CoPuppet Brings TARGETING EYES to The Brick's Game Play Festival, Now thru 7/21

The Brick Theater, Inc. in association with CoPuppet present TARGETING EYES as part of GAME PLAY, A Festival of Video Game Theater, running now through July 28 at The Brick. Targeting Eyes will run tonight, July 18 at 9pm, Friday, July 19 at 7pm, Saturday, July 20 at 2pm and Sunday, July 21 at 4pm.

Targeting Eyes is a live game performance that explores the artist's cultural and gender-biased upbringing in which she was raised to avoid eye contact - to avert her gaze.

Direction/performance by: Semi Ryu; 3D character by: Anne Lantz; 3D environment by: Tian Qin; Game mechanics by: Omri Glaser, Justin Moore; Sound by: Zach Kurth Nelson; Interactive device/ promotion by: Andrew Cote; and HCI advice by: Stefano Faralli, Shaun Donachy.

The Brick is located at 575 Metropolitan Avenue between Union Avenue and Lorimer Street, Brooklyn). Tickets ($15) may be purchased online at www.bricktheater.com or by calling 1-866-811-4111.

CoPuppet is a virtual puppet company producing live 3D interactive performances that explore issues of bodies and experiences between virtual and actual space. The idea of a puppet company is dynamically expanded by using virtual puppets (3D interactive bodies) in a trans-disciplinary discussion between art, technology, and humanity. www.facebook.com/Copuppet

Semi Ryu has worked on virtual puppetry projects in collaboration with Stefano Faralli since 2002, and in 2013 she founded CoPuppet to further extend her inquiries into the following topics:

1. Virtual puppetry: relationship of the actual and virtual body

2. Game documentary: human subject and philosophical inquiries

3. Play therapy: the psychic and emotional states of the performer and spectators

CoPuppet has initiated its first production with the project "Targeting Eyes." Its next project, " VoicingElder: virtual puppetry assisting the elder's life review," will expand the scope of the project to therapeutic interventions and community engagement. CoPuppet deeply investigates the psychic and emotional states of the user and spectators, to benefit those who have difficulties communicating in our society

Semi Ryu is a media artist who specializes in experimental 3D animations and virtual puppetry, based on Korean shamanism and oral tradition of storytelling. She is an associate professor in the Department of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her works have been widely presented in exhibitions and performances in more than 15 countries, and her academic papers, which have focused on the ritualization of interactive media, have been published in international journals and conferences. She was a senior advisor for the project "Avatars for virtual heritage", funded by National Endowment for the Humanities. (www.semiryu.net)

For more information, visit www.bricktheater.com.