Archiving Body Movements: Collective Generation of Chinese Calligraphy
This work addresses the challenge of documenting human body movements for performing and visual arts, specifically in the context of Chinese calligraphy, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing interests in movement representation.
The paper tackles the problem of archiving body movements by applying Chinese calligraphy principles to stimulate and document them through an interactive artwork called Wushu, resulting in a compendium of generated calligraphy that engages the audience in a cyclical process of creation and appreciation.
As a communication channel, body movements have been widely explored in behavioral studies and kinesics. Performing and visual arts share the same interests but focus on documenting and representing human body movements, such as for dance notation and visual work creation. This paper investigates body movements in oriental calligraphy and how to apply calligraphy principles to stimulate and archive body movements. Through an artwork (Wushu), the authors experiment with an interactive and generative approach to engage the audience's bodily participation and archive the body movements as a compendium of generated calligraphy. The audience assumes the role of both writers and readers; creating ("writing") and appreciating ("reading") the generated calligraphy becomes a cyclical process within this infinite "Book," which can motivate further attention and discussions concerning Chinese characters and calligraphy.