MVCR 1 (1) pp.

115127 Intellect Limited 2010

Metaverse Creativity
Volume 1 Number 1
2010 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/mvcr.1.1.115_1

SEMI RYU
Virginia Commonwealth University

Virtual puppet, my love

impossible
ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

This article expounds upon the convergence of two seemingly disparate psychic
manifestations; namely the mode of Han, a mindset deeply embedded in traditional
Korean culture and the contemporary relationship of a human handler to his or
her avatar in three dimensional virtual environments. As an artist whose artistic
medium is virtual puppetry performed through three dimensional media, the author
has found an extreme state of paradox as a key aspect of her own Korean culture,
embodied by the concept of Han as the paradoxical state of the human psyche, initiated from the micro-politics of body. This article investigates the potential relation
between human and virtual bodies, and avatars and their users in a paradoxical
manner: this is a story of the love impossible.

puppet
avatar
mixed reality
paradox
ritual
performance
metaverse

INTRODUCTION
There is an interesting paradox in Korean thought. One methodology
in Korean Son Buddhism is called Hwadu(Why dharma went to the
east?). Hwadu is a word that cuts off the paths of language and thought. It
completely cuts off all conceivable exits, therefore, one cannot settle down.
Hwadu activates massive doubts: in the state of being lost in complete chaos.
It continuously fights against our tendency to stabilize man-made structures
such as language and rational thought. It is interesting that Hwadu uses language in order to fight against language. It would be painful to stay within
such a problematic structure. It is difficult to live with dilemmas but it is

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equally difficult to continuously fight for them. This is the extreme structure
of paradox.
Paradoxical structures can be seen in layers of mixed reality, as continuous conflicts, emerging between actual/ virtual presence, and man/ machine.
The author perceives a similarity between such states and the Korean clowns
tightrope walking, which looks risky, unstable and unbalanced, continuously
swinging left and right. The clown usually holds a fan in one hand, which
seems to defy the act of balancing, but actually demonstrates a different
philosophy: that of oscillating continuously between balance and unbalance,
in order to find the greater moment of balancing. It is the cosmic tree, which
connects between separated poles: left and right. The taller the cosmic tree
the more unstable it appears, and, paradoxically, the greater its stillness also
appears. It is the paradoxical process: what can be termed as ritual. The
potential relationship between the user and his/ her avatar can be discussed in
this paradoxical context. Its complexity goes far beyond singular expressions
such as control, immersion or interaction.
Potential relationships between subject and object have been the primary
issue in the authors ongoing virtual puppetry projects. What would be the
potential ritual between virtual puppet/puppeteer, and user/avatar? What
would be the height of the cosmic tree in between the two states? What
would be distance between a virtual puppet and a puppeteer? The parameter
of the distance is not only physical, but also emotional, and psychological.
In the romantic sense, it would be a distance between lovers, embroiled in
a continuous process of becoming and farewell. It would be the story of love
impossible.
This article will explore the micro-relationship between puppets and their
puppeteers within the context of love impossible. The Korean cultural psyche
Han will be introduced to explain this tearful story, in an extreme state of grief
but with a fearsome desire for challenging impossibility; the authors virtual
puppet performance Parting on Z will also be introduced within the context of
love impossible, exploring the Korean concept of Han within virtual puppetry.

THE PUPPET
It has been found that the cultural, social and philosophical meanings of
words have been driven in different ways. Migrating to different language
environments, the author herself has experienced miscommunications, caused
by cultural differences and different modes of thinking. Language suggests
a certain assumption of understanding things and experience. Fundamental
ideas associated with it are an invisible system we usually take for granted.
Thus many terms which frequently appear in new media such as interaction,
immersion, puppet, are all open questions.
The word puppet is interesting in and of itself due to a dynamic range
of different interpretations. A puppet is a simple object related to humans,
easily situated within our contemporary daily lives, as well as popular play spaces
including online virtual games and the metaverse. It can provide a playful and
interesting platform for debates, contrasting different thoughts and perspectives.
There are a number of definitions of the puppet, deeply rooted in the hierarchical separation of subject and object, based on western cultural traditions
(Shershow 1995: 1415.) The puppet has served as a metaphor for power relationships an object to be controlled by man, the puppet master. This idea
has been also been passed into the digital realm, from the avatar to automated

