AThe essence of puppet performance is its balance between animacy and inanimacy,the artificial and the natural.This article proposes the framework of puppetry as a Book means of understanding the transcendent potential of a group of medieval reliquary busts from Cologne.In both appearance and manipulation, these sculpted busts blurred the boundaries between life and death, much like puppets.
I argue that the dual mimesis of these busts, both visual and kinetic, enhanced their theological purpose as vessels for the bones of saints, and tech shirt points to a medieval interest in the productive paradoxes of representation.Through their puppet-like hybridity, these sculptures bridged the distance between humans and the divine for medieval viewers.The article concludes by proposing a parallel between the temporary lives of puppets and the hybrid nature of artificial intelligence, suggesting that medieval conceptions of mimesis can provide a means of thinking through twenty-first century technology.