La présente thèse a pour but d’approfondir l’étude du geste dans le cadre de l’interaction Homme Machine. Il s’agit de créer de nouveaux paradigmes d’interaction qui offrent à l’utilisateur de plus amples possibilités d’expression basées sur le geste. Un des vecteurs d’expression du geste, très rarement traité en Interaction Homme Machine, qui lui confère sa coloration et son aspect, est ce que les théoriciens et praticiens de la danse appellent « les qualités de mouvement ». Nous mettons à profit des collaborations avec le domaine de la danse pour étudier la notion de qualités de mouvement et l’intégrer à des paradigmes d’interaction gestuelle. Notre travail analyse les apports de l’intégration des qualités de mouvement comme modalité d’interaction, fournit les outils propices à l’élaboration de cette intégration (en termes de méthodes d’analyse, de visualisation et de contrôle gestuel), en développe et évalue certaines techniques d’interaction.Les contributions de la thèse se situent d’abord dans la formalisation de la notion de qualités de mouvement et l’évaluation de son intégration dans un dispositif interactif en termes d’expérience utilisateur. Sur le plan de la visualisation des qualités de mouvement, les travaux menés pendant la thèse ont permis de démontrer que les modèles physiques masses-ressorts offrent de grandes possibilités de simulation de comportements dynamiques et de contrôle en temps réel. Sur le plan de l’analyse, la thèse a permis de développer des approches novatrices de reconnaissance automatique des qualités de mouvement de l’utilisateur. Enfin, à partir des approches d’analyse et de visualisation des qualités de mouvement, la thèse a donné lieu à l’implémentation d’un ensemble de techniques d’interaction. Elle a appliqué et évalué ses techniques dans le contexte de la pédagogie de la danse et de la performance. / 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.

L’eau est porteuse d’aspects différents de consciences, tout en étant un espéranto planétaire. Doit-on parler des artistes de l’eau ? ou bien de l’eau des artistes ? Quel que soit le point de vue que l’on considère, il se dégage une synergie de pensées oeuvrant à une réflexion consensuelle et paradigmatique. Cette recherche propose une nouvelle lecture de l’interaction de l’élément naturel avec la place qu’il occupe dans l’art contemporain ; comment l’eau dans l’art contemporain devient, grâce à sa puissance évocatrice, l’Eau de l’Art, une source inépuisable d’adaptabilité transculturelle qui se fait l’écho d’une nécessaire métamorphose. L’eau est devenu un médium parmi tant d’autres. L'eau, matière naturelle par excellence, se retrouve utilisée indifféremment par un peu tous les courants artistiques actuels notamment dans des vidéos, des performances, des sculptures, en architecture ou dans des expériences à la frontière de l’art et des sciences cognitives. On peut examiner trois aspects de la culture de l'eau : en tant que vecteur à la fois d'une culture enracinée, et d'une éthique de l'Universel commun, la force symbolique de l'eau dans l'histoire de l’art, et l'actualité écologique, scientifique et psychologique. L’eau couvre tous les champs du possible, et rend accessible les moindres recoins de la pensée, aussi bien la part d’ombre que la lumière de la psyché humaine. Elle accompagne et interagit sur les non dits des sociétés, car elle contient leurs savoirs ; elle est la matrice de leur philosophie, leur sociabilité, leur géographie (compréhension de l’espace et des milieux de vie), leur communication, leur histoire, leur langage. L’Eau de l’Art dynamise ainsi une esthétique écosophique en puisant dans la poésie du temps. / Water is a messenger of various aspects of consciousness, while being a global Esperanto. Should we talk about artists of water? Or the water of artists? Whatever point of view one considers, a synergy of thoughts emerges involving a consensual and paradigmatic vision. This research proposes a new reading of the interaction of the natural element with its role in contemporary art; how water in contemporary art becomes, with its evocative power, Water of Art, an inexhaustible source of crosscultural adaptability that echoes a necessary metamorphosis. Water has become a medium among many others. Water, a natural material par excellence, is used interchangeably by almost all the current artistic trends, including video, performance, sculpture, architecture and experiences on the frontier of art and cognitive science. There are three aspects of the culture of water: as a vector of both an ingrained culture and the Universal ethic; the symbolic force of water in art history; and the ecological, scientific and psychological information. Water covers all possible fields, and allows access to every corner of the mind, the dark side as well as the light of the human psyche. It supports and interacts on the unspoken aspects of society because it contains their knowledge; it is the matrix of their philosophy, their sociability, their geography (understanding of space and living environments), communication, history, language. Therefore, Water of Art adds a dynamic to ecosophical aesthetics in drawing from the poetics of time.

