what is rhythmanalysis

1
what is rhythmanalysis?

• Tom Hall

2
what is rhythmanalysis?

• introduction to rhythmanalysis
• Henri Lefebvre
• key terms and concepts
• rhythm and the everyday
• rhythm and mobility
• rhythm and the city
• case study
• rhythmanalysis as research method
• conclusion

3
introduction to rhythmanalysis

• Henri Lefebvre (1901-91)
• Éléments de rythmanalyse introduction à la
  connaissance des rythmes (1992)
• Rhythmanalysis space, time and everyday life
  (2004)
• This little book does not conceal its ambition.
  It proposes nothing less than to found a new
  science, a new field of knowledge the analysis
  of rhythms
• (Lefebvre 2004 3)
• Thought strengthens itself only if it enters into
  practice into use
• (Lefebvre 2004 69)

4
introduction to rhythmanalysis

• key terms and concepts
• rhythmanalyst
• a psychoanalyst
• a poet
• not a statistician
• rhythms

5
introduction to rhythmanalysis

• Rhythms
• Everywhere where there is interaction between a
  place, a time and an expenditure of energy, there
  is rhythm
• (Lefebvre 2004 15)

6
introduction to rhythmanalysis

• key terms and concepts
• rhythmanalyst
• a psychoanalyst
• a poet
• not a statistician
• rhythms
• repetition (and difference)

7
introduction to rhythmanalysis

• Repetition (and difference)
• No rhythm without repetition in time and space,
  without reprises, without returns But there is
  no identical absolute repetition, indefinitely.
  Whence the relation between repetition and
  difference Not only does repetition not exclude
  differences, it also gives birth to them it
  produces them
• (Lefebvre 2004 6-7)
• the metronomic and the rhythmic

8
introduction to rhythmanalysis

• key terms and concepts
• rhythmanalyst
• a psychoanalyst
• a poet
• not a statistician
• rhythms
• repetition (and difference)
• cyclical and linear repetition

9
introduction to rhythmanalysis
10
introduction to rhythmanalysis

• cyclical and linear repetition
• At any rate, spring is here, even in London N. 1,
  and they can't stop you enjoying it So long as
  you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or
  immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is
  still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the
  factories, the police are prowling through the
  cities, the lies are streaming from the
  loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round
  the sun, and neither the dictators nor the
  bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the
  process, are able to prevent it
• (George Orwell, Thoughts on the Common Toad)

11
introduction to rhythmanalysis

• key terms and concepts
• rhythmanalyst
• a psychoanalyst
• a poet
• not a statistician
• rhythms
• repetition (and difference)
• cyclical and linear repetition
• polyrhythmia eurhythmia isorhythmia arrhythmia

12
what is rhythmanalysis?

• introduction to rhythmanalysis
• Henri Lefebvre
• key terms and concepts
• rhythm and the everyday
• rhythm and mobility
• rhythm and the city
• case study

13
rhythm and the everyday

• taken-for-granted and overlooked an elusive
  object the quotidian
• what is left over after all distinct, superior,
  specialized, structured activities have been
  singled out by analysis
• the body (and rhythm) and the everyday
• Normally we only grasp the relations between
  rhythms, which interfere with them. However, they
  all have a distinct existence. Normally, none of
  them classifies itself on the contrary, in
  suffering, in confusion, a particular rhythm
  surges up and imposes itself palpitation,
  breathlessness, pains in the place of satiety
• (Lefebvre 2004 21)

14
rhythm and mobility

• The trap of the present the immobility of
  things a moving but determinate complexity
• Repetition, difference and the passage of time
  Cartesian geometry, changing places and
  phenomenological space
• The body (and rhythm) and mobility
• Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a
  pillar, holding the body upright between the
  earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging
  from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight
  of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the
  foot The legs reverse position. It starts with
  a step and then another step and then another
  that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the
  rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most
  obscure thing in the world
• (Solnit 2002 3)

15
rhythm and mobility

• Gordon Cullens Townscape

16
rhythm and the city

• space, time and the city urban polyrythmia
• seen from the window
• a contemporary everyday urbanism
• manifold practices across hundreds of spaces an
  everyday order and flexibility partly owing to
  the repetitions and regularities that become the
  tracks to negotiate urban life routine
  practices of care, repair and maintenance
• The low soothing hum of air-conditioners
  winding up and winding down, long breaths layered
  upon each other , a lullaby The rush of
  traffic still cutting across flyovers, even in
  the dark hours a constant crush of sound, tyres
  rolling across tarmac and engines rumbling, loose
  drains and manhole covers clack-clacking Road
  menders mending, choosing the hours of least
  interruption, rupturing the cold night air with
  drills and jack-hammers hard-sweating beneath
  the fizzing hiss of floodlights, shouting to each
  other like drummers in rock bands calling out
  rhythms
• (McGregor 2003 1)

17
case study

• Cardiff city centre
• the mundane, repetitious work of outreach
• mobile practices and a crepuscular geography
• urban regeneration and arrythmia

18
rhythmanalysis as research method

• a mode of analysis not a new object but a new
  way of approaching familiar objects
• difficult to distil as a methodology for the
  social sciences more a (re)orientation than a
  method
• Rhythmanalysis is an attitude, an orientation, a
  proclivity it is not analytic in any
  positivistic or scientific sense of the term. It
  falls on the side of impressionism and
  description, rather than systematic data
  collecting
• (Highmore 2005 150)
• the rhythmanalyst as the principal registering
  device
• In order to grasp and analyse rhythms, it is
  necessary to get outside them, but not completely
  to grasp a rhythm it is necessary to have been
  grasped by it one must let oneself go
• (Lefebvre 2004 27)
• new research technologies

19
conclusion

• Rhythmanalysis space, time and everyday life
• Everywhere where there is interaction between a
  place, a time and an expenditure of energy, there
  is rhythm
• (Lefebvre 2004 15)
• Thought strengthens itself only if it enters into
  practice into use
• (Lefebvre 2004 69)
• Dr. Tom Hall, Cardiff University School of Social
  Sciences
• hallta_at_cardiff.ac.uk
• http//www.sensescapes.co.uk/