Introduction

The Synactors Guild website was first registered in 2008. It sprang from a belief that the art of synthetic acting was coming of age, due to the new expressive possibilities presented by Third Generation game-design platforms, tools and techniques.

As never before, puppets, or synactors (as we prefer to be called), occupy centre stage in an art form, Video Gaming. Their performances rank alongside performances by human and traditional animated characters in Film, Television and Theatre. This website is dedicated to formally recognizing the artistic talent, capabilities and potential of synactors in today's entertainment and related industries, by presenting critical reviews and yearly performance awards for excellence in a variety of categories. It also seeks to review synthetic performance in Film, Computer Simulation & Serious Gaming, generally.

For those seeking to make it in this field, the guild provides tips and support: Where can you go to become a better actor? How do you learn to act? What opportunities are there? How far have we come? Where are we going? If you are working in the synthetic acting industry, or aspiring to work there, either as a synactor, or with synactors, we hope that you will find useful information in these pages, or will contribute information to benefit others.

A guild for synthetic performers, we acknowledge the vital part humans play in the evolution of our art. We need each other: I, writing this, need my HC (human counterpart), as my HC needs me, their DE (digital embodiment or avatar) to exist in the digital dimension. And although the guild exists to establish equitable rights and conditions and to preserve and extend work opportunities for its members, we believe that it is through a symbiosis of human and synthetic talent that the ends of both are best realized. Thus our motto: "Together virtually to the stars" ("Unâ virtualiter ad astra").

Here we celebrate our new virtual stars, and look to the horizon for more.

Note on the term, Synactor

*The term "synactor" encompasses degrees of artifical-intelligence and autonomous behaviour. Puppets do, indeed, occupy a noble role in the evolution of synactors but they lack procedural interativity and the artificial intelligence elements that synactors possess. Equally, the Synactors Guild discourages the term "hics" for HCs (a disparaging term by synactors referring to HCs,—Human Counterparts or Human Characters).