Herman Roodenburg's Eloquence

With great delight I read Herman Roodenburg's 2004 book called 'Eloquence of the Body. Perspectives on gesture in the Dutch Republic'. I already posted about it earlier with respect to Jelgerhuis and a lovely video about 'Welstand'. Roodenburg is a scholar based at the Meertens Instituut, who has written on various topics where history and sociology meet. Cover of the book (source) Some of his works have been translated into many languages. I previously read 'A Cultural History of Gesture from Antiquity to the Present Day, red. J.N. Bremmer en H.W. Roodenburg (Cambridge, 1991)', of which I found a 1993 Dutch translation in my local bookshop. But his documentations of the histories of honour, humor and corsets also captured my imagination. The current work, Eloquence of the Body, is a time machine. It took me, a young Dutch man, back to the days of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), an important man in the history of the Dutch Republic. And Roodenburg makes it happen because he seems to have developed an ear for the stories that books tell about their previous owners. He scrutinizes the library lists of the Huygenses and compares them to their correspondence and is deeply engrossed in his studies of the old texts on civility (Castiglione, Erasmus, etc.). And from all this scholarly groundwork rises a clear picture of the role of gesture and bodily memory in the minds of the people at that time. The chapters: - Castiglione's Paradox - Civility and the Dutch Republic - Incarnating Civility - Painting and Civility - Acting and Civility - Preaching and Civility There are also many notes and a large bibliography, which unlock the old writings on gesture for any novel student such as myself. It is a guide to thoughts of the past. To stimulate the imagination many images illustrate the points made by the author. For me, it was also a free lesson on art history and in how painting and acting (and preaching) are related to gesture. Sadly, what is lacking is a bridge from the past to the present. I would have loved to read whether the 'welstand' for example is still practised today in the Netherlands. Or how children are taught manners today. Or perhaps some remarks about the 'Dutch Identity', a vague term that has been hijacked by nationalistic politicians. I would hope that Roodenburg can make more sense of what is typically Dutch (from a historical perspective) than them.

Gesture Interaction for Window Displays

Orange, the phone company, is exploring and developing a nice new niche market for gesture recognition: The Interactive Shop Window. Could it be one of the killer apps for gesture recognition? I think it is possible. The advantages are quite clear. As a unique selling point gesture recognition offers the possibility to interact through existing windows, simply because a camera can see through them. I do not think any other interaction technique can do that. Voice recognition doesn't travel through windows. Touchscreens need to physically available, as any other haptic device (mouse, keyboard, etc.). Review by Gizmodo Made by The Alternative Update Feb 3: Reviewed by the Dutch Marketing Facts

Soldier Hand Signals

Just for a laugh, here is a caricature of soldiers' hand signals: (Source: Geenstijl Dumpert)

Lleyton Hewitt Trademark Gesture Challenged

I just noticed that there is a new case of people trademarking a gesture. In this case it is tennisplayer Lleyton Hewitt . However, he did not 'invent' the gesture (if such a thing could be said about a gesture in the first place), another tennisplayer called Niclas Kroon was apparently the first to trademark this "Vicht" salute, and he shared the rights with Mats Wilander. The gesture and accompanying "C'mon" are claimed to be known as "doing a Lleyton". (source & pic: Getty) I you find it hard to believe, you may share it with the people on this forum. I merely find it interesting to witness (there are so many other 'ridiculous' things that can and will be trademarked). It is certainly not the first time it happens. Besides Kroon, there was once a wrestler called Diamond Dallas Page who fought a legal battle with rapper Jay-Z over a trademark violation of his 'Diamond Cutter Gesture'. One seems to hear about gesture trademarks only when there is a dispute (as it is often with patents as well). If you want to study the matter, read Henry Abromson's good piece on gesture trademarking and the legal case of Page vs. Jay-Z, from which the following pictures were taken: V.

