Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Digital Shadow Theater

264 Artists’ Statements messages (on an average of 2–3 a month) than I do public comments. Thank you for sharing. As a “melting pot caucasian American” I envy your sense of heritage and desire to share it with your children, I wish I had such a treasure to share with mine. I don’t know what is right or wrong, but sometimes, I think as “Americans,” the end to discrimination will only occur when we are all mixed into beautiful shades of tan. —Glass Houses [6] New houseguests are always welcome, as are return visitors. Glass Houses can be accessed via the California Museum of Photography at and at the Long Beach Museum of the Arts. References and Notes 1. Glass Houses (1997), web site created at the University of California, Riverside. Here I quote an excerpt that appears on the screen, which can be accessed from the family room. 2. I use the term “modern” before “Chicana” to focus on the ideologies of the changing Chicana feminism of the 1990s. 3. This quote is from an excerpt that appears on the screen, which can be accessed from the upstairs bedroom. 4. This quote is from an excerpt that appears on the screen, which can be accessed from the dressing room. 5. This quote is from an excerpt that appears on the screen, which can be accessed from the front entrance. 6. This quote is taken from a personal E-mail message I received from a houseguest on 12 March 2000. Bibliography Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands (San Franciso, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 1987). Anzaldua, Gloria. Making Face, Making Soul (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 1990). Castillo-Speed, Lillian. Latina: Women Voices from the Borderlands (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). Cisneros, Sandra. House on Mango Street (Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press, 1994). Lippard, Lucy R. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990). Lippard, Lucy R. Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984). Lovejoy, Margot. Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989). Meyer, Pedro. Truths & Fictions: A Journey from Documentary to Digital Photography (New York: Aperture, 1995). Spender, Dale. Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace (North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, 1995). BEYOND TRADITION AND MODERNITY: DIGITAL SHADOW THEATER Ugur Güdükbay, Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, 06533 Bilkent Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: . Fatih Erol, Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, 06533 Bilkent Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: . Nezih Erdogan, Department of Graphics Design, Bilkent University, 06533 Bilkent Ankara, Turkey. E-mail: . Received 13 December 1999. Accepted for publication by Roger F. Malina. The first performances of Karagöz (Karagheus), the traditional Turkish Shadow Theater, date back to the 16th century [1,2]. It was one of the most popular forms of entertainment until the late 1950s. Legend has it that Karagöz and Hacivat were two masons whose unending conversations were so entertaining that they slowed down the construction of a mosque, to such an extent that the Sultan decreed their execution . It was a Sufi leader who invented the shadowplay, Karagöz, to console the Sultan who deeply regretted what he had done. Thus, the story also shows an example of how art functions as a consolation for loss. The mode of representation in Karagöz is in contrast with traditional narrative forms of the West. The western narrative presents itself as real and hence is illusory. Karagöz, however, is non-illusory and self-reflexive in the sense that it quite often makes references to its fictitious nature, stressing the fact that what the spectators are viewing is not real but imaginary. We designed a software program that would digitally animate Karagöz characters . One of our aims was to show how traditional forms can be adapted to contemporary media; also we wanted to demonstrate how Karagöz can perhaps force the new media to develop new capabilities of artistic expression. The software, Karagöz, uses hierarchical modeling [3] to animate two-dimensional characters containing body parts and joints between these parts. Once the parts are defined, they are aggregated...