NOTA-ANNA

It is an human movement notation research conducted between 1981 and now. This research was the subject of Analivia master’s thesis resulting in the book Nota-Anna – an electronical notation of body movements based on Laban method.

Nota-Anna is a human motion notation software that graphically describes the spatial displacement of 24 joints of the body in three dimensions. The data input can be through video frames or sensors.

To propose a system of movement notation occurs only at the maturity of a study. A researcher can only try to establish control over the movement after decades of practical experience, self-observation, scientific knowledge, and observation of other people. After such a complex and long study, you will surely understand how little you know about the body movement to try to control it to a large degree.

Nota-Anna was developed in 3 distinct phases from 1981 to 2019. The technological phases of this development were:

Phase I (1982-1986) using a PDP 11/60 and programmed with Fortran IV at University of São Paulo, and then using a VAX 11/780, programming with Fortran 77 at Intergraph offi ce in São Paulo.

Phase II (1994 to 1996) started with use of open platforms with Unix workstations from Sun Microsystems (SPARCstation 2) and C language together with Graphics libraries. During the third and last phase (1996 to 2001), Nota-Anna was converted to Java, so it could run on any platform.

Phase III from 2015 till now based on the idea of visualizing the movement through new means, which allowed an extension of the Nota-Anna, in addition to the creation of sculptures. Nota-Anna was improved by new visualizations of the movement volume or of the displacements of points of the body joints. The readers’ reaction to Nota-Anna has been very positive. Now we can say that Nota-Anna is an instrument of human communication that writes, describes, and creates the movement for people to exchange messages after the movement has already taken place, as a past act.