Where There is a Body, There is a Story

This presentation argues that where there is a body, there is a story, revealing how certain narratives are culturally emergent, despite any dramaturgical intent. By decoupling stories from storytelling like so, latent body narratives that underscore both performance and human-computer interaction are shown as interrelated. These non-linguistic and even non-linear narratives are understood to be foundational to embodied knowledge. As such, stages and computer interfaces are discussed as mediums for transferring and archiving this knowledge across analogue and digital domains. This parallelism makes it possible to bridge choreography with interaction design, as demonstrated in my research on choreographic interfaces. Peppered with questions throughout, last to be asked in the essay is: as new media is used to transfer embodied knowledge just as stages for millennia, what new narratives will surface — structurally in performance, personally for performers, and automatically for human and non-human (computer) observers?