Au cours des dernières années, l’avènement des technologies de captation du mouvement a radicalement transformé l’univers de la pratique artistique tout en ouvrant des perspectives inédites pour la recherche scientifique. La musique est actuellement l’un des domaines les plus impliqués dans ce renouvellement expressif et épistémologique. Dans ce cadre, les processus d’interaction entre médiation technologique, mouvement et son, semblent se décliner selon deux modalités majeures : d’une part, les technologies d’analyse du mouvement permettent d’étudier expérimentalement la connexion mutuelle entre phénomène acoustique et système sensori-moteur; de l’autre, la compréhension de la nature incarnée de l’expérience musicale oriente la conception et le développement de technologies interactives pour la performance vers un modèle plus holistique. En partant de ces prémisses, cette thèse porte sur la manière dont la transformation des aspects imperceptibles du mouvement en données perceptibles – sous forme de son – permet de prendre conscience des processus physiologiques et figuratifs qui sont à la base du geste. Dans ce contexte, la relation entre mouvement et feedback sonore est analysée selon une perspective écologique visant à mettre en lumière comment la médiation technologique induit un processus d’extension et d’intensification autopoïétique de l’anatomie corporelle. Notamment dans le cas de la pratique performative, l’interaction sonore offre alors au performeur la possibilité de redéfinir sa propre organisation perceptive sur la base d’un un nouveau répertoire des données sensorielles, lui permettant ainsi de repenser la composition expressive du mouvement. / During the last years, motion sensing technologies have radically transformed the universe of the artistic practice. This dramatic change has recently inspired new perspectives in scientific research. Music is actually among the most affected domaines by this expressive and epistemological renewal. The interactive relation between mediation technology, movement and sound, seems to be declined into two main modalities : on one hand, movement analysis’ technologies allow to study mutual connections between acoustic phenomenon and sensorimotor system, on the other hand, embodied understanding of musical experience can help to devise an holistic approach to interactive systems conception and development. Given this background scenario, this thesis focuses on how movement’s qualities transformation into sound allows the performer to become aware of physiological and imaginative processes in gesture composition. In this framework, sound feedback-movement relation is analyzed from an ecological point of view. According to this approach, mediation technology seems to elicit an autopoietic process of extension and intensification of corporeality. Especially in the artistic performance, sound interaction offers to performer a new sensorial geography that allows him/her to renew his/her perceptive organization and thereby rethink expressive composition of movement.

