Escaping Dante’s hell with an informed virtual environment for interactive bodies in movement

Indira Thouvenin and Francis Rousseaux

^(*) UMR CNRS Heudiasyc, France
^(†) URCA/CReSTIC, France
E-mail: indira.thouvenin@utc, francis.rousseaux@univ-reims.fr

Abstract

The paper addresses the question of Informed Virtual Environments from the point of view of some philosophical and ethical key-issues. By browsing some eclectic experiences like dancing, serving Asturian cider, trying to escape Dante’s Hell or manufacturing a tyre, important questions are raised, and some answers are sketched about some possible ways of designing our future environments: but gestures have then to be considered as cultural objects too, being not reducible to their physical traces.