The thesis studies gesture in the context of Human-Computer interaction. It aims at creating new interaction paradigms that offer the user further expressive possibilities based on gestures. The theorists and practitioners of the dance call "movement qualities” (MQ), a notion that conveys expressive content describing the way a gesture is performed. This notion has been rarely taken into consideration in the field of HCI. Our work draws on collaborations with the field of dance to explore the notion of movement qualities and to integrate it as interaction modality.
The contributions of the thesis are in the formalism of the notion of movement qualities and evaluation of its integration as interaction modality in terms of user experience.
We also provide computational tools for considering MQ in interactive systems in terms of analysis, representation and gesture control methods. On the representational level, our work have demonstrated that physical models based on masses and springs systems offer great opportunities for simulating dynamics related to MQs and for real-time gesture control. On the analysis level, we developed innovative approaches to automatic real time recognition of movement qualities. Finally, we implemented of a set of interaction techniques based on movement qualities that we applied and evaluated in the context of dance pedagogy and performance.
