Spirit Of Singora: Creative Media from Southern Folklore

 31 ส.ค. 2563 15:06 น. | อ่าน 1895
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Folklore is one of cultural heritages, transmitted with word of mouth, called as pulpit. It brings knowledge, enjoyment, morality and imagination to audiences with reflection of local living way of villagers in the past interestingly. In southern-border provinces, there are numerus folklores and most of them reflect living way of Thai-Muslim people in the southern-border provinces, followed by living ways of Thai Buddhist people and Thai-Chinese people. The features of these folklores are narration with ordinary words and proses with word of mouth. There is no clear evidence who was a storyteller. The folklores contain various patterns such as fables, local tales, mythology, animal-related tales and funny tales. The examples of tales in the book are Luminous Wood Louse, Carpenter and Smith, Little Gibbon, Bird-egg Ring, Po Da Hae, and Grasshopper Queen etc.

Cat and Mouse is a folklore in Songkhla Province, which is told from historical and geographical contexts of Songkhla City as sea port. This tale has been applied with creative media for learning local values, telling a story of a cat and a dog stuck with a ship. Thinking of a way to go home, they forced a rat to steal a magical glass of a merchant which made them unsinkable and able to go home. However, having greed, during swimming, they fought each other to possess the magical glass, and finally the glass sank and was broken before turning to the glass beach (Had Sai Kaew). The cat and the rat drowned becoming Koh Nu and Koh Maew at the gulf of Songkhla. Meanwhile, the dog tried to swim to the shore but finally was exhausted and dead, becoming the rock around Kao Tangkuan near the Gulf of Songkhla.

Digital Media and Local Identity Transmission

"Spirit Of Singora" is an inspiring work from a folklore entitled “Cat and Mouse”, winning the 1st prize in the media design for city development contest in type of online game, to reflect environmental issues. This contest was organized by Arsom Silp Institute of the Arts together with the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (THPF) and member network. With the idea of a local youth namely Miss Kulasatree Saelee, year-3 student in the design course (digital media) in Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Songkhla Rajabhat University, she designed it under the concept of a game which could be played on online and offline platforms. She was inspired by a folklore of Songkhla Province, named “Cat and Mouse” to design it in a form of action adventure game.

In the Spirit Of Singora, players will take adventure with 2 characters to get through stages base on the folklore, redesigned to suit places, living ways and communities of Songkhla People, reflecting environmental issues transmitted through waste monsters. The players can develop ability of the main character which is the “mouse” to upgrade levels to fight against monsters including oil monster, fish monster or plastic bag machine etc. with a cat character to help the players. The game consists of stages for the players to pass and a party mode that the players can play with others.

From legend to creative media for southern environment

“At the serene Gulf of Songkhla lies a magical glass ball to support and balance environments. This glass ball is missing from the island, and natural power awakens spirits in form of cat and mouse to quest this magical glass ball”

The story in "Spirit Of Singora" reflects environmental context in southern-border provinces where the marine environment is degenerated by commercial fishery, and partially by tourism industry. Many sectors attempt solving this problem and restoring the nature with various ways. It is important to render new-generation youths to understand and realize vitality of local ecosystem.

Online game media is easily accessible among youths and children in this era, and using online game to connect with and uplift environmental conservation and transmit identity of legends and tales indicates different local contexts of southern-border provinces. It includes to understand differences of multicultural diversity for new-generation people to learn enjoyably and to be implanted conscientiousness. It is another form of creative media for local development, which can be supported for application with every local area in southern-border provinces. This is a learning process with cultural value system that when the youths know and realize value and diversity of identity in each area, they will have food understanding about southern-border provinces to mitigate current problems and to implant affection and understanding to be deep-rooted for our descendants.

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