The coming of gestural interactions on mass market products such a the Wii brings lots of question about how to design movements, how to express them and discuss their relevance. This question is of particular importance in the video game industry and there is currently lots of discussion about how to create gestural grammar/vocabularies. I've attended seminars about people try to describe the movements (both the physical movements and their translation in the virtual counterpart) and there has not been any satisfactory solutions. Reading a newspaper, I stumbled across this exhibit called "Les écritures du mouvements" (i.e. The writings of movements) in Paris that presents the different notation systems used in dancing and it seems strikingly pertinent for explaining movements. As described on this website about the show, each notation system attest of the peculiar way to perceive movements, which also depends on the historical, scientific and cultural context of the society in which this system occur. These systems are used either as mnemonic helps but also as a way to train people or even to create. Historically, there has been lots of different systems such as the ones represented below (left: by Bagouet, right: by Zorn):

The most common today are the Laban's system and Benesh's system. Below is an example of Laban:

Of course,t here are tools that allows to use these annotations: see for example Benesh Notation Editor or Credo.

Why do I blog this? This sort of notation systems seems interesting and pertinent for describing gestural interactions. Might have to dig this more deeply. Will wee see superb game design documentations with pages showing this sort of depictions?