From movement to motor behavior: epistemology of embodied knowledge and the limits of its digital representation

Abstract

This article problematises the dominant ways in which spatio-temporal movement data are interpreted and semantically enriched in the context of intangible cultural heritage. Rather than treating semantics as a secondary layer added to already recorded kinematic parameters, the paper argues for the necessity of a preceding analysis of the knowledge realized through motor cultural practices. The study seeks to clarify the epistemological status of embodied knowledge in the context of motor cultural practices as a necessary condition for any subsequent strategy of digital representation and semantic enrichment. It proposes a distinction between movement as kinematics and movement as motor behavior — understood as an embodied and socially organized form of knowledge realized in action. On this basis, semantic enrichment is reconsidered not as an annotational technique, but as a form of epistemic mediation between the measurable parameters of movement, the research paradigm, and embodied cultural knowledge in action. Finally, the paper outlines implications for digital documentation and data collection protocols aimed at representing the conditions under which motor knowledge is realized as practice without being reduced to formal categories.