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Virtual puppet, my love impossible

programming languages, invisibly supporting the ontological lowness of the

puppet.
Shershow points out the ontological lowness of the puppet in his book,
Puppets and Popular Culture, saying that Pupa seems to manifest at once a
psychosexual expectation of gender behaviour (little girls play with dolls) and
a more general semantic impulse of diminution, that is the small made even
smaller (Shershow 1995: 17, 69.) Furthermore, the Latin term pupa itself
derives from the Indo-European root pou (little), which figures in other
English words such as pupil, puppy, puberty, pauper and poverty a semantic
map of social and corporeal subordination.
Puppets have been understood pretty much in the power structure of a
man-made system, suggesting a certain prototype of subject/object relationship. In the metaverse, the avatar as a new type of puppet seems to be the
newest extension of puppets within a hierarchical structure. A users strong
attachment to his/her avatar has been frequently explained in terms of aspects
of easier and more precise control of the digital body, thus magnifying the
power relationships between the puppet and the puppeteer (Meadows
2007: 36.) Bringing the diverse perspectives of puppets to light would be a
great place to start a further discussion of the user/avatar relationship.

PUPPET: THE RITUAL OBJECT PARTING ON THE Z-AXIS

Historically, there is clear evidence of how ritual objects such as masks have
been transformed into puppets, showing the inherent connection between
ritual and puppetry (Baird 1965: 3031.) Masks are considered the evolutionary
step before the puppet. They were gradually transformed so that they could
be held in front of the body, and subsequently made to move by strings. In
primitive societies there has been a widespread use of the articulated mask in
religious ceremonies, pointing towards clear evidence of an eventual transformation from ritual into the art of puppetry.
It is of interest to see the historical presence of the ritual object getting more
and more dissociated from mans body (Kaplin 2001: 2124). This phenomenon
has been assisted by the development of technology, from strings, rods, to
wireless connection and digitally distributed networks. Ritual objects such as
masks were placed directly on the skin providing direct contact with the human
body. The point at which the ritual object began to be detached and separated
from the body is critical for the author, since this is in fact the point at which the
ritual object starts being called a puppet. However, puppets have been parting
from their objects for some time, as far as they can, and as far as technology
supports, starting with the length of a human arm, progressing on to strings,
rods, and finally telematic networks. This dramatically increases the aspect of
separation from the ritual object, which is transformed into a puppet through
that very process of separation.
In this respect, separation seems to be a critical aspect in the description
of what a puppet is. In the romantic sense, it is a process of farewell between
the puppet and the puppeteer. The puppeteers gaze and interest creates
and reconfirms the distance, coordinating the Z-axis and marking the depth
between puppet and puppeteer. The act of distancing always happens on a
Z-axis, creating the genuine moment when the beloved and the lover sincerely face each other. The puppets departure on this Z-axis, starting from the
puppeteers gaze, interest, and love slowly turns the process into the story of
love impossible. With digital technology, the puppet is departing on the Z-axis

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into the infinite depth of virtual fields. It is this infinite distance which makes
virtual spaces so potentially appealing to human consciousness and the human
psyche. Symbolically, virtual spaces would be infinite places for farewell.
Thus the puppet is a ritual object which is continuously parting on the Z-axis
from its puppeteer, and his/her leaving is endless in the metaverse, reaching into
the virtual realm. It is a new type of farewell, beyond physicality, continuously
stimulating mans desire for becoming the other: object, puppet, something
alternative. It is a ritual happening on a micro-level of human consciousness.
The puppet is a ritual object in relationship with man, involved with mans
dynamic mental engagement, which continuously liberates mans body into
becoming the other. Puppets life cannot be discussed, without the puppeteer.
The puppet truly comes to life in mans consciousness, as in this description by
the remarkable Russian puppeteer Sergey Obraztsov:
In reality, no inanimate object can be animated not a brick, rag, toy, or
theatrical puppet no matter how expertly it moves when manipulated
by a puppeteer. Regardless of circumstances, the objects listed above
remain objects lacking any biological features. However, in mans hands
any object the same brick, rag, sole of a shoe, or a bottle can fulfill
the function of a living object in mans associative fantasy. It can move,
laugh, cry, or declare its love.
(Tillis 1992: 23)
There is the wilful engagement as the puppeteer continues in this state of play,
as well as the continuous transforming state of the puppet, from inanimate to
animate, as well as from animate to inanimate. The puppet as a marginal object
revolts against a fixed identity. It is a revolutionary object going beyond the
hierarchical structure and endowed with mans powerful mental attachments:
mans fantasy, imagination, and suspension of disbelief. We may call this love,
especially impossible love, starting from the tragedy of the puppeteer.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE PUPPETEER

