Ο ταχύτατος ρυθμός εξέλιξης της επιστήμης των υπολογιστών τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες είχε σαν αποτέλεσμα την επέκταση της χρήσης των υπολογιστών σε διάφορους τομείς της καθημερινής μας ζωής, από ένα συνεχώς αυξανόμενο αριθμό ανθρώπων. Ωστόσο παρατηρούνται ακόμα αρκετές δυσκολίες στον τρόπο χειρισμού διάφορων υπολογιστικών συστημάτων, γεγονός που προσανατολίζει την έρευνα στην ανάπτυξη συστημάτων των οποίων η χρήση βασίζεται στα "φυσικά" μέσα επικοινωνίας που χρησιμοποιούνται από τον άνθρωπο, όπως για παράδειγμα οι χειρονομίες. Αντικείμενο της παρούσας ειδικής επιστημονικής εργασίας αποτελεί η διερεύνηση και υλοποίηση ενός συστήματος αναγνώρισης ανθρώπινων χειρονομιών σε ακολουθίες εικόνων (video), με χρήση τεχνικών υπολογιστικής όρασης. Κατόπιν μιας σύντομης αναφοράς στην επικοινωνία ανθρώπου-υπολογιστή (ΕΑΥ), ερευνώνται εκτενώς τρία πεδία της όρασης υπολογιστών: το χρώμα, και ειδικότερα η χρήση του χρώματος για την κατάτμηση μιας εικόνας, η τεχνική της σύμπτωσης προτύπων (template matching) για αναζήτηση πρωτοτύπων εικόνων σε άλλες εικόνες και η μέθοδος αναγνώρισης κινούμενων αντικειμένων. Οι μεθοδολογίες αυτές συνδυάζονται για την ανάπτυξη του συστήματος αναγνώρισης χειρονομιών, το οποίο μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί σε εφαρμογές όπως η αλληλεπίδραση με ηλεκτρονικούς υπολογιστές, σε κονσόλες βιντεοπαιχνιδιών και διάφορων συσκευών που χρησιμοποιούμε καθημερινά, όπως η τηλεόραση και το κινητό τηλέφωνο. / The enormous rate of evolution of computer science in recent decades has resulted in expanding the use of computers in more and more areas of our everyday life, by more and more people. However there are still numerous difficulties in using various computer systems, therefore the research is oriented to the development of the use of which is based on more "natural" means that people use to communicate with each other, such as gestures. The subject of this master thesis is the study and development of a system for the recognition of human gestures in image sequences (video), using computer vision techniques. After a brief mention of Human-Computer Interaction extensively investigated three areas of computer vision: color, particularly the use of color for the segmentation of an image, the technique of template matching to search prototype images other images and recognition method of moving objects. These methodologies combine the development of gesture recognition system, which can be used in applications such as computer interaction, video game consoles and various devices that we use every day, including television and mobile phone.

The goal of human action recognition on videos is to determine in an automatic way what is happening in a video. This work focuses on providing an answer to this question: given consecutive frames from a video where a person or persons are doing an action, is an automatic system able to recognize the action that is going on for each person? Seven approaches have been provided, most of them based on an alignment process in order to find a measure of distance or similarity for obtaining the classification. Some are based on fluents that are converted to qualitative sequences of Allen relations to make it possible to measure the distance between the pair of sequences by aligning them. The fluents are generated in various ways: representation based on feature extraction of human pose propositions in just an image or a small sequence of images, changes of time series mainly on the angle of slope, changes of the time series focus on the slope direction, and propositions based on symbolic sequences generated by SAX. Another approach based on alignment corresponds to Dynamic Time Warping on subsets of highly dependent parts of the body. An additional approach explored is based on SAX symbolic sequences and respective pair wise alignment. The last approach is based on discretization of the multivariate time series, but instead of alignment, a spectrum kernel and SVM are used as is employed to classify protein sequences in biology. Finally, a sliding window method is used to recognize the actions along the video. These approaches were tested on three datasets derived from RGB-D cameras (e.g., Microsoft Kinect) as well as ordinary video, and a selection of the approaches was compared to the results of other researchers.

Active Reading is an important part of a knowledge worker’s activities; it involves highlighting, writing notes, marking with symbols, etc., on a document. Many Active Reading applications have been designed in seeking to replicate the affordances of paper through digital-ink-based annotation tools. However, these applications require users to perform numerous steps to use various types of annotation tools, which impose an unnecessary cognitive load, distracting them from their reading tasks. In this thesis, we introduce GestAnnot, an Active Reading application for tablet computers that takes a fundamentally different approach of incorporating multi-touch gesture techniques for creating and manipulating annotations on an e-document, thus offering a flexible and easy- to-use annotation solution. Based on the literature review, we designed and developed GestAnnot and then performed lab and field evaluations of the software. In lab evaluation, GestAnnot performed better than one of the best existing annotation application in many aspects, including number of steps. The design was then refined based on the feedback received. The field evaluation of the improved design helped us to understand the performance of the application in the real world. We proposed a set of design guidelines through the feedback received from both evaluations, which any future Active Reading application could benefit from.

