My fascination with hands and their expressive qualities revealed itself over time. As a child, I watched my father at the piano, his fingers translating intention into music. In my mother's art studio, her hands dutifully wrapped around brushes, layering color onto canvas. Each movement was a form of embodied intelligence, a way of thinking through the hands. This early understanding drew me naturally to dance and choreography.

There was something I was certain of: hands were the gateway to something much deeper about the human experience

In studios and on stages, I discovered my own language of expression, where hands became both vocabulary and voice, my hands and body becoming extensions of my own thoughts and reflections of the world. As I developed as a choreographer, many of my works centered on motifs and gestures of the hands — I loved how the subtlest shift in hand position could completely transform the emotional quality of a piece. In my dancers' hands, I saw stories unfold—their gestural patterns revealing more about their inner lives than hours of conversation could have uncovered. There was something I was certain of: hands were the gateway to something much deeper about the human experience.

My transition from dance to technology wasn't as unlikely as it might seem. It is the necessary work of a choreographer to be deeply engaged in analyzing movement vocabularies and gestural motifs - studying how certain hand positions or movements could be repeated, varied, and combined for a particular artistic agenda. As the tech industry began embracing spatial and embodied computing—spurred by the release of the first iPhone in the late 2000s and continuing into the early 2010s—my systematic approach to movement found unexpected applications.

When I joined Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group, my understanding of hands and their expressiveness deepened. The work on Project Soli—a miniature radar system for detecting fine hand movements—didn’t start with inventing new gestures but rather with studying the fundamental ways hands already organize themselves. Early research, including conversations with primatologists, revealed fundamental gestures of primates (pushing and pulling). Ergonomics of the hand are essential to consider, such as the precision grip for fine manipulation and the power grip for grasping larger objects. These weren’t arbitrary patterns; they were biomechanical optimizations that human hands had evolved over millions of years.

It is the necessary work of a choreographer to be deeply engaged in analyzing movement vocabularies and gestural motifs

The radar technology in Project Soli was uniquely suited to capture the qualitative subtleties of movement—the difference between a quick versus steady motion, or a sweeping gesture. When the technology was released on the Pixel phone, a user could sweep their hand in the air across the screen to change their music, or dismiss an alarm in the morning - it felt magical.

When people learned their phone contained a radar sensor with an invisible sensing field, often their intuitive response was to reach out and 'feel' for it, much like sensing the warmth of a fire

When people learned their phone contained a radar sensor with an invisible sensing field, often their intuitive response was to reach out and 'feel' for it, much like sensing the warmth of a fire. This visceral response highlighted how deeply embedded these hand movements are in our evolutionary history - as technology extends from the screen into our physical world, our hands instinctively draw upon ancient patterns of knowing to make sense of these new digital contexts.

Even in standardized gestures like pinching to zoom or swiping to scroll, I see individual personalities emerge

In my years of choreography and technology work, I've observed thousands of hands in motion. No two people interact with a digital interface exactly the same way. Some move with deliberate precision, others with fluid spontaneity. Even in standardized gestures like pinching to zoom or swiping to scroll, I see individual personalities emerge—tentative or bold, flowing or staccato, each movement a glimpse into someone's unique way of being in the world. 

These differences remind me that while hands might follow universal patterns shaped by evolution and culture, they are also profound expressions of individual spirit. The way we gesture when telling a story, the unconscious movements we make while thinking, the particular tension or ease we hold in our fingers—these are as distinctive as our voices, as revealing as our eyes.

From ancient mudras to modern touchscreens, our hands are conductors between realms—physical and spiritual, digital and material, known and unknown.

Across various traditions, hands have long been celebrated as instruments of both action and insight. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, practitioners use their hands to apply pressure to specific acupuncture points—believed to channel qi (vital energy)—demonstrating a precise understanding of the body's energetic pathways. Similarly, Buddhist traditions employ mudras such as the Abhaya Mudra (gesture of fearlessness) and Dhyana Mudra (gesture of meditation) to cultivate mindfulness and deepen concentration. In Qi Gong, each deliberate gesture is more than just physical movement; it acts as a form of meditation that shapes our thoughts and influences our reality. As practitioners guide their hands through slow, intentional motions, they are not merely exercising but also reconfiguring their internal landscape, aligning mental clarity with physical balance.

From ancient mudras to modern touchscreens, our hands are conductors between realms—physical and spiritual, digital and material, known and unknown. In the context of digital technologies today, it’s fascinating to think the same motions that once let us shape clay or sense fire's warmth are also being repurposed and recontextualized for our modern world. 

Through my years of research in gesture interfaces and human-computer interaction, I've observed that true innovation often emerges not from inventing entirely new behaviors, but from amplifying our own embodied wisdom. When digital interfaces harmonize with our innate physical intelligence, the technology becomes more than just a tool; it becomes an authentic extension of human capability, much like my dad on the piano, or my mom with her paintbrush. I like to think of this process as a sort of technological archaeology—unearthing ancient bodily knowledge and translating that into digital expression. We're not simply advancing technology, we're uncovering and remembering what has always been there.