The author proposes the term tragedy of the puppeteer in order to address
the emotional grief involved in the process of becoming. The tragedy of the
puppeteer lies embedded in the ironic process of continuously joining before the
farewell. In this scenario, the puppeteer is in love with the puppet, despite all
of the definite portents of the upcoming farewell. It is a tragedy because of the
puppeteers continuous desire for an impossible relationship. It is the paradoxical
aspect of becoming the other. The puppeteer faces the irremediable distance of
the puppet and experiences nostalgic for fulfilled moments of integrated unity.
The puppeteer laments his/her separation with the puppet who is the symbolic
lover, the symbolic dream of oneself forgotten. It is tragic when you recognize
the separation from what you love: your lover, dream, puppet, yourself. It would
be tragic when you are aware of the upcoming farewell, even when deeply in
love. It is the beginning of the story of the love impossible.
Tragedy comes from a paradoxical situation: from continuous denial of the
current state, which is part of a problematic state like Hwadu (as previously
stated). It is akin to a continuous denial of our own body; we free ourselves to
explore alternative places through the puppet, but we always have to return
back home to our own bodies situated within a definite socio-economic field.
It is the quantum state of paradox.

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Our body has been contaminated and repressed under the micro-politics
of power structures: society, hierarchy, and language. We are systematically
trained to be better adapted to the formations of power (Guattari 1996: 714.)
This is particularly the case with subject-object relationships occurring within
a definite socio-economic field, especially one which is socially predefined,
promoting certain modes of behaviour and constructing self-observatory
systems. In short, the idea of a norm defined by society would be a
tremendous obstacle in looking for human freedom and identity.
Felix Guattari talked about the micro-fascism of our own body and the
molecular revolution. This is what can also be termed as ritual, one which
happens on a microscopic level of human consciousness (Ryu 2005: 105).
Ritual celebrates the quantum mode of the self, starting from an ontological
or transcendental oppression (Weinstone 2004: 17). During the ritual, we like
to prove ourselves to be much more than our definitions, exploring critically
different modes of the self. This constitutes a revolution against the power
structure, and one which would be impossible to be involved in within our
physical state of being. The tragedy of the puppeteer contributes to the ongoing
story of the love impossible, an ongoing state of becoming, of being continuously
in love with our displaced selves.
Lacan also discusses impossible relations as a never-ending desire for
becoming, and a desire for love. As desiring machines we are the main characters of the love impossible; we follow the rainbow that cannot be perceived
except from a distance. We can only see, feel, and dream about it from a
distance. The distance challenges us to look over, standing on our toes, lengthening our neck, and narrowing our eyes, very carefully and longingly, for the
eternal process of loving. The author is especially interested in the emotional
states happening in this story. Mans broken heart and tears are the very sign
of a molecular revolution; in Korea this is called Han, the paradoxical state of
consciousness driving the story of the love impossible.

THE MODE OF HAN

Han is well known as the most important characteristic of the Korean mindset
and of the emotional states of the culture (Choi 1993: 78). It is a paradoxical
state of consciousness that combines an extreme state of grief, caused by physical
or mental constraints, with a great hope and strong desire for overcoming the
impossible. Han drives dynamic and playful process of the Korean shamanic
ritual, Gud. What the kings of the Chosun Dynasty of Korea feared most
was to see people looking up to the sky with sighs or tears, since this was perceived to be the sign of Han (Kim 1992: 228230). Han calls forth revolution,
which makes people look to the sky with fearsome desires for change. As such
Han motivates people to look beyond the power structure.
Han has also been considered to be a blood clot, blocking the healthy
circulation of energy flow in the body. The way to treat Han is through
releasing, rather than through resolving. Critical differences between the two
can be explained through comparison of Han and Won. Won () is another
emotional state, commonly driving the heroic literature of Asia. For example
if ones master is killed by the enemy Won emerges from the servers heart,
promising to avenge his/her master and kill the enemy (like Confucious virtue
and heroic attitude). Won tries to overcome a distressing situation by eliminating
the source of the problem, e.g. through resolving. It projects a linear process
with a definite end, often culminating in revenge, animosity, and resentment.

