Abstract:
<aside> 💡 In the age of digital and big data, the interaction with machines is central and emphasizes the sophistication of user interfaces and browsing tools. In the domain of digital artwork collections, we now benefit from platforms where data can be queried through keywords for specific researches or through their similarities with other data. A retrieval of information that is led by the machine and where specific requests have to be translated into words, before being translated and processed by the many layers of the computer. Other exhibition systems also include more immersive scenarios with navigations through specific features of the collection. However, these interfaces and search functions seem to focus mostly on the spectacularity of the display apparatus and its technological performance and have lost sight of the fundamental role of our body in communication processes. Our postures, movements and gestures are an important tool for our communication with our peers and the world. They allow us to convey information through social conventions or personal expressions and symbolize a certain form of knowledge. It is based on this perspective offered by body language that a new browsing interface was envisioned and created in the context of a research on hand gestures in early modern art. A new tool that allows the researcher to directly interact via their own gestures with hand gestures from the past, placing the human at the centre of the querying system. Through a hand detection system, the machine is used to analyze gestures produced by the user and to output similar ones found in paintings. A system where the hand becomes an actor of the thoughts, allowing to navigate an art collection through poses as embodied forms of knowledge. Fostering new exploration possibilities, the project directly questions the need to re-invent the access to digital data for research purposes and to propose new approaches to our digital tools. Furthermore, it questions the position of the digital humanists, what they can fundamentally bring to the different fields they tackle and their responsibility towards digital data curation.
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