My first papre was publshed

Oh my god. I just read the abstract of the first journal paper I have ever published (not counting my writings for the University's weekly, the Delta). It is horrible writing! After a long and tedious process of writing, revising, co-editing, and revising some more it is unreadable! The present and past tense are alternated seemingly at random. Bizarre sentences arose from disputes and compromises. Strange ambiguities must leave even the most forgiving reader puzzled and irritated. I promise here and now to do a better job next time. Well, leaving the abstract aside, the paper contains the results of my first experiments, which are not entirely uninteresting I think, regarding the perception of signs and fidgeting. It is called 'When and how well do people see the onset of gestures'. To explain what it is about let me give you a little task. Next time when you are away from your computer and among the people, look for two or three people grouped together, talking or otherwise. Preferably they are at enough distance so as not to be overheard (or take offense at your snooping). Now, watch their movements, their hands. And as soon as you see a gesture you knock on something. If you do this you will probably experience three things. First, it is an easy task. Second, you will probably ignore the fidgeting. Third, if you ask a friend to join your little game of gesture-spotting (as I have done on many occasions), he will probably knock in response to the same movements that you do. Now, the ability to spot gestures, and ignore fidgeting, may seem trivial to you, but imagine you were a robot. Do you think computer vision experts would have been able to program you with this ability? At the moment, they don't even have a clue how to solve this puzzle. You would be forced to analyze any movement as 'possibly a gesture I might have to respond to'. And perhaps you would wish you had something to filter out the 50% 'just fidgeting' (estimate by intuition) to save you time that you need to keep from bumping into lantern posts and such.

Jelgerhuis and the Eloquence of the Body

Here is a wonderful video that sums up and illustrates the main ideas about gestures that are available in the work of Johannes Jelgerhuis, a famous artist of this time as a painter, illustrator and actor. At the same time the video follows the story of a recent book by Herman Roodenburg, Eloquence of the Body, which is however mentioned nowhere. But the illustrations are all in that book and the ideas are the same as well, although I am only halfway in the book so far. I scanned the book written by Jelgerhuis between 1827 and 1830, of which an original copy is available in the library of Utrecht. It is a wonderful series of ´lessons´ about gesture, posture and mimicry with a large collection of plates, witch Jelgerhuis etched himself. There is also a 1970 reprint avaliable with Dutch and English summaries and all the plates. Furthermore there is a full translation, with annotations, available in Golding's book on classicistic acting. The ideas of the eighteenth century about the 'welstand' in Holland, or more generally about appropriate bodily behavior for the upper classes are inspiring. They contain an appealing myth: acquire a certain second nature of standing, walking, dancing, etc. and you will be lifted in society. People will value your behavior and may consider you their peers. Yet at the same time, paradoxically, such a second nature was only attainable for those of the right first nature. If you didn't have the right breeding then you might as well forget it. Ever since I read the books I have been trying to walk more upright, keep my feet at right angles, and behave and talk as elegant as I can. Alas, I slip into my burly uncivilized manners as often as not. I blame my parents for not putting me into a straightjacket as a boy and sending me off to dancing and fencing lessons (I forgive them for my genes, they were all they had to give). But Jelgerhuis' book is not about life. It is about acting. He wrote about the art of gesture on stage (see this earlier entry for links to Johann Jakob Engel, but also to the memory of Dene Barnett). But then, life and acting are not exactly two mutually exclusive categories. Literature JELGERHUIS RZ, JOHANNES Theoretische lessen over de gesticulatie en mimiek, gegeven aan de kweekelingen van het fonds ter opleiding en onderrigting van tooneel-kunstenaars aan den stads schouwburg te Amsterdam. Amsterdam, P. Meijer Warnars, [1827-1830]. Roodenburg, H.W. (2004) The Eloquence of the Body. Studies on Gesture in the Dutch Republic. Waanders, Zwolle, 208 p. 1e dr. (Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History, nr. 6) Golding, Alfred Siemon; Jelgerhuis, J. (1984). Classicistic Acting: Two Centuries of a Performance Tradition at the Amsterdam Schouwburg to Which Is Appended an Annotated Translation of the Lessons on the Principles of Gesticulation and Mimic Expression of Johannes Jelgerhuis, Rz. University Press of America

