Previous chapter * No need to say that Nietzsche's contribution to rhythmology is one of the most developed in the 19th century but also one of the most obscure and ill-known. I guess that there is still much more to discover in his posthumous writings, fragments and letters, even in his published texts, nevertheless, our survey has clearly shown a certain number of significant points. 1. Contrary to Hegel or other previous Idealist philosophers of the 19th century, but also to (...) - Sur le concept de rythme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

In this essay, I will examine Henri Maldiney’s phenomenological aesthetics, focusing on his claim that “art is the truth of the sensible.” This claim is presented by Maldiney in the context of a two-fold critique of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s respective attempts to phenomenologically elucidate the experience of artworks. According to Maldiney, both Husserl and Heidegger fail to recognize what he, following Erwin Straus, terms the “pathic” moment of sense experience, which is also the key moment of the aesthetic reception of (...) art. Drawing on this concept of the pathic and its way of engaging what Maldiney calls the “transpassibility” of receptivity, I argue that his phenomenology of art can be viewed as an attempt to bring together the two senses of the aesthetic in the Kantian sense, namely as an aesthetics of sense experience and as an aesthetics of art, from within the domain of sensibility itself. I develop this idea by turning to Maldiney’s notion of rhythm and examining how he thinks that it can be applied to the visual arts. Ultimately, I suggest that Maldiney’s aesthetics imbues art with ontological significance, since he takes the rhythmic presence of artworks to be a sensuous manifestation of the rhythmic ground of the world’s constitution. The truth of art, in this sense, is a revelation of the ontological functioning of rhythm. (shrink)

One character in Cortázar's novel truly believes in cosmic rhythm. This belief is characteristic of a magical view of the universe central to 1960s counterculture. The other characters in Los Premios, like the implied narrator, reject Persio's essentialism; they dismiss the notion that there is really any rhythm common to art, humanity, and the universe. However, there are key points in the narrative, inspired by falling in love and by works of art, at which their world does appear (...) patterned by just such a rhythm, a ‘swing cósmico’. The novel itself turns out to depend on the intermittent conviction of this rhythm, not objectively embedded in anything, but always seen, living, and dying in time; the price of art is the acceptance of this rhythmed mortality. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a process-based ontology of art following John Dewey’s concepts of experience and rhythm. I will adopt a pragmatist and embodied point of view within an adverbialist framework. I will defend the idea of an artistic way of experiencing – a subtype of aesthetic experience – as something which allows us to assign the ontological category of art to an object or event. The adverbial features of this artistic way of experiencing will (...) be characterized as being rhythmic in nature. This goal will be achieved in three steps. First, I will explain and elaborate on the concept of adverbialism. Second, the importance of rhythm in experience will be taken into account through a close reading of Dewey’s philosophy and by incorporating the nuances of the Pre-Socratic idea of rhuthmos, as well as some recent findings about brain and bodily oscillations from cognitive science. Third, to conclude I will propose four necessary but not sufficient features of the rhythmic engagement enacted while an artistic way of experiencing takes place: a necessary degree of object or event awareness, a positive feedback dynamic, a loosening of the sense of agency, and being attentionally demanding. (shrink)

In this essay, I will examine Henri Maldiney’s phenomenological aesthetics, focusing on his claim that “art is the truth of the sensible.” This claim is presented by Maldiney in the context of a two-fold critique of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s respective attempts to phenomenologically elucidate the experience of artworks. According to Maldiney, both Husserl and Heidegger fail to recognize what he, following Erwin Straus, terms the “pathic” moment of sense experience, which is also the key moment of the aesthetic reception of (...) art. Drawing on this concept of the pathic and its way of engaging what Maldiney calls the “transpassibility” of receptivity, I argue that his phenomenology of art can be viewed as an attempt to bring together the two senses of the aesthetic in the Kantian sense, namely as an aesthetics of sense experience and as an aesthetics of art, from within the domain of sensibility itself. I develop this idea by turning to Maldiney’s notion of rhythm and examining how he thinks that it can be applied to the visual arts. Ultimately, I suggest that Maldiney’s aesthetics imbues art with ontological significance, since he takes the rhythmic presence of artworks to be a sensuous manifestation of the rhythmic ground of the world’s constitution. The truth of art, in this sense, is a revelation of the ontological functioning of rhythm. (shrink)

This text translated here (first published in Die Tat in May 1921) is an early elaboration of Rudolf Laban’s polyrhythmic ontology. The phenomenon of rhythm here takes shape through the manifold ways in which it resonates in the text (Ur-rhythm, Eu-rhythm, Kako-rhythm). Besides positing a fundamental co-dependency between rhythm, movement and space, Laban sees rhythm here also as the gateway to a socio-ethical dimension culminating in the Festival, or art of celebration.

Between present and past, visible and invisible, and sensation and idea, there is resonance—so philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued and so Jessica Wiskus explores in The Rhythm of Thought.

Previous chapter In the 1880s and the 1890s, there was a new turn in the use of the concept of rhythm in art history and aesthetics. Rhythm, which had been successively—and sometimes jointly—considered as a judgment criterion then as an analytical category, was increasingly considered as a form of process. This new trend was mainly influenced by the new development of psychology which began to be massively imported into aesthetics during this period, but it also resulted from the (...) growing - Esthétique – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Previous chapter In the 1880s and the 1890s, there was a new turn in the use of the concept of rhythm in art history and aesthetics. Rhythm, which had been successively—and sometimes jointly—considered as a judgment criterion then as an analytical category, was increasingly considered as a form of process. This new trend was mainly influenced by the new development of psychology which began to be massively imported into aesthetics during this period, but it also resulted from the (...) growing - Esthétique – Nouvel article. (shrink)

An exploration of Rudolf Steiner's recommendation that class teachers create verses for their pupils to be inserted into their annual school reports.

