The number of active shadow puppet troupes in Malaysia have dwindled to around eight, following a ban on shadow puppetry in the 1990s in its home state of Kelantan. In the face of fading heritage due to film, television and social media, the multimedia lecturer said he hoped robotic technology can help shadow puppets to be seen more often “whenever and wherever”.Įfforts to preserve the art form have been hampered in recent years not just by a lack of public interest, but also by criticism in the Muslim-majority country that the stories and characters surrounding shadow puppet performances, often based on Hindu gods and epics like the Ramayana, were "un-Islamic". The love for shadow puppets' ability to tell stories of ordinary people through dialogue, music and visuals prompted the 33-year-old to start the project in July 2021 to “save” the heritage with a government grant of Malaysian ringgit 20,000 (160,000 baht). Unlike traditional shadow puppetry, which includes meticulous efforts to craft puppet figurines out of buffalo skin and lengthy rehearsals among dozens of artists, this modern animatronic show uses 3D-printed characters controlled by robotics with their movements choreographed and programmed by one person - its young creator, Ahnaf Hakimi Ahmad. Shadow puppetry is an art form that requires nothing more than a light source, a surface to project that light onto, and a shadow-casting object that moves between the two. Its origins can be traced all the way back to the Western Han period, more than 2,000 years ago. It is the performance of " wayang kulit", or shadow puppetry, a theatrical art form once popular across Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia. Shadow puppetry is an ancient Chinese art form.
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