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Figure 1: GO-PU-RI: The process of releasing Han is one of the primary aspects
of Korean culture. A scene GO-PU-RI, from a cleansing ritual SSI-KIM-GUD,
in Jin-Do, Korea, visually demonstrates the process of releasing Han. In this scene,
there are white cloths with seven or nine knots, which represent the Han of the
dead person. A shaman releases the knot one after another singing and dancing in
grief. This ritual is quite emotional and accompanied by tears and cries, both on
behalf of the shaman as well as the audience (Lee 2004: 137).

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Han is predominant in the Korean cultural environment. Quite distinct

from Won, Han is the mental state of the non-objective (Kim 2004: 320321),
which means acknowledging ones own participation in the entire situation
(Choi 1993: 89). This perspective means projecting the sources of problems
towards oneself, rather than others. It creates extreme states of grief, weakness,
self-accusation, and a sense of futility. It may indeed sound very passive: it is
true Han has been primarily discussed negatively in Korea, related to its tragic
history of never-ending invasions from neighbouring countries (Han and Han
2007: 8485). However, Han reflects a quantum mind that positions itself as
part of a problematic interconnected system. Han has an attitude of embracing
everything, including difficulties. The role of ritual is to release Han. For the
author it is the essential aspect of the Korean shamanic ritual.
Korean writer Ji-ha Kim highlights the essential quality of Han as passive
activeness in his book Hwang-To, where he uses a lotus flower as a metaphor
for the endless flow of love.
The lotus flower is born in morasses of mud. It has hidden meaning
of life, transparent, endless wandering, disappointment, frustration, and
discouragement. It is always abandoned but always loves with endless
passion toward the world, toward human, toward all things
(Kim 1970: 101)
It is an endless flow of love and process, through constant pain, grief and
difficulties arising from the state of paradox. It is an infinite process of loving.
It is unconditional and eternal. Han shows a way to live with problems but
with great hope and strong belief, asserting with a soft but powerful voice,
not yet but some day! Korean scholar Eeo-Lyeong Lee supports this optimistic sense of Han, saying Han cannot be shaped without a strong desire
to overcome the situation (Lee 1982: 923). Han gives one the courage to
deal with pain, even magnifying it for the ritual. Yeol-Gyu Kim said Han is
the necessary condition to heighten the extreme state of playfulness called
Shin-Myung, showing the other side of Han, and how opposite emotional
states can contrast, balance and indeed transform into each other (Kim 1986:
123133). Han is a sense of grief but also a sense of joy. It is a cry but also a
laugh. It is the soft but very powerful energy of creation.

VIRTUAL PUPPET, MY LOVE IMPOSSIBLE

It is interesting to what an extent impossible love stories are omnipresent
in Korean culture, represented in its music, drama, movies, and literature.
These stories have heartbreaking and tearful storylines, which tend to make
people emotionally involved and immersed, crying and laughing at the
story. In a traditional setting, impossible love stories often incorporate the
class conflicts present within Confucianism society, dealing with the illegal
marriages between different classes. This represents one of the examples of
mans struggle with impossible relationships. In these stories it is Han that
drives the story of the love impossible, presented in the diverse layers of
human oppression, from micro to macro scales, and from invisible to visible layers. The author proposes Han within the puppeteers consciousness,
embedded in a tragic moment of recognizing the unavoidable obstacle, but
nonetheless with a strong wish to overcome it. As previously stated, the puppet
is seen as a ritual object continuously separating on the Z-axis of space. As the