In the early 1990s, Microcebus murinus, a small primate endemic to Madagascar, emerged as a potential animal model for the study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease. This paper traces the use of the lesser mouse lemur in research on aging and associated neurodegenerative diseases, focusing on a basic material precondition that made this possible, namely, the conversion of a wild animal into an experimental organism that lives, breeds, and survives in the laboratory. It argues that the “old” mouse lemur model (...) can be considered as an eco-zootechnical acquisition. This is shown by examining how, since the early 1970s, French mouse lemur researchers have articulated colony productivity and viability with the influence of environmental factors on the demographics and physiology of the species. The appearance and maintenance of a growing number of old mouse lemurs in French research facilities are related to three developments: the application of the ecological notion of “social stress” to the understanding and management of the behavior of the captive population; the experimental demonstration that a variety of seasonal physiological changes in the species were influenced by the photoperiod; and the related attempt to accelerate aging in mouse lemurs through the manipulation of annual light conditions. (shrink)

The glowing light of cinema, which continues to claim supremacy as a collective site for evolving senses of time, has fundamentally changed since its inception, from exclusively projected light to primarily emitted light. Digital, rather than analog projectors, dominate in personal rather than public spheres. The physiological and behavioral effects of those technologies manipulate our biological clocks, creating an entanglement of time-sensing. Similarly, the art of cinema now relies far more upon energy-intensive materials and methods, from equipment to image manufacturing (...) and data flow. This essay takes the twelve-hour clock as a slanted optic to address those profound shifts, choosing a handful of moving-image artists to feature, including Deborah Stratman, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, and Mikael Kristersson, who are attempting to find alternative temporal modes of depicting the hyperobjectiveness of eternity, ecocrises, dystopias, and deep time on screen. (shrink)

Previous chapter The sudden emergence of artistic concerns in a book devoted to economics sounds rather strange and outdated by our current standards. Is there one single economist who would dare today cover a field of research spanning from work to art, from labor management to dance, poetry, and music? Yet, this was not only considered as entirely legitimate at the end of the 19th century, it was also addressing problems that have been—quite mistakenly in my opinion—put aside by modern (...) - Économie et Marxisme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient GreeceMindy FenskeBodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece by Debra Hawhee. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Pp. xiv + 226. $40.00, hardcover.In Bodily Arts, Debra Hawhee constructs an often compelling, always interesting case for the conceptual and material linkages between the ancient arts of rhetoric and athletics. In so doing, Hawhee also highlights the integral role of the musical (...) arts to rhetorical and athletic training. Throughout the book, Hawhee weaves together close readings of multiple texts (poetry, oratory, sculpture, painting, architecture) in order to illuminate the intricate “network of overlapping practices” that connect the bodies of rhetoric, athletes, and musicians in Ancient Greece. To this reader, the central strengths of the study are methodological as well as conceptual. In terms of method, Hawhee carefully and with studied finesse integrates close readings of visual, spatial, and verbal texts and practices. In the wrong hands, this type of endeavor can easily appear as the worst kind of pastiche. Not so in this case where Hawhee manages the textual interpretation with deft expertise. Conceptually, the central premise that rhetoric was a practice that was fully embodied and, most importantly, that embodiment was not in a hierarchical relation to reason, rationality, and the mind is provocative. Hawhee argues that the relations of mind-body in Ancient Greek culture were understood as a complex interlocking system that, when trained through physical practices emphasizing rhythm, repetition, and response (to/with an encounter), resulted in the possible transformation of the very nature of the self. [End Page 197]In the process of constructing the argument for the connections between rhetorical and athletic training and performance, Bodily Arts moves through three phases. The Introduction and first three chapters lay the theoretical groundwork for the second phase: the introduction of the concept of phusiopoieses in Chapter 4. Chapters 5–7 then discuss the actual rhetorical and athletic spaces, practices, and bodies of and in phusiopoiesis.The introduction opens with description of a first-century BC bronze statue of an “Antikythera Youth” (3). Hawhee uses the mystery surrounding the identity of the figure (deciphered largely through interpretations of the actions implied by the stature of the statue) to articulate the connections between the body of the rhetor and the body of the athlete as well as to introduce the importance of the body to Greek values of hexis (comportment) and aretē (virtuosity). The Introduction also presents three critical relations that serve both as conceptual departure points as well as hail the multiple audiences of the book: relations of body and mind, learning and performing, and classical studies and rhetorical studies. Hawhee’s perspective is quite straightforwardly that rhetoric is an art that required physical training and physical performance.Chapter 1, “Contesting Virtuosity: Agonism and the Production of Aretē,” connects the values of agon and aretē and argues that the “very logic for linking rhetoric and athletics” lies at the heart of this relation (22). Hawhee argues that agon and aretē are less about ends (victory and virtue) and more centrally concerned with embodied processes. Agon, through Hawhee’s reading of Hesiod’s Work and Days, is articulated as a mode of encounter that produces a particular, and possibly transformative, response. Aretē is the bodily performance of virtuosity. Central to this performance, according to Hawhee’s interpretation of the Olympic ethos through Pindar’s poetry, is the activity of questing. Aretē is demonstrated rather than simply won or attained. Following these definitions of agon and aretē, the chapter moves to illustrating the shared language of rhetoric and athletics in terms of these values. Hawhee argues that this shared vocabulary confirms that sophistic rhetoric was understood and practiced as an embodied and agonistic art “fused and infused” with athletics (43).In Chapter 2, “Sophistic Mētis : An Intelligence of the Body,” Hawhee describes mētis as cunning and somatic becoming that “infuses the arts of rhetoric and athletics with a kind of bodily intelligence... not an explicit set of precepts but rather a tacit style of movement running through most kinds of actions, including thought” (47). Moreover, the movement of mētis [End Page 198] is corporeal. It... (shrink)