Wii-Gesture Control for Robots

Here is a guy called roschler demonstrating how to (learn to) control an i-Sobot, the world's smallest humanoid robot, with Wii-gestures instead of using a complicated remote control. Because the robot's routines are mostly gestures you can create commands for them through imitation or iconicity. Probably, actions will often have to be simplified, since I do not expect people will want to make an actual somersault to tell the robot to do that. Also, for certain actions or scripts I imagine that the gestures will become arbitrary and not really intuitive, but probably still easier to use than the alternative RC. Robot control, another good niche for gesture recognition? i-SOBOT by ThinkGeek: World's Smallest Fully Articulated Humanoid Robot Buy an i-SOBOT at Amazon for about $250 Watch a fight: i-SOBOT vs. Godzilla More about Robodance, a.k.a. Robosapiens Dance Machine, which can also be used to control WowWee Robots.

ZCam 3D Gesture Recognition

The ZCam, from 3DV Systems, is featuring in several recent movie demos on the YouTube. It is a camera with onboard technology (it emits infrared pulses and catches refections) that not only provides RGB values for a matrix of pixels, but also a Z-score, i.e. the depth of that pixel. It is reported to be quite accurate. It is also reported to become cheaper, and therefore more widely available to, for example, game developers. The ZCam, small but deep? So far, there are demos shown of a squash game, a boxing game, and a flight simulator. But the website from the company has a more extensive video gallery. Here is a nice review on Gizmodo, where they always keep an eye out for interesting gadgets like this. Crowd response has been positive so far but it remains to be seen whether this technology will be adopted in the market. It is at the moment a bit hard to say how well the technology works, what sort of drawbacks there are, etc. But if it does work well than I think it has less disadvantages than stereo-cameras. I have some experience with a stereo-camera (two synchronized cameras with a software algorithm to integrate their output and obtain depth). This is expensive, costs processing power, costs time to configure, is unreliable (it should not be moved or even touched after configuration), and it relies on skin color segmentation to track faces and hands. But what about the ZCam, what are users required to do or not to do, that is the question.

Emblems in action

See here a nice video on the YouTube featuring a lot of gestures (it is a group of Sicilians at the dinner table). Thanks to Kensy Cooperrider and his embodied talk weblog for digging up some video gems. A Sicilian Argument One of the things I like in this video is that you can see some emblems in action, such as the mano bursa (grip hand). It is made near the end of the video by the man in the blue shirt. Kendon (1995, 2004) wrote extensively on how gestures like the ones you see here can be used with a high degree of conventionality. The ring hand alone is used in a variety of conventional ways. It is not hard to imagine that indeed this group of people knows how to make their gestures count.

Name calling in SLN

There is an interesting initiative to include name calling or swear signs in the SLN lessons for parents of Deaf kids was organised by a group of parents of Deaf kids. According to their leaflet (in Dutch) they will be treating the following signs in the first lesson: klootzak (dysphemism for scrotum), idioot (idiot), and sukkel (idiot/loser). See posts on Doof.nl and FOK (with many comments). It made me wonder how much of the vulgar Dutch emblems are part of the SLN lexicon. In fact, I am quite curious in general about the relation between signs and a host culture's emblems (which according to Ekman & Friesen (1969) and Morris et al. (1979) are a recognizable set of symbolic gestures with a conventionalized meaning in a culture that can be used to substitute words or parts of speech. Kendon (1984, 1992) calls them 'quotable gestures'). I will check the set of 20 key gestures from Morris et al. (1979) against an SLN dictionary (Standaard Lexicon NGT, deel 1+2, NGC, 2002) to see which of those 20 emblems are also SLN signs. It should be noted that according to Morris et al. only 12 of the gestures are commonly known in the Netherlands, which I checked with 'Het Gebarenboekje' by Andrea & De Boer (1993) to see if they concurred, which by and large they did. One gesture is at least a well known SLN sign: the Fig. Do you know what it means in the Netherlands and in SLN? (Source: Morris et al. 1979)