The concept of an "avatar" has become important to digital artists and philosophers. Writers such as Jean Baudrillard and William Gibson have provided complex ways of treating interactions between real and virtual worlds. An avatar allows a human to project himself into a virtual world through an image. Indeed, a single human can be represented by multiple avatars simultaneously. Here, I associate the concept of an avatar with special meaning from Chinese folklore and traditional belief systems.

Two artworks are discussed: "Face/Fate" and "Avatar." These works meditate on desire in contemporary society, using symbols from Chinese facial features and the Chinese folk tradition of burning paper objects -- which I call "Chinese. My paper discusses software, interactive technology, montage, 3D animation, and image formatting in support of this art. I argue through digital images that the "avatar" is of special importance to Eastern artists.

These two artworks also are an experiment in combining technology art and Chinese folklore. They aim to present the spirit of the Chinese tradition of burning symbolic paper objects. This involves exposition about Chinese belief systems and viewer interaction. This allows a novel presentation these Eastern "convectional" traditions through an interaction of technology and art.