My name is Jeroen Arendsen. This site is the result of my general interest in gestures and HCI. My PhD topic is the perception of sign language and other gestures. I work on a gesture recognition project at the Delft University of Technology (DUT). I also participate in a project (ELo, pdf) to create software for deaf children to practice sign language vocabulary.
This site was named ‘A Nice Gesture’ after a workshop held by our group at the DUT which was called in Dutch ‘Een Mooi Gebaar’. That is an expression referring to acts that are fairly small by themselves but become bigger because an actor (succesfully) communicates his good intentions with them.
The logo of the site is the shortest summary of a question: “What makes people see that something is a gesture?”. In the picture you probably see a hand. But do you also see the gesture? Some do and some don’t. If you are told it is a Queen Anne’s Fan, would that help you see? A range of topics is treated on this site. They share one thing: it has to be about gestures (with a small exception for cool robot stuff). Besides that you can check the categories in the sidebar for specific interests.
Share and enjoy!
Jeroen