Recently much attention has been paid to the concept of expression in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and its role in his theories of language, art, history, and truth. However, most authors have considered expression only as a mode of language. This paper attempts to show that a full understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s concept of expression, and in particular the problem of how new meanings can be created out of existing language, is possible only by considering the role of emotional gesture in expression. It (...) does so by interpreting Merleau-Ponty’s writings on emotion and expression through a phenomenology of a particular emotion, specifically joy. (shrink)

Previous chapter In 1910, Hans Hermann Russack, one of August Schmarsow's students in Leipzig, published an essay entitled Der Begriff des Rhythmus bei den deutschen Kunsthistorikern des XIX. Jahrhunderts – The Concept of Rhythm in the German Art Historians of the 19th Century. This study was far from complete: it barely mentioned Aloïs Riegl and the competitors of the Viennese school; it referred only indirectly to Wilhelm Pinder and gave - Architecture – Nouvel article.

Rhythm is the fundamental pulse that animates poetry, music, and dance across all cultures. And yet the recent explosion of scholarly interest across disciplines in the aural dimensions of aesthetic experience--particularly in sociology, cultural and media theory, and literary studies--has yet to explore this fundamental category. This book furthers the discussion of rhythm beyond the discrete conceptual domains and technical vocabularies of musicology and prosody. With original essays by philosophers, psychologists, musicians, literary theorists, and ethno-musicologists, The Philosophy of (...) Rhythm opens up wider-and plural-perspectives, examining formal affinities between the historically interconnected fields of music, dance, and poetry, while addressing key concepts such as embodiment, movement, pulse, and performance. Volume editors Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison bring together a range of key questions: What is the distinction between rhythm and pulse? What is the relationship between everyday embodied experience, and the specific experience of music, dance, and poetry? Can aesthetics offer an understanding of rhythm that helps inform our responses to visual and other arts, as well as music, dance, and poetry? And, what is the relation between psychological conceptions of entrainment, and the humane concept of rhythm and meter? Overall, The Philosophy of Rhythm appeals across disciplinary boundaries, providing a unique overview of a neglected aspect of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Rhythm is generally taken to refer to a temporal pattern of events. Yet in recent years, across diverse fields in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, it has come to serve as the conceptual marker for a wide range of new approaches to understanding relations and relationality, following most explicitly from the late work of Henri Lefebvre. This article explores the temporal aspect of such relational thinking, in particular asking how time is implicated in relations, and how it can (...) be meaningful in those relations. The sense of time is surveyed from the perspectives of both cognition and metaphysics as well as with reference to music scholarship and social theory, and key threads are drawn, from the writings of Gaston Bachelard and Charles Sanders Peirce in particular, in order to suggest that time can be a sign, and that the signifying properties of rhythm have critical social consequences. (shrink)

We owe our first graphic experiences to Neanderthal Man, who introduced to the cultural baggage of the genus Homo two metaphorical behaviors that are fundamental in terms of their innovation: one concerns the preservation of the bodies of the dead through burial, the other is the making of signs, which in this stage of evolution do not yet represent recognizable subjects but only lines. This attests to the creation of a graphical tool that materializes and makes visible that which exists (...) in the mind, something that is other than itself, thus providing signs of a communication that unfortunately today we cannot define semantically. We cannot say whether these linear marks are a sort of «brand» or if they are carriers of meanings, however, we can observe that, with the Neanderthals, a conceptual, projectual plan exists that enables the measurement of space and the configuration of a regular rhythm, creating an original condition of movement and an association of potentially dynamic lines. (shrink)

This paper explores how phenomenological notions of rhythm might accommodate a richer description of preverbal infant-caregiver dialogue. Developmental psychologists have theorized a crucial link between rhythm and intercorporeality in the emergence of intersubjectivity and self. Drawing on the descriptions of rhythm in the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Erwin Straus, Henri Maldiney and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, the paper emphasizes the role of art and aesthetic processes proposing that they not only be considered as metaphorical or representational aspects of (...) class='Hi'>rhythm but as primary resources that can enrich and deepen our understanding of self-emergence and intercorporeality in preverbal infant-caregiver dialogue. (shrink)

Jessica Wiskus’s book The Rhythm of Thought: Art, Literature, and Music (University of Chicago Press, 2013) is a fascinating study of Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy inrelation to the artistic expression of Mallarmé, Cézanne, Proust, and Debussy. By invoking examples from across the arts and citations from across Merleau-Ponty’soeuvre, Wiskus provides us with a style for reading some of Merleau-Ponty’s difficult late concepts, including noncoincidence, institution, essence, and transcendence.In this review, we explore some of the key concepts and insights of Wiskus’s (...) rich, interdisciplinary book and offer some places where the depth that it opens up perhapsinvites further exploration. (shrink)