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puppet gets further away from the puppeteer, the depth of Han increases. The
level of grief and tragedy is overwhelming, and therefore the ensuing ritual is
all the more tearful and powerful.
It is interesting to see that technology has supported the farewell between
puppet and puppeteer, maximizing the distance for challenges and an
increased state of Han. Technological development has been dedicated to the
critical quality of ritual object, continuously parting on the Z-axis of the virtual
realm, the metaverse, over the network, over the rainbow, over the horizon.
We seem to be drastically increasing the height of the cosmic tree connecting
and also disconnecting the separated poles, reflecting mans increased desire
to tell the dramatic story of love impossible.
This author is fascinated by virtual space in terms of the infinite depth of
the Z-axis found therein. Virtual puppets travelling on such a vast Z-axis would
be new ritual objects in the context of the love impossible, becoming more and
more remote, intangible, flexible, deconstructed, multiplied, and fragmented,
challenging us with new types of distances. The quality of the distance presented
by the virtual puppet is not only physical, but also psychological. There is a level
of uncannyness arising from the paradoxical conflict between life and death, and
also between materiality and immateriality. The distance between the virtual
puppet and the puppeteer is far greater than the one found in a traditional setting,
with regards to the physical as well as to the mental aspects.
Virtual space is an infinite stage for the enactment of the love impossible.
It is a space for creating Han, and also releasing Han. The virtual puppet as the
agent of the love impossible laments the gap between virtual and real presence. Despite pain and difficulties, the author chooses to address Han rather
than hiding, encouraging rather than discouraging. However, the greatest
sadness possible would be to lose the sensation of distance, the disconnection
and the love impossible, to lose the sense of ourselves as human beings struggling with power structures, to lose the ability to experience powerlessness,
to really cry: to lose the ability to feel Han. Could it be that we are the main
characters of the story of the love impossible? Without feeling the tragedy,
how can we cry or laugh with the story? Without feeling the distance, how
can we dream of revolution?
The author sees her virtual puppet as an agent of the story of the love impossible, proposing a taller cosmic tree, and deeper Han, for a heightened process
of the ritual. Her virtual puppetry proposes Han, embracing conflicts, difficulties, and the distance of virtual/actual presences, traditional/digital media, and
human computer interaction. The virtual puppet performance Parting on Z
explored Han in the paradoxical relationships between the virtual puppet and
the puppeteer via the distance between avatar and user symbolic lovers facing
each other, continuously exchanging dialogues of love and farewell. The story
chosen for this performance was the farewell scene from Chun-Hyang-Ga ,
the classic Korean impossible love story that demonstrates Han.

VIRTUAL PUPPET PERFORMANCE PARTING ON Z

Parting on Z was a virtual interactive puppetry performance enacted at The
Project Room for New Media, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, on 27 May
2009, working with the puppeteers voice, weight balance, and facial tracking.
Parting on Z connected virtual puppetry to the traditional Korean oral
storytelling performance known as pansori. Pansori is a Korean traditional folk
play/one person opera. The pansori master plays all characters for the duration

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Virtual puppet, my love impossible

Figure 2: The virtual puppet, Mong-Ryong, from virtual puppet performance Parting on Z.
of an oral storytelling performance. Pansori consists of singing (SORI), speech
(A-NI-RI) and body-motions (BAL-LIM). It is a combination of throat singing and oral storytelling play, and was originally performed by nomadic folk
artists who belonged to the lowest class of society deeply in the mode of Han,
and who were prosecuted and mistreated. Pansori masters undergo a rigorous
training in order to achieve the level of quality in throat singing, which projects
Han into the texture of the voice, which is rough, emotional, and appealing.
Literally, Pan means space for play or situation play and Sori means singing
(Yoo 2005: 143144).
Unlike traditional settings which promise clear visibility, Parting on Z
positioned the audience in a difficult spot when it came to following both
the virtual puppet and the puppeteer simultaneously, since they were located
between the virtual puppet and the puppeteer was placed at opposite ends
of the space, with a long distance in between. Thus the audience had to turn
their head and choose one of the embodiments, whilst retaining the other
in their memory or their imagination. The story was orally told in Korean,
without direct English translation. It explored the meta-layer of communication by providing a set of keywords instead of the verbatim translations of
the original dialogue from Korean into English. Considering oral storytelling
as a transformative creation of narrative continuously imagined, evolved, and
generated by listeners, keywords allowed the audience to navigate through
and compose their own storytelling. Speed and display of text generation was

