The PiLi Inc. manager Wen-tza Huang, the NARL president Wen-Hua Chen, the NSC deputy minister Cheng-Hong Chen, and the NARL-NCHC director general Guo-Ning Chiang (from left to right) with the puppet characters.

Taiwan traditional hand puppet (po-te-hi in Taiwanese or bu-dai-xi in mandarin Chinese) consists of an embroidered "cloth sack" topped with a painted face. It integrates the elegance of silk costume, the deftness of the body movements manipulated by the palm or fingers, and the fantastic narration of puppet dialogue. The fascination of different emotive expressions is created by many movable parts of the face, involving small and subtle movements. The Taiwan puppetry is performed on a highly decorative stage and accompanied by an ensemble of Oriental string, wind and percussion instruments. And it is an important cultural asset for the country, and one of the most sophisticated puppetry in the world.

Inspired by the runaway success of the digital three-dimensional (3-D) version of “Avatar”, James Cameron’s recent science-fiction epic, by the use of performance capture technology, the PiLi International Multimedia Inc. has eagerly sought to cooperate with the NARL’s National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) in developing the cost-effective tangible interface for Taiwan’s 3-D puppet films. The aim of this collaboration is to invigorate the traditional art and to bring it onto the international stage. After an agreement was reached, a five-minute experimental film featuring the legendary puppet character So-hoan-chin who leads half the culture field and military domain was produced. The film was extremely vivid, just as if the puppet character jumping out from the screen. And the outcome promises to substantially lower the production cost and time in creating future 3-D puppet films.

The NARL-NCHC, Taiwan’s only national-level supercomputing center, is equipped with advanced supercomputing and storage capacity, and has developed scientific visualization technologies. In the past decade, the NARL-NCHC has applied its outstanding visualization technologies in the fields of biotechnology, environmental disaster prevention, geographic information system, and engineering simulations. And the recent collaboration with the PiLi Inc. gives the NARL-NCHC an opportunity in applying 3-D imaging technology, virtual reality, augmented reality and video storage in cultural and creative industries for the first time. It is expected that the venture of this kind will be further expanded to other areas of cultural and creative industries in the near future.