Resumen: Como educación estética, la educación musical no sólo necesita transmitir la belleza del arte, sino que también es una forma educativa de transmitir la belleza de la vida. Por lo tanto, con base en la estética de la vida y la connotación de la vida de la educación, la investigación discute la orientación de la vida de la educación musical de varios niveles desde múltiples perspectivas. La investigación analiza la estética vital de la música desde tres aspectos: lo limitado (...) y lo infinito, la existencia cultural del espíritu humanista y el isomorfismo del estado de vida. La discusión sobre la connotación de la vida educativa parte de tres aspectos: sobrevivencia, vivir y vivir. Sobre esta base, la investigación integra las dos teorías anteriores y discute la experiencia subjetiva-comunicación, cogniy emoción cognitiva en la educación musical. A través de la elaboración básica de la visión de vida de la educación musical, se puede encontrar que la educación musical es ayudar a los estudiantes a seguir una vida llena de arte, ayudándoles a desarrollarse armoniosamente. (shrink)

Is it possible to find an ethical and generative way to speak about the ‘work’ of Indigenous art? Regardless of what prohibitions exist to protect sacred knowledge from the gaze of Western eyes, Indigenous work is circulating; it is being read, misread, interpreted, misinterpreted and otherwise known. How can a non-Indigenous person ‘speak’ about Indigenous art without reducing it to the diagram, collapsing it into Western modes of knowing, or intruding into the domain of restricted cultural information? Given the lessons (...) of the Indigenous cultural practices, I propose that the work of art is performative and not merely representational. Through attention to the operation of rhythm in Kathleen Petyarre’s paintings, I propose to reconfigure contemporary understandings of performativity. In this formulation I will argue that in the dynamic productivity of the performative act, the world intrudes into practice, and in a double movement, practice casts its effects back towards the world. In this way I suggest that just as life gets into images, so imaging also produces reality. This mutual reflection is the work of art. (shrink)

The article attempts to clarify the appeal to the Benedictine ideal that Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) makes in The Aims of Education and Other Essays as a way to renew the life of the spirit in education. In particular, the essay will consider St. Benedict's three central themes of Whitehead's philosophy: freedom and discipline, the teacher as artist and the art of life, and universities as workshops or homes of creative energy. The aim is to bring about a harmony of (...) thought and action, the mind to the feelings of the heart, to subordinate scientific or critical pedagogy to aesthetic‐spiritual instruction. This deserves our attention because today's educational theories and practices emphasize the technical, the critical, and the social sides to the neglect of the aesthetic‐spiritual side. On both its practical and theoretical side, the educational theory of Whitehead falls within the Benedictine tradition of ora (meditative reading) and labora (work). (shrink)

One of the aims of phenomenology was to uncover a logic of the sensible world. This essay shows how rhythm can be understood as a logic of the sensible world and how rhythm is not only a profoundly aesthetic experience but one integral to phenomenological reflection. The essay highlights how aesthetic experiences accomplish phenomenological reductions and how phenomenological reflection demands a continued inquiry into the ways intelligibility first opens from within the sensible world. Rhythm is shown to (...) be a preverbal logic and expressive power that takes place between sensing and the sensible. The essay explores how art and phenomenology draw upon rhythms to bring forth senses of experience that normally get passed over and escape conceptual determination. The investigation digs beneath predicated experience and propositional language to reveal how rhythm is a preverbal mode of inquiry that takes place between solicitations made by the sensible and the body’s sensitive responsiveness. Rhythm establishes an original synchronic relation to sensible things that allows nascent forms of intelligibility to come into a dynamic and living clarity. However, rhythms comprise a latent form of intentionality that precedes the act-object schema of intentionality. As a form of intentionality rooted in the senses, rhythm is shown to be a mode of transport that effectuates absorptive experiences which pose unique challenges for phenomenological reflection and aesthetic theory. Nonetheless, rhythm helps clarify one way in which sources of intelligibility not only grow out of the sensible world but retain an enduring aesthetic quality. (shrink)

Body feedback is the proprioceptive feedback that denominates the afferent information from position and movement of the body to the central nervous system. It is crucial in experiencing emotions, in forming attitudes and in regulating emotions and behavior. This paper investigates effects of dynamic body feedback on affect and attitudes, focusing on the impact of movement rhythms with smooth vs. sharp reversals as one basic category of movement qualities. It relates those qualities to already explored effects of approach vs. avoidance (...) motor behavior as one basic category of movement shape. Studies 1 and 2 tested the effects of one of two basic movement qualities (smooth vs. sharp rhythms) on affect and cognition. The third study tested those movement qualities in combination with movement shape (approach vs. avoidance motor behavior) and the effects of those combinations on affect and attitudes toward initially valence-free stimuli. Results suggest that movement rhythms influence affect (studies 1 and 2), and attitudes (study 3), and moderate the impact of approach and avoidance motor behavior on attitudes (study 3). Extending static body feedback research with a dynamic account, findings indicate that movement qualities – next to movement shape – play an important role, when movement of the lived body is an independent variable. (shrink)