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determined by the puppeteers voice input through a wireless microphone. A

sample of the keywords and the text generated:
farewell, many thoughts, cannot help crying, what can I do, so many
thoughts, random thoughts, thinking about past, a brave man, even
heroes cried, awkward, cry for farewell, tears, walking and walking, hold
back tears, distraught.
Parting on Z invited the pansori master, Junghee Oh, to be the puppeteer
interacting with the virtual puppet on a large projection in real time. The
puppeteer interacted with the virtual puppet, which faced her but at quite a
distance, speaking back her story in real time mimicry, and mirroring her body
in swaying motions. She stood on a Nintendo Wii Balance board, transmitting
her balance signal to the virtual puppet within the virtual space in order
to steer, breathe and walk as her reflection. The sound input of her oral
storytelling through the wireless microphone motivated the mouth, body and
facial expression of a three dimensional virtual puppet in real time. The virtual
puppet constantly spoke and sang back to the puppeteer, very much akin to
an echo or a mirror reflection. The audience was physically and spiritually
located between the spiralling interactive dialogues of the virtual puppet and the
puppeteer. The puppeteers face was tracked and video-captured in real time,
and projected onto the virtual puppets face at the climax of the performance.
Parting on Z demonstrates Han through the classic Korean impossible love story: Chun-Hyang-Ga. It uses the most tearful and saddest scene
of farewell between lovers, Chun-Hyang and Mong-Ryong. Through usage

Figure 3: Symbolic lovers, virtual puppet and puppeteer, from Parting on Z.

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Virtual puppet, my love impossible

Figure 4: The virtual puppet, mapped with live video of the puppeteers face, from
Parting on Z.
of this poignant tale Parting on Z demonstrates Han not only through the
literary side of the impossible love story, but also through the relationship of the
virtual puppet and the puppeteer in a meta-layer. Parting on Z is, in fact,
an impossible love story between symbolic lovers: a virtual puppet and a
puppeteer who shape a continuous dialogue of love and farewell, over a distance.
This meta-layer is slowly revealed throughout the performance. The performance starts with two virtual puppet characters clearly distinct from each other,

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however, their monologues and dialogues start mixing and confusing one
another, breaking the traditional narrative, then the virtual puppet appears
with the puppeteers lively captured face, creating the inner dialogue of the
puppeteer herself.

CONCLUSION
This article has investigated the potential relationship between human and
virtual bodies, avatars and their users, in a paradoxical manner: using a story of
the love impossible to discuss the concept of love, a story of distance and dematerialization to discuss the concept of becoming, and a story of disconnection to
discuss the concept of connection. Paradox seems to be a key issue in addressing the complicated relationships that come about in multiple realities both
real and virtual when compounded by the emotional engagement of human
experience. The author has found the extreme state of paradox to be a key aspect
of her own Korean culture, embodied by the concept of Han as the paradoxical
state of the human psyche, initiated from the micro-politics of body.
It is to be hoped that the virtual puppetry project will provide a platform
to further discuss human perception, sensation and consciousness, through
the usage of paradoxical means. In this context, virtual puppetry would be
dedicated to broader pursuits such as art, education, therapy, psychology,
and philosophy. The virtual puppet would be a paradoxical object against
its own definitions, putting the self into ongoing enquiries of being, identity
and desire. It would be a ritual object continuously departing on a Z-axis,
exploring the complexities of human nature that might become neglected at
this highly technology-driven moment in time. Micro-relationships between
subject and object can be seen to be the points of trajectory for molecular revolutions, which may affect real change at the macro level of human existence.
Three-dimensional, socially interactive virtual worlds such as the metaverse,
with their integral agents and the puppet embodied as avatar, seem to possess
great potential to begin this tearful ritual.

REFERENCES
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SUGGESTED CITATION
Ryu, S. (2010), Virtual puppet, my love impossible, Metaverse Creativity 1: 1,
pp. 115127, doi: 10.1386/mvcr.1.1.115_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Semi Ryu received a BFA from the Korean National University of Arts and an
MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She is an associate professor in the
Department of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is
also a media artist who specializes in experimental three dimensional animations and virtual puppetry based on Korean shamanism and the oral tradition of storytelling. Her works have been widely presented at exhibitions and
performances in more than fifteen countries, and her academic papers, which
have focused on the ritualization of interactive media, have been published
in international journals and conferences. Her virtual puppetry was recently
performed at Chelsea Art Museum, New York. She is currently writing a
chapter for Point of Being (editor: Derrick de Kerkhove, Cambridge Scholars),
and is a senior advisor for the project Avatars for virtual heritage funded by
the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Contact: 2144 Ridgefield Green Way, Richmond, VA 23233, USA.
E-mail: sryu2@vcu.edu
Website: www.semiryu.net

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