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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00627
- Thesis Title
- Rhythmanalysis: an expressive method for environment/aesthetics relationship.
- Author
- Kyriakos Charalampides
- E-mail
- kcharalampides AT icloud.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Master
- Year
- 2017
- Number of Pages
- 81
- University
- Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatoire in The Hague
- Thesis Supervisor
- Raviv Ganchrow
- Supervisor e-mail
- raviv.ganchrow AT gmail.com
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Sonology
- Copyright Ownership
- Languages Familiar to Author
- Greek, English
- URL where full thesis can be found
- Keywords
- Rhythmanalysis, Sonification, Sonology
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- Just before the dawn of the 21st century, Henri Lefebvre envisioned an act that sought to analyse the world as a moving complexity. Originating from Pinheiro dos Santos’ phenomenology of rhythm and its revision by Gaston Bachelard1, Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis aspired to transform the abstract concept of rhythm into a method. By conceiving rhythm as interactions between places, time and expenditures of energy, Lefebvre invoked the subject as the sculptor of rhythmicity and the axis of its study. Upon this conception, he proposed a method which, through the study of rhythm, would reveal the relationships that compose the world. Rhythmanalysis, by studying periodic temporalities through subjective prisms, carries the vision to allow its practitioners to listen to a town or a street, in the same way as an audience listens to a symphony.
The evolution of music, that Groupe de Researches Musicales initiated during the last half of the previous century, indicated the environment not only as a source of musical inspiration but also as a source of musical material. Nowadays, in contemporary music, the environment is frequently considered as a vessel for the expression of the musician. Despite the valuable contribution of this tendency to musical practice, in most of the available examples, the musical utility of the environment is restricted to its materiality. Along these lines, Lefebvre’s vision may be able to reveal an alternative path towards environment-oriented sound organisation.
With the publication “Elements of Rhythmanalysis”, Lefebvre proposed the capture, analysis and representation of perceptible motion, through the analysis and representation of the motion perception process by an individual. His theory uses the subjectively gained empiricism as an interpretation axis. The present study, progressing on the same axis, hypothesises that the application of Rhythmanalysis on the musical domain would contribute a counter-proposal to established practices of environment-oriented sound organisation. The discussing method does not aim to be restricted to the expression of an observed environment; it aspires to express the way that an individual is affected by the process of observation. The proposing research carries the ambition to form a methodology able to sonically express the intersection between the subject and the environment.
The proposed implementation aims to study the above hypotheses based on incoming data from motion and biological sensors. Its ultimate objective is to sonify periodic analogies among the collected data. Individual data packages are to be sonified through different algorithms while the overall sound outcome would be determined by their correspondence, aiming to express in that way, the character of their interrelationship.