need for the public to be educated about Wayang Kancil – the ‘diffusion’ of his work – as opposed to the need to strictly adhere to the conventions of ‘traditional’ performance. By all accounts, the 80-year old Wayang Kancil is an innovation that broke away from the traditional performance of the 200-year old Wayang Kulit – this possibly explains the flexibility that practitioners give to experimentation in their craft.
As Dani (a Wayang Beber pracitioner) remarked, the only way to be contemporary is to be rooted in tradition.
Children invited to watch the Wayang Kancil performance
Another method of sustaining the Wayang Kancil through building new audiences is through staging performances for child-audiences. In the first Wayang Kancil performance I watched (insert hyperlink) while I was in Yogyakarta, three primary schools from around the area were invited to watch in order to nurture a lifelong love for Wayang theatre in the long run.
2. Imagineering: Engineering a Radical Innovation of Story Collection
Pak Surjono
AKAKOM Calendar (designed by students)
Pak Surjono is a professor of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems at Universitas Gadja Madah, and at AKAKOM (the Academy of Computing) Yogyakarta. He is also a dhalang. His interests in both fields of engineering and Wayang Kulit converge in his latest project: the creation of software to collect stories that can be stored up for future generations. This software is certainly a worthwhile investment for future generations, and will go a long way in ‘reproducing’ Wayang theatre.
I’ve also found an National University of Singapore equivalent of Pak Surjono in terms of research interests and skills in Dr. Golan Ashraf, a professor in the School of Computing with a background in Engineering and Computer Science. In addition to conducting research on knowledge-based character synthesis, motion editing, and interactive stories for babies, he also has produced and directed theatre productions. (He even started a group called “Precocious puppets”!). His biography states that he ‘weaves together knowledge gathered from street theater (Badal Sircar – Kolkata), puppetry & clay modeling (Shyamli Khastagir – Shantiniketan, Bengal), and a variety of computing concepts (animation, parallel processing, data management.)’.
I’m impressed by how both professors are able to utilize knowledge and expertise from both new media technologies and old media landscape to tell stories (talk about radical inter-disciplinarity!). Each media has its unique affordances, market, and cultural status. It’s the interaction of both communication channels that defines the broader contemporary and historic media landscape.
3. Old in New: Keeping Tradition Alive through Trans-media Storytelling
- Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
Trans-media storytelling. In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins defines the term as ‘the integration of entertainment experiences across a range of different media platforms…storytelling that immerses an audience in a story’s universe through a number of dispersed entry points, providing a comprehensive and coordinated experience of a complex story’.
Trans-media storytelling is also acknowledged to be a 360-degree approach to
Trans-media Storytelling: The Matrix
storytelling – 360 content, 360 platforms, and with the potential for the full 360 experience. The basic premise of trans-media is that different media channels can be utilized to communicate different elements of the story. Its success relies on fragmenting a narrative and making each platform do what it does best, which in turn, extends the life and longevity of the story. The bottom line, argues [trans-media designer, consultant, and PhD researcher] Christy Dena, is that with a solid trans-media strategy in place, ‘everything remains connected by the same central narrative and theme, but each channel excels at what it does best, rather than bending to fit a central idea that’s being repurposed for multi-platforms’. This means that narratives and characters are fragmented and ideas and begin to take on new life of their own as they are virtually (literally) owned and driven by community.
Since trans-media experiences are generated through co-creation of a product by different users in different mediums (e.g. Ophelia in Hamlet extending her life on the stage through the creation of a blog journaling her thoughts and feelings) rather than adaptation from one medium to another (e.g. a filmed version of the play), they will be able to reach wider and more diverse audiences.
“The value of a good story remains and is vital; the question is will you prefer to read, listen, watch, or do?”
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