La présente thèse a pour but d'approfondir l'étude du geste dans le cadre de l'interaction Homme Machine. Il s'agit de créer de nouveaux paradigmes d'interaction qui offrent à l'utilisateur de plus amples possibilités d'expression basées sur le geste. Un des vecteurs d'expression du geste, très rarement traité en Interaction Homme Machine, qui lui confère sa coloration et son aspect, est ce que les théoriciens et praticiens de la danse appellent " les qualités de mouvement ". Nous mettons à profit des collaborations avec le domaine de la danse pour étudier la notion de qualités de mouvement et l'intégrer à des paradigmes d'interaction gestuelle. Notre travail analyse les apports de l'intégration des qualités de mouvement comme modalité d'interaction, fournit les outils propices à l'élaboration de cette intégration (en termes de méthodes d'analyse, de visualisation et de contrôle gestuel), en développe et évalue certaines techniques d'interaction.Les contributions de la thèse se situent d'abord dans la formalisation de la notion de qualités de mouvement et l'évaluation de son intégration dans un dispositif interactif en termes d'expérience utilisateur. Sur le plan de la visualisation des qualités de mouvement, les travaux menés pendant la thèse ont permis de démontrer que les modèles physiques masses-ressorts offrent de grandes possibilités de simulation de comportements dynamiques et de contrôle en temps réel. Sur le plan de l'analyse, la thèse a permis de développer des approches novatrices de reconnaissance automatique des qualités de mouvement de l'utilisateur. Enfin, à partir des approches d'analyse et de visualisation des qualités de mouvement, la thèse a donné lieu à l'implémentation d'un ensemble de techniques d'interaction. Elle a appliqué et évalué ses techniques dans le contexte de la pédagogie de la danse et de la performance.

My inquiry, centered on the applied practice of teaching, confronts the detachment that often disassociates the intellectual study of music theory from the physical experience of music. This pedagogical detachment, perceived as a split between opposing views of knowledge, privileges positivist science over interpretive art (Aróstegui, 2003), producing written competencies that have little or no musical meaning (Rogers, 2004). Endeavouring to re-attach music theory and the music it was initially intended to explain (Dirié, 2014), I constructed four Listening Guides to align with the intermediate-level theory curriculum of the Royal Conservatory of Music. Their construction incorporates elements of design research along with an underlying framework derived from the Kodály Method’s four-step instructional process. Given my multi-faceted personal/professional interactions with music theory, my research project is presented in the form of a quest narrative that weaves together my story and the stories of participant teachers who established the Listening Guides’ potential usefulness through reviewing and implementing interactions. This narrative, as a creative representation of arts-based research practices (Leavy, 2015), is derived from the blurring of specific cognitive findings and less definable aesthetic knowings (Greenwood, 2012). My data, both the prototypical data I designed and the empirical data I collected from focus group discussions with my participants, are filtered through an a/r/tographic lens that acknowledges the coexistence of my artist/researcher/teacher identities. The analysis of our aggregate narrative, as an exploration of music theory pedagogy with, about, in, and through music, relies on the evaluative tools of educational criticism (Eisner, 1991). Unfolding in a mostly linear climb, my quest for a fully integrated music/theory (art/science) pedagogy reaches its apex in the understanding that a music-logic organization confounds the subject-logic of traditional teaching approaches. Thus, my inquiry challenges the customary practices of scientific knowledge-building with a model for artistic “ways-of-knowing” in music theory pedagogy.

The purpose of this essay is to examine documentary photographs using art-science methods. The subject of the analyzes is photographer Lauren Greenfield’s project Generation Wealth, which reflects the Western consumer culture of our time. From a social-constructivist perspective, three photographs from this 25-year project are examined. These three photographs follow the theme of money and portray three different occasions that are not related to each other, but which are linked here as three subsequent steps in the theme. With the help of Erwin Panofsky's iconological interpretation model, the photographs are examined to reach a deeper meaning than merely documents about an event or of specific individuals. The iconological interpretation helps to put the photographs in a wider context which makes them symbols of our time. On the basis of the preparatory analyzes, connections are made with art historical works that both visually and contextually becomes keys in the interpretation. The photography of Phoebe 17 years becomes a symbol of the role of young people, especially girls, as objects in a consumer system. Eli Broad Dinner Party symbolizes how money controls the art market while this photograph also play with gender order. The photograph of Florian Homm becomes evidence of the emptiness that comes with the quest to constantly achieve financial success.  The analyzes also discuss the division between documentary photography and art photography with the conclusion that such a division inhibits the photograph's sub-meanings. Such a division becomes a clear sign of social constructions and it’s need to categorize and place them in different fields. The essay discusses photography as a reality portrayal. This is a complex discussion which determines of the context in which the photograph is located. By simultaneously seeking an understanding of photography as a medium and by reading photography as a text, the photographs shows how social constructs are inherited and contribute to standards that keep people trapped in the culture of consumption.