Infants’ gestures feature prominently in early language. The observation that accomplishments in gesture presage verbal milestones prompted the question of whether encouraging infants to gesture would bring on language gains. This thesis addressed this question, remedying many of the shortfalls of previous research. In a yearlong longitudinal study, high-SES mother-infant dyads (n = 40) were randomly allocated to one of four conditions: Symbolic Gesture training, British Sign Language (BSL) training, Verbal training and a Non-Intervention Control group. Infants’ language was continually assessed between the ages of 8 to 20 months to determine the impact of encouraged gesture on language development. With the exception of a small number of boys, encouraging gesture did not affect infants’ language development. However, the expressive language of boys who started the study with a low language ability was improved by gesture. A gesture-training intervention was delivered to low-SES mothers at a Sure Start children’s centre. Infants of mothers trained to gesture showed greater gains in their receptive and expressive vocabularies than infants of mothers who attended sessions aimed to improve general communication (without gesture instruction). Gesture helped reduce the discrepancy between the language abilities of infants from low and high-SES backgrounds. Qualitative investigations revealed how encouraging mothers to use gestures with their infants led to perceived wider, non-linguistic benefits. However, a comparison of maternal and infant stress scores revealed no difference between gesturing and non-gesturing mother-infant dyads. Infants, who because of biological and/or environmental factors have lower language abilities than their peers, stand to benefit from encouraged gesture in infancy. Through early intervention, gesture has the potential to reduce the disadvantage that children from lower-SES families face from impoverished language abilities. By changing the course of their early development, encouraged gesture could ultimately bring about lasting benefits.

Focusing attention on a neglected aspect of Renaissance scholarship, this study aims to illuminate the rhetorical role of the body in Renaissance literature by exploring the rhetorical nature of three forms of corporeality: stasis, gesture, and dance. Generally speaking, rhetoric of the body is not lacking in early modern scholarship. However, consideration of the literary body as a rhetorical entity that not only articulates but also creates meaning is indeed a neglected area. The body-as-text paradigm that grounds performance studies provides for a unique and nuanced approach to literary text analysis. The methodology employed in this thesis combines a historical and text-based approach, with substantial attention given to classical rhetoric because of its awareness of the rhetorical capacity of the body. The rhetoric of stasis is explored in Sir John Davies’ poem Orchestra and in three works by Shakespeare: The Winter’s Tale, The Rape of Lucrece, and Coriolanus. In this chapter, trauma is presented as a framing mechanism for the characters’ static presence. Gesture and its rhetorical quality are studied through distinctive analyses of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, The Rape of Lucrece, and Titus Andronicus. An analysis of Ben Jonson’s Epicoene provides a comic close to this study of gesture. This chapter also has as its framework the concept of trauma, presenting it as either a cause for or effect of gesture. Finally, the rhetoric of dance is examined in further analyses of Orchestra and The Winter’s Tale and also in Ben Jonson’s Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue. The literary approach to the rhetorical study of stasis, gesture, and dance taken in this study includes its dramaturgical and compositional functions, providing for a new lens through which to view instances of corporeality in Renaissance literature. This project attends to the early modern awareness and understanding of the rhetorical capacity and force of the body, and does so in a way that allows the speaking body to be examined within original contexts, thus bridging literary and performance analysis.

<p>How do infants learn word meanings? Research has established the impact of both parent and child behaviors on vocabulary development, however the processes and mechanisms underlying these relationships are still not fully understood. Much existing literature focuses on direct paths to word learning, demonstrating that parent speech and child gesture use are powerful predictors of later vocabulary. However, an additional body of research indicates that these relationships don’t always replicate, particularly when assessed in different populations, contexts, or developmental periods. </p><p>The current study examines the relationships between infant gesture, parent speech, and infant vocabulary over the course of the second year (10-22 months of age). Through the use of detailed coding of dyadic mother-child play interactions and a combination of quantitative and qualitative data analytic methods, the process of communicative development was explored. Findings reveal non-linear patterns of growth in both parent speech content and child gesture use. Analyses of contingency in dyadic interactions reveal that children are active contributors to communicative engagement through their use of gestures, shaping the type of input they receive from parents, which in turn influences child vocabulary acquisition. Recommendations for future studies and the use of nuanced methodologies to assess changes in the dynamic system of dyadic communication are discussed.</p> / Dissertation

