Abstract

The Tibetan Book of the Dead LIVE

Carl Skelton
Artist, Director of the Integrated Digital Media Institute,
Polytechnic University, Brooklyn

I’m proposing to give a presentation about a live performance/multimedia project co-produced by the Asia Society, the Golden Sun Foundation, and the IDMI.

The Liberation Through Hearing is a thousand-year-old Buddhist text, one of the main sections of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It is ritually read or recited to the dying over a period of several weeks, to assist the dying person in achieving enlightenment, thereby escaping the cycle of death and rebirth. Failing this, the text is meant to help the dying person find a favorable rebirth. A close reading of the text reveals it to be in essence a series of directions to visualize a complex narrative sequence of images, and the transitions between them: morphing, breaking up, shimmering, dissolving, reforming, fading, moving back and forth between literal representation and abstract configurations of light…

At the IDMI, we’ve been working to develop next-generation VJ software, to extend the range and flexibility of live media performance genres. It’s recently become practical for us to render an interpretation of the Liberation Through Hearing’s principal themes, through real-time rendering of animations of 3D representations of deities and mythological figures, in combination with video and Thangkas, traditional Tibetan ritual paintings.

This project, currently under development, will feature an original score by Philip Glass, multimedia direction by Carl Skelton, software development and VJ performance by Anton Marini (Master of Science in Integrated Digital Media ’06, current researcher in residence), contemporary Thangka by Romio Shrestha (Kathmandu).

This project represents to fulfillment of an opportunity to bring cutting-edge media performance tools to the service of a new and broader understanding of the living tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, through the live performance of one of its most important texts.