Taiwanese Puppeteers Looking To Preserve Art Through NFTs

A group of Taiwanese puppeteers is looking to bring their traditional art form into a modern era and keep it relevant with the help of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

NFTs are all the rage now, even though their spark seems to be dying down when compared to last year. They are crypto-assets representing a digital item, such as an image, video or even land in virtual worlds, with prices rising so fast last year that speculators around the world sometimes “flipped” them within days for a profit.

Pili International Multimedia 8450.TWO, which makes Taiwan’s longest-running television show featuring the puppets at its studio in Yunlin County, says it wants to use NFTs as another source of revenue.

“The sort of imagination everyone nowadays has for the online world is developing so fast that we are almost unable to grasp it,” said Seika Huang, Pili’s brand director. “Instead of sitting on the sidelines, the best approach is to go ahead and understand fully what’s going on. This is the fastest way to catch up.”

Pili has thousands of glove puppet characters, a traditional part of Taiwanese street entertainment culture that spins colorful and highly stylized stories of heroic courage and romance, often featuring martial arts.

The puppets are painstakingly created and expertly maneuvered during filming, with costumes that are sewn on and strands of hair meticulously put in place. Pili said four of its puppet characters were made into digital versions and 30,000 sets had been sold as NFTs since they were listed in early February.  The company declined to reveal its profit-sharing with the market platform but said prices for each set started at US$40, which translates to generated revenue of at least $1.2 million.

Marketing technology company VeVe, which is in charge of selling Pili’s NFTs, said the stories of the puppet heroes resonated with a younger crowd and could draw in foreign fans of superhero films, such as those based on characters from Marvel Comics. “Westerners actually really like our martial arts heroes and kung fu,” said VeVe brand manager Raymond Chou.

Huang, who said Pili’s initial listings sold out seconds after launching on VeVe, is now working on transforming up to 50 other puppet characters into NFTs, potentially adding another million-dollar revenue stream for the studio.