L’étude de l’œuvre de Georges Mathieu, artiste controversé dont les activités s’étendent sur les décennies suivant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, vise à éclairer un parcours méconnu afin de pouvoir l’intégrer de manière plus pertinente dans le champ de l’histoire de l’art contemporain. S’intéresser aux réseaux au sein desquels a gravité l’artiste permet de considérer globalement l’abstraction lyrique et de dessiner des relations complexes entre les différents acteurs des mondes de l’art. Les enjeux du contexte artistique des années 1950 sont ainsi mis en avant plus précisément, conduisant à l’identification de stratégies de promotion en partie basées sur les mythologies du geste créateur. Mathieu, élaborant son discours par anticipation de sa réception et se présentant comme une personnalité médiatique ambivalente, s’inscrit dans une dialectique inhérente de l’art à l’ère postmoderne : l’oscillation perpétuelle entre culture d’élite et culture de masse / The study of Georges Mathieu’s work, debated artist whose activities extend over the decades following the Second World War, aims at enlightening an unkown path to be able to integrate it in a more relevant way into the contemporary field of the art history. Be interested in the networks in which the artist gravitated allows to consider the lyrical abstraction overall and to draw complex connections between the various actors of the worlds of art. The stakes in the artistic context of the 1950s are so put forward more exactly, leading to the identification of strategies of promotion partially based on the mythologies of the creative gesture. Mathieu, developing his discourse by anticipation of his reception and appearing as an ambivalent media personality, fits into an inherent dialectic of the art in postmodern era : the constant swaying between culture of elite and mass culture

Pesquisas em Interfaces Naturais, sub-área da Computação Ubíqua, investigam o uso de dispositivos não-tradicionais para possibilitar a interação entre usuários e aplicaçõs de maneiras menos intrusivas (gestos, voz e escrita baseada em tinta eletrônica, por exemplo). Com o aumento da popularidade de dispositivos equipados com sensores de aceleração, os desenvolvedores agora dispõem de um novo dispositivo que pode ser utilizado para prover interação entre usuários e diferentes aplicações, como por exemplo as que se encontram presentes em ambientes de TV interativos. Assim, aplicações que fazem uso de acelerômetros vêm sendo desenvolvidas para situações específicas, e suas implementações e formatos de dados manipulados são dependentes do domínio para o qual foram projetados. Este trabalho apresenta um modelo para a formalização do modo como esses dados podem ser manipulados, por meio de uma abordagem genérica e extensível. Além disso, o modelo permite a descrição de regras para agregação de valor a estes dados por meio da adição de significados. Isto e obtido com a proposta de uma arquitetura em camadas que possibilita a estruturação e compartilhamento desses dados de modo flexível. Três protótipos foram implementados na linguagem de programação Java, fazendo-se uso dessa arquitetura e de uma API desenvolvida para facilitar o uso do modelo. Essas implementações demonstram a viabilidade do modelo proposto como solução para a questão da interoperabilidade nos cenários ilustrados, e para a extensibilidade dos dados, nos casos em que uma mudança de requisitos faz-se necessária / Research in Natural Interfaces, sub-area of Ubiquitous Computing, investigates the use of non-traditional devices to support user interaction with applications in less intrusive ways (gestures, voice and writing based on electronic ink, for instance). With the increasing popularity of accelerometers, developers now have another tool that can be used to provide interaction between users and different applications, such as interactive TV environments. However, applications that make use of accelerometers are currently being developed for specific situations, and their implementations and handled documents are also dependent on the domain for which they were designed. This work aims to propose a model to formalize how the accelerometer data may be handled in a generic way. In addition, the model enables the description of rules to aggregate value to these data through the addition of meanings. This is done by proposing a layered architecture to structure and share data in a exible way. Three prototypes were implemented in the Java programming language, making use of this architecture and an API designed to facilitate the model implementation. These prototypes demonstrate the feasibility of the model proposed as a solution to the issue of interoperability in the scenarios illustrated, and the problem of data extensibility, whenever a change of requirements poses necessary

