Reflections on Technology, Media & Culture
rhythm
Hidden beats
The online book City Rhythm published in 2018 explores rhythm to explain cities and their internal diversity, as well as differences between cities. As I have explored elsewhere, mundane and ordinary events are also everyday events i.e. events that occur every day, repeatedly, and relate to people’s habits, their habitual activities. So a rhythmanalysis can focus … Continue reading
Tremble and drift
For philosopher Henri Lefebvre, rhythms are influenced by their context. They also vary. The waves on the sea provide an obvious example. Perturbations across water involve counter movements, complex overlays of movement, and the patterns rely on the shape and materials of the shore, the tides, weather conditions, and water traffic. He contrasts rhythm with … Continue reading
COVID-19 Rhythmanalysis
Rhythms permeate the city, and these rhythms overlap, combine, aggregate and interfere with one another. That’s the gist of Henri Lefebvre’s book entitled Rhythmanalysis. By my reading the concept fits within the genre of research concerned with everydayness, the quotidian, which implies a concern with ordinary things and everyday phenomena that repeat. (See post: Time … Continue reading
Time and tide wait for no one
“Rhythm is one of the most fundamental formal means of composition in classical music, poetry, and architecture,” according to architectural lore. Think of colonnades, window placement, stacked office floors, fence posts and pilons. Repetition provides a tool of spatial organization. This much is obvious. Is it repetition that animates people’s lives, or rhythm? In his book Rhythmanalysis, philosopher Henri Lefebvre … Continue reading
The king’s speech impediment
Tom Hooper’s film The King’s Speech demonstrates the vital importance of the human voice in establishing and maintaining power. If you can’t get the words out then you will never assert authority.