In the debate over the ontological structures of the entity that exists as being-in-the-world, the French philosopher Henri Maldiney focuses his theoretical developments on the unintentional and pre-predicative dimension of experience, where sensing (sentir) takes its origin, and based on which the Existentials of “encounter”, “surprise” and “rhythm”, that are key to understanding the aesthetic-artistic experience, are explained in the horizon of transpassibility and transpossibility. Given that that dimension is the privileged field of encounter with art, this paper will (...) raise the question of the nexus of the articulation between art and image. This question will be developed through the opposition of form and image, of the reality of image and the image of reality, and the aesthetic vision and imaginative vision. In this analysis, we will rely upon the Heideggerian conception of Existence, as well as some of Husserl’s and the neuro-psychiatrist Erwin Straus’s researches into the passive dimension of experience, with the purpose of showing how Maldiney, starting from them, contributed in a singular and significant way to the deepening of that unintentional dimension of existence which he calls “pathic”. (shrink)

Stemming from a general study of rhythm in the work of Gilles Deleuze, we propose a distribution of this concept throughout three levels: a topic level, in which we place rhythm between chaos and measure; a dynamic level, in which we analyse the formation of rhythm towards its stabilisation as a spatio-temporal dynamism; and an unfolding, in which these dynamisms take on the form of rhythmic machines applied in music (refrain), in painting (sensation) and in cinema (montage (...) and time crystals). In this last phase, the rhythmic devices of various arts lead to a genesis of time. We are thus driven to think and elaborate on the link between these two concepts, rhythm and time, in the writings of Deleuze. Bearing this purpose in mind, we turn to the schema of the three syntheses of time in Difference and Repetition. These syntheses show how time emerges from different ways of understanding repetition, in the place of which rhythm will then appear. We will compare this schema with the argument articulated by Deleuze in Logic of Sensation regarding rhythm in its pictorial form. This comparison will enable us to deduce that both concepts follow a parallel path arising from the same series of processes: vibration, coupling, resonance and forced movement. We will conclude that the schema proposed in Difference and Repetition and its aesthetic purpose delineate the ways in which rhythms unfold creatively. These three syntheses of rhythm are implicated in artistic processes. (shrink)

This volume investigates the meaning of visual rhythm through Piet Mondrian's unique approach to understanding rhythm in the compositional structure of painting, drawing reference from philosophy, aesthetics, and Zen culture. Its innovation lies in its reappraisal of a forgotten definition of rhythm as 'stasis' or 'composition' which can be traced back to ancient Greek thought. This conception of rhythm, the book argues, can be demonstrated in terms of pictorial strategy, through analysis of East Asian painting and (...) calligraphy with which Greek thought on rhythm has identifiable commonalities. The book demonstrates how these ideas about rhythm draw together various threads of intellectual development in the visual arts that cross disparate aesthetic cultural practices. As an icon of early 20th Century Modernism, Mondrian's neoplasticism is a serious painterly and philosophical achievement. In his painting, Mondrian was deeply influenced by Theosophy, which took its influence from Eastern aesthetics; particularly East Asian and Indian thought. However, Mondrian's approach to visual rhythm was so idiosyncratic that his contribution to studies of visual rhythm is often under-recognized. This volume shows that a close inspection of Mondrian's own writing, thinking and painting has much to tell scholars about how to understand a long forgotten aspect of visual rhythm. Rodin's famous criticism of photography ("athlete-in-motion is forever frozen") can be applied to Muybridge's zoopraxiscope, the Futurists' rendition of stroboscopic images, and Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase." Through a comparative study between Mondrian's painting and these seminal works, this volume initiates a new convention for the cognition of the surface of painting as visual rhythm. "Mondrian's simultaneous emphasis on the static and the rhythmic is hardly fodder for a publicist. Eiichi Tosaki has taken on the challenge of elucidating Mondrian's theories of rhythm, and particularly his conception of "static" rhythm. The result is a tour de force that will forever alter the reader's encounter with the works of Mondrian." Prof. Kathleen Higgins. (shrink)

Movement, Velocity, and Rhythm from a Psychoanalytic Perspective: Variable Speed(s) explores philosophical and psychoanalytic theories, as well as artworks, that show sensible bodily rituals for reviving our social and subjective lives. With a wide range of contributors from interdisciplinary backgrounds, it informs readers on how to find rituals for syncing ourselves with others and world rhythms. It will be essential reading for Lacanian psychoanalysts in practice and in training, as well as anyone interested in rhythm at the intersection (...) of Lacanian psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. (shrink)

Here I will put forward a claim about rhythm – that rhythm is relation. To develop this I will explore the entanglement of and antagonism between two notions of the musical avant-garde and its theorization. The first of these is derived from the European classical tradition, the second concerns Afrodiasporic musical practices. This essay comes in two parts. The first will consider some music-theoretical and philosophical ideas about rhythm in the post-classical avant-garde. Here I will explore how (...) these ideas have been used to, on one hand, stage a critique of Afrodiasporic musics, and specifically jazz, and, on the other hand, diminish and obscure the relation between the post-classical and Afrodiasporic avant-gardes. In the second part I will develop another lineage of rhythm, orthogonal to that of the post-classical avant-garde. Drawing from philosophy and Afrocentric, Afromodernist and, finally, Afrofuturist theory, I will map a theoretical move from rhythm understood, in its post-classical guise, as an exclusive and strictly musical category, to rhythm understood as an inclusive and plural category. This likewise charts a passage from an aesthetically autonomous understanding of objects of art to social and collective forms of artistic practice. (shrink)

