FWD: Call DIGITAL PUPPETRY

DIGITAL PUPPETRY

Digital puppetry, the virtual counterpart of traditional puppetry,
deals with manipulation and performance of animated figures and
characters. Typically, performance and rendering occurs in real-time,
which makes digital puppetry distinct from conventional character
animation. Also, digital puppetry often includes novel interfaces for
expressive control.

CALL
DAW07 is seeking work that links traditional puppetry with its
virtual counterpart, digital puppetry. This can be defined as any
application from shadow casting, meta-puppets using speech-synthesis,
and 3d avatars amongst others that employ character animation,
expression, and gestural control for artistic purposes.
DAW07 particularly encourage submissions of performance work that is
also suitable for children, as our intention is to create a special
daytime session during DAW07 festival for children of various ages.
Example types of Digital Puppets in consideration:

Digitally Enhanced Puppetry - This refers to any type of traditional
puppetry such as hand puppets, marionettes to shadow puppets that are
in some way enhanced by digital technologies. These might include
speech synthesis, motion tracking, and physically linked sensor
networks amongst others.

Waldo puppetry - A digital puppet is controlled onscreen by a
puppeteer who uses a telemetric input device connected to the
computer. The digital puppet therefore responds to the movement of
the input in a corresponding manner. A keyboard, a mouse and haptic
game controllers have been often used as simple telemetric input
devices.

Motion capture puppetry - Also known as mocap puppetry. Here, a
puppet or a human body is employed as a physical representation of a
digital puppet. The digital puppet is then manipulated by a puppeteer
and the movements of the object or body are matched correspondingly
by the digital puppet in real-time. Often the actual manipulation of
the puppet is used as part of the work, bringing the real and the
virtual together in real time.

Machinima - This refers to production technique that can be used to
perform with digital puppets. As a production technique, Machinima
concerns the rendering of computer-generated imagery (CGI) using low-
end 3D engines in video games. Scenes are often acted out in real-
time using characters and settings within a game. The action is
recorded and later edited in to a finished film. This technique can
often be used as backdrop scenery with analog puppets in the
foreground - thus creating and making use of the possibilities of
artificial reality.
Note: The DAW07 team is considering using large-scale urban
projection at an outside location to present the digital puppetry show.

DEADLINE
Friday, 2nd March 2007.
Notification of acceptance of proposals will be sent out on or before
Friday, 2nd April 2007.
For more information regarding the call please write to: daw-
[email protected]
For more on the Digital Art Weeks 07, please see: HYPERLINK "http://
www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/"http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/