The Use of a Motion Capture Facility to Capture the Puppeteer and Puppets’ Movements in Wayang Kulit Kelantan Performance

Abstract

The Kelantan Malay shadow play, a local cultural heritage in Malaysia is threatened with imminent extinction. There have been no significant attempts made at preserving this important traditional art form and it is clear that with the current situation in Malaysia and the low level of official support, Wayang Kulit Kelantan is unlikely to last long. Some researchers have suggested that this form of theatre be digitized into the cyber world so that it can be watched on the digital screen. The digitisation of Wayang Kulit Kelantan will promote the art form and also indirectly help to preserve it in alternative media. One of the major problems faced by the traditional Wayang Kulit Kelantan is that of disseminating the technique of puppeteer. Based on a closed system of individual attachment or discipleship, the art of puppeteer has been traditionally passed down to direct descendants of the master puppeteers. This system of handling down Wayang Kulit Kelantan is no longer practised by the few puppeteers who are still active. The art of puppeteer is not well-documented because on the whole the older generations of practitioners have been reluctant to share their knowledge with outsiders. However, since Wayang Kulit performances cannot sustain the livelihood of puppeteers in Malaysia, not many people venture into this traditional performing art; even the offspring of puppeteers are not very keen to carry on with it. This paper presents the use of a motion capture facility to capture and preserve the movements of an acting puppeteer and puppets in a simulated Wayang Kulit Kelantan performance. This experiment was carried out in University Putra Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, in the year 2011. The captured data was then transferred into a virtual Wayang Kulit Kelantan performance to simulate its shadow images.