Previous chapter Rhuthmology as “Philosophy of Rhythm” Strikingly, in his Rhythmic Researches, the young Nietzsche refers many times to the project of a “philosophy of rhythm.” In one of his notes, he contemplates the idea of writing a larger book that the one he will finally publish. He explicitly places this new philosophy in line with what he will examine in The Birth of Tragedy: “Importance of Art, Dionysus and Apollo, Socrates, The position of the artist.” Exposed - (...) Sur le concept de rythme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Previous chapter Between 1900 and 1914, rhythm became a commonplace in aesthetics and art history. In addition to Riegl's and Schmarsow's general studies which embraced large sections of Near-Eastern and Western history, it spread in numerous specialized fields devoted to more limited periods. The time had come for an application of the concepts which had just been invented. Since the Vienna school was weakened by the sudden death of Riegl in 1905, most of this new works however were - (...) Esthétique – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Poetry is a literary art, and is often examined alongside the novel, stories, and theater. But poetry, much of it, has more in common with music, in important respects, than with other forms of literature. The emphasis on sound and rhythm in both poetry and music is obvious, but I will explore a very different similarity between them. All or almost all works of literary fiction have narrators—so it is said anyway—characters who, in the world of the fiction, utter (...) or write the words of the text thereby reporting the events of the story. But there is a very different way of understanding literary works, one applicable especially to poetry. Much music can be understood in a similar manner, and doing so nicely explains several important characteristics of listen-ers’ experiences. (shrink)

Previous chapter In her book Die Form des Werdens: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Embryologie, 1760-1830, Janina Wellmann claims that around 1800 the concept of rhythm has emerged and penetrated the entire Western culture. In literature, in theoretical reflection on art, in philosophy, but especially in the newest life sciences, rhythm would have become a common scientific “Paradigm” or better yet, a new “Episteme”. It would be great if it is true. But I think - Sur le concept de rythme (...) – Nouvel article. (shrink)

One of the aims of phenomenology was to uncover a logic of the sensible world. This essay shows how rhythm can be understood as a logic of the sensible world and how rhythm is not only a profoundly aesthetic experience but one integral to phenomenological reflection. The essay highlights how aesthetic experiences accomplish phenomenological reductions and how phenomenological reflection demands a continued inquiry into the ways intelligibility first opens from within the sensible world. Rhythm is shown to (...) be a preverbal logic and expressive power that takes place between sensing and the sensible. The essay explores how art and phenomenology draw upon rhythms to bring forth senses of experience that normally get passed over and escape conceptual determination. The investigation digs beneath predicated experience and propositional language to reveal how rhythm is a preverbal mode of inquiry that takes place between solicitations made by the sensible and the body’s sensitive responsiveness. Rhythm establishes an original synchronic relation to sensible things that allows nascent forms of intelligibility to come into a dynamic and living clarity. However, rhythms comprise a latent form of intentionality that precedes the act-object schema of intentionality. As a form of intentionality rooted in the senses, rhythm is shown to be a mode of transport that effectuates absorptive experiences which pose unique challenges for phenomenological reflection and aesthetic theory. Nonetheless, rhythm helps clarify one way in which sources of intelligibility not only grow out of the sensible world but retain an enduring aesthetic quality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epic and Tragic Music: The Union of the Arts in the Eighteenth CenturyJoshua BillingsI. The Union of the Arts in WeimarAround 1800 in Weimar, thought on Greek tragedy crystallized around the union of speech, music, and gesture—what Wagner would later call the Gesamtkunstwerk. Friedrich Schiller and Johann Gottfried Herder both found something lacking in modern spoken theater in comparison with ancient tragedy’s synthesis of the arts. Schiller’s 1803 “Trauerspiel (...) mit Chören,” Die Braut von Messina, represents a radical experiment in recreating the ancient union of the arts.1 The Greek tragic chorus, revived in Schiller’s drama, becomes the modern locus for this union. In a preface appended to the published version of the play, Schiller writes,The tragic work of poetry first becomes a whole through its theatrical performance: the poet only gives the words; music and dance must be added as well to enliven them. As long as the chorus lacks this powerful sensory accompaniment, so long will it appear in the economy of a tragedy as an alien element, a foreign body, a retardation.2 [End Page 99]Exactly contemporary (and possibly in response), Herder’s discussion of drama in his journal Adrastea similarly views the union of the arts in ancient tragedy as a corrective for modern drama:3A Greek who attended our tragedy [Trauerspiel], used to the musical voice of his own, would have to find in it a sad play [trauriges Spiel]. “How wordy-mute,” he would say, “how dull and soundless! Have I stepped into a decorated grave? You shout and sigh and bluster! Move your arms, strain your facial features, reason, declaim; but does your voice and feeling never become song? Do you not miss the strength of this demonic expression? Do your rhythms, your iambs never urge you on to the accents of the true language of the gods?”4The focus on media distinguishes these Weimar discussions of tragedy both from the Jena aesthetics of the Schlegel brothers and from the Idealist “philosophy of the tragic” already underway in the works of Schelling, Hölderlin, and Hegel.5 Though both Schiller and Herder are relatively indifferent to dance, their writings reflect strong interests in music.6 Their considerations [End Page 100] of tragedy show a close engagement with the sensory experience of drama that is unusual for its time, and has little precedent in Germany.For Schiller’s late poetics, the union of words, music, and gesture is a means of radically dividing the experience of theater from daily life. The tragic chorus “should be for us a living wall, which tragedy sets up around itself in order to close itself off wholly from the real world.”7 It “justifies the tragic poet in this raising of tone, which fills the ear, which strains the spirit, which broadens the whole mind.”8 Musical speech, Schiller argues, allows for an expression that transcends conventional language and quotidian existence. Schiller had hoped “to let [the choral intermezzos] be recited in the way of song and to accompany them with an instrument,” though his wish went unfulfilled in the first, and subsequent performances.9 Yet even after relinquishing the real possibility of a union of the arts in performances of Braut, Schiller upheld it as an ideal in his preface.Herder is remembered today primarily for his elaboration of an organic historicism, which understands cultural phenomena according to the circumstances of their creation. Yet his concern was more than merely historical; especially in the Adrastea, he continually sought guidance for the present in the events of the past. A contemporary, writing shortly after Herder’s death, saw the two orientations, historical and critical, as equally important: investigation of the past was intended as “a didactic or warning image” for his own time.10 The guiding idea of the journal was similarly educative, based on Herder’s understanding of Adrastea as a principle of justice and moderation.11 In Herder’s thought, as in most writing on ancient literature of the eighteenth century, there is no absolute division between scholarly and critical concerns: the study of ancient works was both an end in itself and a... (shrink)

