Art Toy Design Project Based on Journey to the West Literature for Dhamma Philosophy Study Motivation

Abstract

The impetus of this research is based on the ancient Chinese Mahayana Buddhist literature - Journey to the West, especially the character of the mythical monkey Sun Wukong. The research aims to re-create three-dimensional art toys that narrate this story.  Journey to the West incorporates Buddhist philosophy through storytelling as well as characters, which symbolizes vice and virtue within Buddhist beliefs. It was found that, through time, such a character as Sun Wukong, has been worshiped as a deity in Chinese shrines. These deity statues exist in contexts and environments that make people feel distant and sometimes frightened. This resulted in new generations losing interest in them. It should be noted that, through time, Journey to the West literature and its characters have also been interpreted and presented through other media until they became toys and art toys, which are fields of creative work that are now growing in popularity. The research therefore proposes that if we adopt art toy design techniques from successful designers, a new series of art toys based on Journey to the West can be successfully created. These questions are as follows. 1) Is it possible to use art toy techniques to help the ancient story reach out to younger people? 2) Will these art toys be able to raise more awareness in Buddhist philosophy among more people?   

This research also involved how various ancient characters could have been reinterpreted in Pop culture and contemporary design. This includes other media such as movies. The research also involved studying the definition of art toys and art toy design techniques, studying Journey to the West literature, by focusing specifically on the characters of Sun Wukong. The researcher used the life path of Sun Wukong to visualize the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy that this researcher wanted to convey. Important episodes that were turning points in Sun Wukong’s life path were selected to design 4 major pieces of the researcher’s art toys. Then the success or failure in communicating the narrative and underlying philosophy was measured by interviewing viewers of the researcher’s art toy exhibitions both in Thailand and Japan. There were 929 visitors in total; and a sample group of 391 people were interviewed. This set of data was published online, with totally of 8710 people participating through online comments. Four experts related to Journey to the West and art toys were interviewed.    

The research resulted in a series of three-dimensional art toys based on ancient literature. It was found that these art toys could help the story and philosophy behind it reach younger generations of people much more easily and help motivate them to be interested in Buddhist philosophy. It should be, however, noted that this success also relies on textual and verbal communication within the exhibitions. Discussions and written descriptions are very crucial additional parts for viewers to understand the hidden meanings of Journey to the West.