Human Machine Interaction, Embodied Cognition and Phenomenology: the Body in Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling has emerged in recent years as a powerful tool for teaching and learning that involves both teachers and students (Robin, 2008). The construction of interactive narratives represents an educational challenge gaining in a considerable importance when they take into account the emotions felt by the users and exploit them to improve themselves (Mangione, Pierri & Iovane, 2012). In this sense, new paradigms of Human Machine Interaction can be a tool for reclaiming body in digital storytelling, unraveling the complexity of the narration and, as such, a simplex way (Berthoz, 2011) to learning with the awareness that “the degree of physical involvement is the measure of immersion“ in a digital context (Krueger, 1991). The objective of the research is the reinstatement of the body to digital storytelling, knowing that the gestures made by the weather person are embedded in a narration (Poddar, Sethi, Ozyildiz & Sharma, 1998).Based on a theoretical framework that integrates the concepts of embodied cognition developed in the context of cognitive science, the contribution of phenomenology (Dourish, 2004) and the new forms of HMI developed in the User Interface Design, this project aims the development of a gesture recognition software to allow authors to create effective, interactive gesture-driven stories, using Natural User Interfaces.