When we discuss the value of a work of art we are confronted immediately with two difficulties: the terms we use, and the peculiar character of art. No one, to my knowledge, has ever doubted that an artist produces a form of some kind, and that in any discussion of art as art that form must somehow be considered; but the terms we use generally have no reference to form. We miss the form in various ways We use terms that (...) are nonartistic—that is, terms that refer to something external to the work, as when we speak of the subject of a painting, of what was depicted rather than the depiction of it, though we know full well that what we respond to is not what was depicted but the depiction of it. "This is a play about Oedipus— what does that tell us of the diverse forms produced by Sophocles, Seneca, Dryden, Voltaire, Gide, Cocteau? Or again, we use terms which are analogical, for example, the "rhythm" of a painting; the difficulty with these is that they are ambiguous and also that, while they may relate to the work, they can designate it only insofar as there is similarity between it and the analogue. Again, we use terms which seem to designate a single form when in fact they refer to forms of the utmost heterogeneity, as when we speak of "the novel"; this usually arises out of the indiscriminate application of the term over some considerable span of history, so that the "historical slippage" of meaning is gradual and goes unnoticed. As the term broadens in meaning to include more and more heterogeneous forms, the essence of each is lost, and the term comes to apply only to accidental analogies between the forms. In the end very little can then be said, involving only the most abstract and general accidents of likeness. Henry James' The Art of Fiction, Percy Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction, and E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel illustrate this condition perfectly. The complaint that it is impossible to discuss tragedy because the term has been diversely employed and its proffered justification stem from this condition. The complaint and the justifications are both trivial, and the solution of the difficulty is simple. All that is necessary is to distinguish the different senses of the term by distinguishing the different things to which it is applied. Language is ambiguous, and we use it ambiguously; this in no way implies that the ambiguities cannot be cleared up. Finally, we may use terms which indeed have reference to the form of the work but place the part for the whole; that is, terms which are elements in its definition but do not constitute the complete definition. Thus we designate something, not through the form proper but through the device or method used, as in "drama," "sculpture," "etching," "collage," or through the means or medium, as in "charcoal sketch," "watercolor," "oil painting." The point is not that the object is not, say, a drama or a watercolor; of course it is. The point is rather that these terms do not as such refer to the form and refer to it completely. If in fact they stipulated form, all charcoal sketches would be alike in form, and all oil paintings, and all dramas. One consequence of speaking in such a fashion is that we are likely to confuse the method with the form and talk of, say, "the nature of drama" as though all drama were of the same "nature," whereas the dramatic method is used in a wide variety of forms; or to confuse the medium or means with the form and to assure that the work can have no properties beyond those of its medium, as though artists did not exist and all art were simply nature.Elder Olson, poet and critic, has received numerous awards for his verse . Among his many works are Tragedy and the Theory of Drama, and The Theory of Comedy. His contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Poetic Process"" , Part 1 of a "Conspectus of Poetry", and Part 2 of a "Conspectus of Poetry". (shrink)

Previous chapter In a book that was only recently translated into English, Die Form des Werdens: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Embryologie, 1760-1830, Janina Wellmann has claimed that around 1800 the concept of rhythm emerged and penetrated the entire Western culture. In literature, in theoretical reflection on art, in philosophy, and above all in the newest life sciences, rhythm became, she argues, a common scientific “Paradigm” or better yet, a new “Episteme” - Sur le concept de rythme.