Thesis advisor: John Sallis / The present dissertation explores the motif of gesture and demonstrates that it encompasses the resonances between the works of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. My thesis specifically is that the notion of gesture articulates the problems of art and language, revealing fundamental convergences in the ways in which Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty investigate a non-metaphysical approach to the sensible and question the limits of philosophy. I develop this argument by closely following Merleau-Ponty's reading of Heidegger's works in the lecture-notes from his courses at the Collège de France. I also rely heavily on Heidegger's reflections on gesture and the body as they are depicted in the Zollikon seminars, considering that some of these reflections retrieve crucial arguments from Being and Time and that they bear a significant resemblance to Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the body. In this way, I elucidate what may be called the gestural character of the work of art and language, establishing structural connections between the texts of these two thinkers. This dissertation is divided into three parts. I devote the first part to the themes of the body and gesture and show that the concept of form and the problem of perception lead to questions concerning the possibilities of a phenomenology of the body. I conclude this part by arguing that, for both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, the notion of gesture corresponds to a phenomenological approach to the body as openness to the world and as an affective milieu. Departing from the arguments and comparisons delineated in the first part, in the second and third parts I examine separately the works of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in order to determine the settings of the notion of gesture within their respective approaches to art and language. The second part treats problems concerning the sensible character of the work of art, arguing that gestures perform a poetical disclosure of nature. In the third part I focus on questions of language and demonstrate that gestures unfold what could be called the logos of the sensible, which constitutes the primary source of language and meaning. I conclude by interpreting Heidegger's work as a gestural philosophy that emphasizes the performative dimension of language, an emphasis that is missing from Merleau-Ponty's work. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo descrever e analisar os gestos produzidos em contexto de narrativa dançada, tomando como base os estudos dos gestos que acompanham a fala (Kendon 2004, McNeill 1992, Kita et al. 1998, Mittelberg 2006, Streeck 2009, entre outros). Para esse fim, adapto para o discurso dançado a proposta de estrutura tripartite de Poyatos (2002) para o discurso oral. Poyatos prevê os níveis linguístico (elementos segmentáveis), paralinguístico (elementos supressegmentais), e quinésico (postura e gestualidade). Os três níveis colaboram para a construção de sentido do discurso verbal. Mantenho a estrutura tripartite, propondo, para a dança, os níveis técnico (elementos segmentáveis, incluída a gestualidade convencionada pela técnica de dança), paraquinésico (elementos não-segmentáveis ligados à dinâmica do movimento), e gestual (postura e gestualidade ligada à comunicação cotidiana, incluída a pantomima). Gestos são considerados, então, quaisquer movimentos expressivos do corpo e/ou da face que não pertençam aos níveis técnico e paraquinésico. A interação entre os níveis para a construção do significado também fica mantida. Para poder verificar a pertinência da proposta, observo, entre outras, a cena do balcão e a cena final na versão de Romeu e Julieta, de William Shakespeare, coreografada por Kenneth MacMillan para o The Royal Ballet, e a cena final da versão de Rudolf Nureyev para o Ballet de LOpéra de Paris. O programa ELAN (EUDICO Language Annotator), versão 4.1.1, desenvolvido pelo Instituto Max Planck, e largamente usado na transcrição de línguas de sinais, foi utilizado para a transcrição dos dados em diferentes trilhas. Ele possibilita descrever de maneira mais abrangente os vários aspectos simultâneos dos gestos, como o movimento das mãos, traços de expressão facial (movimento de sobrancelhas, pálpebras, olhar e boca), entre outros. O objetivo do estudo dos gestos que acompanham a dança é corroborar a proposta da relação entre gesto e conceitualização, entendendo a contribuição do elemento gestual para a construção de significado em um discurso, seja ele oralizado, sinalizado ou dançado. / This work aims to describe and analyze gestures produced in a danced narrative, following the lines proposed in co-speech gesture studies (Kendon 2004, McNeill 1992, Kita et al. 1998, Mittelberg 2006, Streeck 2009, among others). To accomplish this goal, I adapt to the dance discourse Poyatoss proposal (2002) for verbal discourse. According to Poyatos, the verbal discourse is built upon a tripartite structure comprising a linguistic layer (with segmental elements), a paralinguistic layer (which includes suprasegmental elements) and a kinesic layer (including posture and gesture). He proposes that meaning construction in verbal discourse relies on the interaction of these three layers. My proposal is to maintain the triple structure to analyze dance discourse as well as the interaction between its specific layers: technical (which includes segmental elements of the dance technique), parakinesic (including non-segmental elements related to the dynamics of movement), and gestural (related to the posture of the body and gesture, including pantomime). Gesture will, then, be considered any expressive movement of body and/or face that is not part either of dance technique or of its dynamic elements. To verify the relevance of this proposal, I analyze a part of the balcony scene and the final one, among others, from Kenneth MacMillans version of Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, created for and performed by The Royal Ballet, and the final scene from Rudolf Nureyevs version for the Ballet de LOpéra de Paris. The Max Planck software, ELAN (EUDICO Language Annotator), version 4.1.1, largely used to transcribe sign languages, was used for the transcription of the data into several different tiers. This allows for a better description of the many simultaneous aspects of the gestures, such as hand movement and facial expressions features (eyebrows, eyelids, gaze and mouth movements), among others. The aim of studying gestures that accompany dance is to reinforce the proposal of correlation between gesture and conceptualization, understanding the contribution of the gestural element to meaning construction in a discourse, being it oral, signed or danced.