No description available.

Transdisciplinarity emerged from the urge to grasp the elusive knowledge in the most fertile zone in between and beyond disciplines that escapes even the most elaborate interdisciplinary operations. While interdisciplinary protocol enables experts to operate within foreign disciplines, in the extreme case as diverse as art and science (by inviting artists into scientific departments and vice versa), the production of knowledge remains confined to particular domains. To transcend these confinements and access the knowledge that evades institutionalisation Basarab Nicolescu’s Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity sets up conditions for an open structure to be grown outside the current compartmentalisation into a living knowledge. This thesis imagines a possible evolution of transdisciplinarity into knowledge to be lived internally rather than learnt externally in order to overcome the anxiety in transcending the established culture of disciplinary research. By entering the transdisciplinary zone, the identity of experts-specialists dissolves, even the crudest separation into artists and scientists becomes obsolete. From the illusion of losing control over knowledge arises the fear of a return to archaic, mystic or even shamanic ways of knowing. Far from proposing a return to shamanism in its ancient forms this thesis imagines the way of polyphibianism – an imaginary solution to navigate efficiently the protoplasmic state of knowledge that would be indigenous to culture of disciplinary researchers. With every significant discovery the disciplinary researchers already intuitively trespass into the very zone that the Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity invites them to enter intentionally. From examination of documented introspective inquiries into their act of discovery the thesis infers the necessary sensibilities and adaptabilities of the individuals to cross the borders of their disciplines. Their seemingly lost identity is temporarily restored with the term polyphibian (analogous to amphibian) designating their ability to survive and explore multiple environments. With each change of circumstances in research a polyphibian adapts by swiftly reinventing its instinctive instruments, mutating its organs of knowing, indifferently to conventional habits of thought. Through their introspective writings this thesis investigates the polyphibic aptitude of Henri Poincaré, Henri Bergson and Marcel Duchamp to scout at the periphery of physics, metaphysics and ‘pataphysics, to intuitively anticipate the role of chance, chaos and complexity in both arts and sciences. A threshold of complexity has to be surpassed in order to bring the current apparatus of knowledge to life. Bergson’s insight on laughter and dreams suggests how intellect could transcend itself. The thesis proposes to consider laughter as faculty that could induce self-awareness in the intellectual apparatus while dreams are considered to facilitate self-organisation of intellect on higher orders of awareness. In Deleuzian manner of mutating Bergson’s work into Bergsonism, polyphibianism is a mutation in transcribing the code of Creative Evolution where Bergson insisted on interdependency between the theory of knowledge and the theory of evolution. The scholarly dispute on Bergsonian and anti-Bergsonian tendencies present in Marcel Duchamp’s work is revisited in the thesis by interpreting the higher dimensional Bride as a polyphibic organism of living knowledge with access to higher orders of awareness, able to guide the Bachelor’s apparatus of mechanical production and preservation of knowledge out of its predicament. Informed by peculiar Duchampian experiments that challenged both the domain of art and science the research projects in this thesis consist of an intervention at CERN that tested the impenetrability of institutionalised art-science collaborations and installation of the Interval of Suspended Judgement with high mathematical precision at the threshold between physics and ‘pataphysics. With these projects the problems of categorising researchers into artists and scientists are revealed. As Deleuze suggested, to effectively formulate the problem, to realize it in multiplicity of contexts, a new concept must be invented, a new organism must be conceived. This thesis gave birth to an imaginary organism of living knowledge in order to relieve the unnecessary anxieties and to fully engage in transdisciplinary research.