Taiwanese Puppeteer Uses NFT To Introduce Traditional Art To The Modern Era

JAKARTA - A group of Taiwanese puppeteers or puppeteers wants to use non-fungible tokens (NFT), to help bring their traditional art form into the modern era and keep it relevant for new audiences.

NFTs are crypto assets that represent digital items such as pictures, videos or even land in a virtual world, with some of them rising in price so quickly in the last year that speculators around the world sometimes "flip" them within days to make a profit.

Pili International Multimedia, which makes Taiwan's longest-running television show featuring puppets at its studio in Yunlin County, central Taiwan, said it wanted to use NFT as another source of income.

"The imagination that everyone has today about the online world is evolving so fast that we can barely comprehend it," said Seika Huang, brand director of Pili, as quoted by Reuters.

"Instead of sitting on the sidelines, the best approach is to go ahead and fully understand what is going on. This is the fastest way to catch up," added Huang.

Pili has thousands of glove puppet characters, a traditional part of Taiwan's street entertainment culture that spins colorful and stylish stories about courage and heroic romance, often with martial arts.

A cameraman films a puppeteer in action during a filming session of the Pili puppet show, which began in the 80s, in Yunlin, Taiwan.

Two Pili puppy characters battle each other, with real fire as special effects, during a demonstration at their film studio in Yunlin.

The dolls are painstakingly crafted, and expertly maneuvered throughout the filming of the show, with tailor-made costumes and carefully styled strands of hair.

Pili said four of their doll characters were made into digital versions and 30,000 sets have been sold as NFT.