CoPuppet: Collaborative Interaction in Virtual Puppetry

Puppetry is one of the most ancient forms of representation, diffused all over the world in different shapes, degrees of freedom in movements and forms of manipulation. Puppets make an ideal environment for creative collaboration, inspiring the development of supporting technologies (from carpentry to digital worlds). The CoPuppet project explores the possibilities offered by multimodal and cooperative interaction, in which performers, or even audience members, are called to affect different parts of a puppet through gestures and voice. In particular, we exploit an existing architecture for the creation of multimodal interfaces to develop the CoPuppet framework for designing, deploying and interacting during performances in which virtual puppets are steered by multiple multimodal controls. The paper illustrates the steps needed to define performances, also showing the integration of digital and real puppetry for the case of wayang shadowplay.