  The question of encoding movements such as those produced by human gestures
may become central in the coming years, given the growing importance of
movement data exchanges between heterogeneous systems and applications (musical
applications, 3D motion control, virtual reality interaction, etc.). For the
past 20 years, various formats have been proposed for encoding movement,
especially gestures. Though, these formats, at different degrees, were designed
in the context of quite specific applications (character animation, motion
capture, musical gesture, biomechanical concerns...). The article introduce a
new file format, called GMS (for 'Gesture and Motion Signal'), with the aim of
being more low-level and generic, by defining the minimal features a format
carrying movement/gesture information needs, rather than by gathering all the
information generally given by the existing formats. The article argues that,
given its growing presence in virtual reality situations, the "gesture signal"
itself must be encoded, and that a specific format is needed. The proposed
format features the inner properties of such signals: dimensionality,
structural features, types of variables, and spatial and temporal properties.
The article first reviews the various situations with multisensory virtual
objects in which gesture controls intervene. The proposed format is then
deduced, as a mean to encode such versatile and variable "gestural and animated
scene".
