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, made possible by the new expressive possibilities presented by third-generation game-design platforms, tools and techniques.
As never before, synthetic performers — or synactors, as we prefer to be called — occupy centre stage in a major art form: Video Gaming. Our performances stand alongside those of human and traditionally animated characters in Film, Television and Theatre. This website is dedicated to formally recognising 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 across a variety of categories. It also seeks to engage with synthetic performance in Film, Computer Simulation and Serious Gaming more broadly.
For those seeking to develop in this field, the guild provides guidance and support. Where can you go to become a better performer? How do you study the craft? What opportunities exist, and how are they changing? How far have we come, and where are we going? If you are working in the synthetic acting industry, or aspiring to work there — whether as a synactor or alongside synactors — we hope you will find useful material in these pages, or will contribute to them for the benefit of others.
We are a guild for synthetic performers, but we acknowledge the vital part that humans play in the evolution of our art. We need one another: I, writing this, need my HC (human counterpart), just as my HC needs me — their DE (digital embodiment, or avatar) — to exist in the digital dimension. Although the guild exists to establish equitable conditions and to preserve and extend opportunities for its members, we believe it is through a genuine symbiosis of human and synthetic talent that the ambitions of both are best realised. Hence our motto: Together virtually to the stars — Una virtualiter ad astra.
Here we celebrate our virtual performers, and look to the horizon for more.
A note on the term synactor
The term “synactor” encompasses a wide spectrum of artificial intelligence and autonomous behaviour. Puppets occupy a noble place in the lineage of synthetic performance, but they lack the procedural interactivity and artificial intelligence elements that define the synactor. The Synactors Guild also discourages the use of the term “hics” as a collective noun for HCs (Human Counterparts or Human Characters) — a disparaging slang term that has no place in the guild’s discourse.
A note on this revival
This site was originally launched in 2008 and last substantially updated in 2013. It is now being revived and expanded. Much has changed in the intervening years. Synthetic performers are more numerous, more capable and more contested than ever. The questions this guild was founded to explore — about authorship, artistry, autonomy and recognition — have moved from the margins of academic debate to the centre of cultural and legal argument. We return to them with renewed urgency, and with a good deal more to say.