Rhythm should be regarded as a perceptional category rather than as a property of the work of art. Rhythm might be classified according to three principles, serial rhythm, sequential rhythm and dynamic rhythm, three basic sets of gestalt qualities that lay the foundation for versification systems.Two schemas decide the rhythm of a poem: direction and balance. ‘Direction’ refers to rising and falling movements in the line. ‘Balance’ refers to repetitions in a play between symmetry (...) and asymmetry as well as a moment of rest.Rhythms produce meaning, probably due to the fact that rhythms activate internalized bodily experiences as well as conventional meaning patterns. This is demonstrated on the basis of a poem by Sylvia Plath. (shrink)

Rhythm is an underexplored topic in contemporary Anglophone philosophy of music.1 This collection is an attempt to change this trend. It contains twenty-four essays, dealing with issues that range from the ontology of rhythm to questions regarding its existence and relative importance in art forms other than music.I cannot here discuss all of the contributions and my selection should not be taken as indicative of differences in quality among the various chapters.The book’s introduction is worthy of mention, as (...) it is more than a chapter-by-chapter overview. The editors trace a brief history of the philosophical debate on rhythm from antiquity to the present day, stressing the relative lack of interest for this topic.This collection moves therefore in largely uncharted territory, although various essays are firmly grounded in debates that are familiar to contemporary philosophers of art. Ted Gracyk’s essay ‘Rhythm, Resemblance, and Musical Expressiveness’ is an example of this, as it is an attempt to expand on resemblance theories of musical expressiveness by showing that rhythm is crucial to establishing the relevant resemblance between music and expressive behaviour. Gracyk persuasively argues that taking rhythm into account allows resemblance theories to tackle some recurring objections and difficulties. For instance, the centrality of pace and gait to our lives may explain why we automatically focus on music’s resemblance to human movement, as opposed to any of the countless other things it resembles. Moreover, rhythmic entrainment (synchronization to music's rhythm) may be the reason why music sometimes arouses the emotions which it expresses, a claim famously defended by Stephen Davies (2011). Just as it is partly by entraining to other people’s movements that we may come to experience the emotions they experience, we are infected by the music’s mood by entraining to its rhythm. (shrink)

Art forms tend to mirror themselves in each other. In order to understand literature and fine arts better, we often turn to music, speaking of the 'tone' in a book and of the 'rhythm' in a painting. In attempts to understand music better, we turn instead to the narrative arts, speaking of the 'story' of a musical piece. This book focuses on two examples of such conceptual mirror reflexivity: narrativity in jazz music and musicality in spoken theatre. These intermedial (...) metaphors are shown to be significant to the practice and reflection of performing artists through their ability to mediate holistic views of what is considered to be of crucial importance in artistic practice, analysis, and education. This exploration opens up possibilities for new theoretical and practical insights with regard to how the borderland between temporal art forms can be conceptualized. The book will be of interest not only to scholars of music and theatre, but also to those who work in the fields of aesthetics, intermedial studies, cognitive linguistics, arts theory, communication theory, and cultural studies. (shrink)

This text has been presented in Spanish by Aníbal Zorrilla, whom I would like to thank for his remarkable work, in Las Jornadas Internacionales El Ritmo En Las Artes – « Ritmo, poética y espacio » – Buenos Aires – September 6-7-8, 2018.: In her book Die Form des Werdens: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Embryologie, 1760-1830 published in 2010, Janina Wellmann claimed that around 1800 the concept of rhythm emerged and penetrated the entire Western culture. In literature, in - Vers (...) un nouveau paradigme scientifique? – Nouvel article. (shrink)

La voluntad de poder para Nietzsche es un saber estar en el mundo, es un saber danzar con el ritmo y movimiento de la naturaleza. Es desde este horizonte donde debe comprenderse la valoración que Nietzsche realiza del mito como la forma de narración que comprende los movimientos subterráneos de la naturaleza. Ahí donde Nietzsche habla de la transvaloración de todos los valores está planteándose la sustitución de los valores morales por los valores artísticos. Nietzsche mismo hizo de la poesía, (...) de la música y la danza sus objetivos de estudio pero no sólo eso, también representaron para él motivo y pasión de su existencia. Palabras clave: arte; hybris; mito; poder ; voluntad. Art, Myth and Will to Power in F. NietzscheTo Nietzsche, will to power is a sort of know how to be in the world, a sort of knowing how to dance at nature’s rhythm and within its movement. It is from this horizon that one must understand Nietzsche’s appraisal of myth as the narrative form which encompasses nature’s subterranean movement. Where Nietzsche speaks of transvaluation of all values, he is suggesting the substitution of moral values by artistic ones. Nietzsche himself made poetry, music and dance, the focus of his studies. But it is not just that: they represented to him the motive and passion of his existence. Keywords: Art; Hybris; Myth; Power; Will. (shrink)

In many countries, life expectancy has increased considerably in past years, and the importance of finding ways to ensure good levels of wellbeing through aging has become more important than ever. Arts based interventions are promising in this respect, and the literature suggests that musical activities can reduce isolation and anxiety and foster feelings of achievement and self-confidence. The present study examined the effects of group music making programs on the health and wellbeing of nursing home residents in Southern Switzerland. (...) A team of professional and student musicians delivered 10 weekly music sessions in four nursing homes, focusing on singing, rhythm-based activities with percussion instruments, and listening to short, live performances. 22 participants (16 women and 6 men, aged 72-95 years, mean 83.6, SD ± 6.9) were recruited to take part in the study and were interviewed after the last music session. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis to investigate how residents experienced group music making and its effects. The findings show that the music programs were beneficial for residents’ wellbeing. Music plays an important role in their lives, both in their pasts and presently, and being involved in musical activities offers engagement and novelty in daily life, providing learning opportunities and facilitating interpersonal relationships. Moreover, these results were due to interactions with the musicians involved. Residents particularly appreciated the opportunity to listen to live performances as part of the sessions. This study suggests that nursing home residents value music and that music based interventions play an important and direct role in enhancing their wellbeing. (shrink)