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VR Body Calligraphy - Whole-body Performance Writing for Chinese Calligraphy

Published: 19 November 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Chinese Calligraphy is a millennia-old art form. It is an intangible heritage of the Chinese culture. Despite our digital lives, this art form has largely remained unaltered in its traditional two-dimensional expression. Current research is focused on AI-driven character generation on one hand, and on the other the replication of ink and brush dynamics within digital environments, as 2D simulations of the traditional paper canvas. Instead of imitating the existing, this research articulates a technical, artistic, and cultural evolution of Chinese Calligraphy Shufa书法 from the traditional two-dimensional, material-based expression to a novel digital three-dimensional form within virtual reality. The paper is structured as a series of cross-disciplinary experiments amalgamating the essence of the traditional craft with today’s possibilities in computer-human-interactions. Each is evaluated and discussed with an established traditional calligraphy master Law Ching-Bor, commenting on the transformation from single character to complex compositions. At the same time, advancements in finger and full body tracking technologies facilitate sculptural inscription in virtual space. We attempt to write calligraphy with choreographed whole-body gestures, translating these movements into dynamic, three-dimensional strokes of digital Shufa. The investigation details the scribing, interpreting, and experiencing multi-character calligraphy in a volumetric VR context. Ultimately, this paper presents Chinese calligraphy not as a relic of the past but as a living tradition—morphing, expanding, and resonating within the digital context, thereby transforming and evolving its cultural legacy.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SA '24: SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Art Papers
December 2024
194 pages
ISBN:9798400711336
DOI:10.1145/3680530
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 November 2024

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Author Tags

  1. Culture
  2. Craft
  3. Drawing
  4. Human interaction
  5. Immersion
  6. Multimedia
  7. Performance
  8. Sculpture
  9. Virtual Reality
  10. Visualization

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  • Research-article

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SA '24
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SA '24: SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Art Papers
December 3 - 6, 2024
Tokyo, Japan

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Overall Acceptance Rate 178 of 869 submissions, 20%

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