wayangkancil

Meeting Dr. Ashraf reminded me of this video I came across a few weeks back – looks like someone tried to build a software to catalogue Wayang Kulit puppets:

Pak Surjono, an Engineering prof I met in Indonesia in December, was in the process of building a “story-generator” software that could preserve the stories narrated by the dhalangs (most are passed on orally and not written down). Technology can be used to facilitate different stages of puppet making and performance – making it (ideally) more accessible and less intimidating to everyone.

Also, here are several links to websites on Indonesian culture (Which would probably give a more in-depth perspective of Indonesian performance than mine!)

1. Matthew Isaac Cohen: Indonesianperformance.blogspot.com

Dr. Cohen is currently a senior lecturer at the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies from the Royal Holloway, University of London. He has spent six years in Indonesia, and is familiar with both the theoretical and practical aspects of Wayang shadow puppet theatre. You can read more about him here.

2. Wisnu: wayangkancilwisnu.wordpress.com

Wisnu is a very helpful friend I met in Jogja. Recently, he has also started several other blogs on Indonesian cultural resources – you can visit one of them here.

Of course, for all the merits of digital conservation, it’s most necessary for a cultural artefact to be understood in the context of the society that it’s a part of.

Used to the architecture of shelves brimming with books, Dr. Golam Ashraf’s office came as a surprise to me. It was the first lecturer’s office I’d seen that had shelves lined with toys: there were action figures of Batman, Ben-ten…He must have an secret obsession, I thought.

I was proven wrong when I found that he used these models as the basis for his

Dr. Golam Ashraf, School of Computing, NUS

research experiments. Born in Kolkata, Dr. Ashraf had his first encounter with puppets at a school festival. That led him and his friends to begin a small group called “Precocious puppets”, which even had a performance broadcast on television. He eventually began another puppetry group (also called “Precocious puppets”) when he came to Singapore at 18.

See that pair of glasses? He pointed out a pair of safety goggles – it has a sensor stripped on so it can function as a remote in games. It costs less than five dollars to make! By lowering the bar through technology, he commented, more people now have access to art forms and games that were previously thought difficult because of the dexterity required in their manipulation or construction. Puppets can now be designed, manipulated; even collaboratively designed and manipulated, through the use of new software and mobile technologies.

Talk about serious fun.

(P.s. you can read more about him here)