This document discusses Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis and its application to digital, traditional, and pervasive games. It explains that for Lefebvre, rhythm emerges from the interaction of place, time, and energy expenditure. The document outlines different types of rhythms and discusses how the "rhythmanalyst" uses the body to listen to rhythms. It argues that digital games form rhythmic interactions between the player and game, while pervasive games can explore social rhythms and how culture shapes gestures through "dressage."
1. “Everywhere there is an interaction between
a place, a time and an expenditure of energy
there is a rhythm.”
- Lefebvre
2. Bodies, Rhythm and Digital Games
An introduction to Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis and its
relationship to digital, traditional and pervasive games.
Dan Dixon
University of the West of England
Digital Cultures Research Centre | Pervasive Media Studio
3. Aims
➡ “Gameness” and aesthetics
➡ Why rhythmanalysis?
➡ The elements of rhythmanalysis
➡ The rhythmanalyst
➡ Dressage
➡ Digital games
➡ Pervasive games
6. movement systems/rhizome
& rhythm understanding
autotelic
lay ful pla
yfu
p Twirling Pervasive
Lego
l
gaming RPGs
rhythm-action PnP RPG
esMMORPGs
sensation
rhythmic gam tactical
FPS
Dancing Gambling
eve Ballroom
Navigation
ryd Walking Dancing Stockmarket
ryd ay
eve
Sports
ay
Dionysian earnest Apollonian
Lefebvre / Gadamer de Certeau
7. Henri Lefebvre
• Reacting to Marxist focus on Big
and Time.
• Le Quotidien
• mundane, everyday, repetitive
• Intro to Modernity constructed
like a symphony
• Rhythmanalysis specifically
mentioned in POS (1974)
• Rhythmanalysis published
posthumously in 1992
8. “Is there a general concept of rhythm?
Answers: yes, and everyone possesses it [...]
Yet the meanings of the term remain obscure.”
- Lefebvre
9. Rhythm according to
Lefebvre
• Repetition
• Reprise
• Measure
• A sequence of movements
• Time + Space... Rhythm
• dialectic
• “An organ has rhythm, but the
rhythm [...] is not an organ”
• “... it is an interaction”
Rhythm of Black Lines, Piet Mondrian
• Not just a beat or a waveform
10. Types of rhythm
• Cyclical
• Cosmic
• Natural
• Linear
• Begining and end
• Human and Artificial
• Isorhythmia
• Polyrhythmia
• Eurhythmia (symphonic)
Violin strings vibrating
• Arrhythmia
11. The rhythmanalyst
• “The body produces a garland
of rhythms... a bouquet”
• An aesthetic quality to
rhythms
• “At no moment have the
analysis of rhythms [...] lost
sight of the body.”
• Rhythm is a tool of analysis, not
the object to be analysed
• The body is not just the
subject, but also the tool of
Form is the Language of Time
analysis Robert Horowitz
• The Rhythmanalyst listens
12. Dressage
• Gestures are not natural
• We are “broken in” by
society and culture
• Personal gestures are
manipulated by external
rhythms
Construction: Black and White Counterpoint
Burton Wasserman
13. Digital Games
• Traditional, digital and
pervasive games all different
• Player forms a eurhythmia (or
isorhythmia) with the cybertext
that is the digital game
• There is a specific rhythm of
gameness, which is different
from the rhythms of other
cybertexts
Broadway Boogie Woogie, Piet Mondrian
• A form of dressage
14. Pervasive Games
• Social space and rhythms
• Not cybertexts
• Artistic spatial practice
• Explore rhythms of social space
• Explore dressage
• Breaching experiments
Personal Domain of Freedom and Ecstacy
• Turn the player into a Robert Horowitz
rhythmanalyst
15. Summary
➡ Rhythms are a route to “gameness”
➡ Time, Space, Rhythm
➡ Cyclical, Linear, Eurhythmia, Arrythmia
➡ Rhythmanalysts uses the body to listen to the aesthetics of social space
➡ Dressage - Culture breaks us to certain gestures
➡ Digital games - break us into certain gestures
➡ Pervasive games - artistic spatial practice that can explore gestures
Notes de l'éditeur
Dionysus looks more like a gamer than apollo
Introduced in the Birth of Tragedy
Intertwined but separate
Not simple, equal, binary opposites
Described variously as principles, urges, attitudes not properties
Not implying that Computer Games or any other form of game is like Greek Tragedy
Movement is an intrinsic part of thinking about play, one that is often ignored when discussing computer games.
Pathways and patterns in rhythm action games, 2D shooters, platform games, etc.
Gaming is the pleasure of figuring out rules, understanding the system, the enjoyment of information and knowledge, the pleasure of mathematical beauty
Interestingly narrative is part of the Apollonian element and complex narrative is a new comer to games, really only emerging with computer games.
Apollonian is probably most evident in PC based RPGs, especially the turn based RPG where the flow of action is, or can be, interrupted by the player.
Rhythmic - conversational, dialectic,
Fuzzy areas
His Rhythmanalytical project took a long time to develop
Flows/Flux from Marx.
Marx is economics/politics, big power
Influenced by Bergson, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Marx.
Rhythm is something that we all get, but it is difficult to put one’s finger on it.
Bear in mind that this is French philosophy. So we’re not going to get definitional here.
Rhythm is a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." While rhythm most commonly applies to sound, such as music and spoken language, it may also refer to visual presentation, as "timed movement through space. (WIkipedia, 2010)
Works at a physical and affective level
it is musical
utilises repetition and difference
not simply mechanical but also organic
cyclical and linear
at once continuous and also discrete
unites the quantitative and qualitative
Bergson’s duration... goes on to Lefebvre’s moment
Waves on the Mediterranean
Cyclical come from the heavens
From the massive scale of galaxies, suns, planets, down to the scale of cells, molecules and atoms
Not afraid to bring in some scientific metaphors or similes
Linear come from the social (not the internal biologically human)
Isorhythmia - in frequency
polyrhythmia - many rhythms going on at once
Eurhythmia - symphonic rhythms - the body - the rhythms working together
Arrhythmia - rhythms breaking down
A successor to the psychoanalysts
Maybe to all social and psychological investigators
Sense through using eurhythmia and arrhythmia
Data from all the senses
Must step outside the experience and evaluate
Humans break themselves in like animals
Again metaphors of organs, to society.
The rhythms of dressage are not the totality of rhythms
Linear and cyclical rhythms in games linking into our cyclical and linear rhythms
The game designer is a rhythmanalyst. Tying into our rhythms.
Game play is choreographed
Controller dances, popular dance form
The successful pervasive games have a rhythms borrowed from other rites
But also explore and play with those rhythms.
In many cases they need to inflict dressage to get you to play
In other cases they need you to break out of the cultural dressage, cf Garfinkel’s breaching experiments.