Graffiti in Tel Aviv
(on Shne'ur at Tchernichovsky, behind Meir Garden)
Body Movement and Rhythm Perception (Groove)
My dissertation—Groove: The Phenomenology of Musical Nuance (2007)—has to do largely with rhythm perception. One of the claims I made is that body movement is not merely a reaction to hearing rhythms but that moving our bodies influences the way we hear rhythms; body movement is a part of the perceptual structure. Tapping your foot, e.g., affects the way you hear a given swing rhythm. (To musicians and phenomenologists, this is not an outlandish claim, but many analytic philosophers do not accept it.)
Interestingly, recent work by psychologists Jessica Phillips-Silver and Laurel J. Trainor provides experimental evidence that body movement influences rhythm perception. In their paper, "Hearing What the Body Feels: Auditory Encoding of Rhythmic Movement," they describe recent experimental findings to the effect that body movement affects subjects' perception of ambiguous rhythms.
This is their summary of the experiment. "We trained adults, while listening to an ambiguous rhythm with no accented beats, to bounce by bending their knees to interpret the rhythm either as a march or as a waltz. At test, adults identified as similar an auditory version of the rhythm pattern with accented strong beats that matched their previous bouncing experience in comparison with a version whose accents did not match" (Phillips-Silver and Trainor, p. 533; Cognition, 105, 2007). [thanks, Bill]
Whereas Phillips-Silver and Trainor are concerned with the effect of earlier body movement on later interpretation of rhythmic structure, my specific concern has been more qualitative, with the way we hear fine-grained, performed, rhythmic variations (timing nuances) while we move. Very briefly, I believe that hearing grooves (the feel of a rhythm as "leaning" or "pushing," e.g.) involves feeling, in the body, early or late notes as thwarted rhythmic expectations. Our experience of expectations of rhythmic regularities becomes deepened through body movement which is in accord with the regularities. When slightly early or late notes disrupt regularities—if we are moving—we experience the thwartings in our bodies, more qualitatively than if we had been perceiving in a detached manner.
The Ripening of Nick Lowe
I've always been a Nick Lowe (and Rockpile) enthusiast, but I'm a bit blown away by the patient minimalism of his recent arrangements and solo performances. Lowe's songs are so well-written that it is no surprise that they sound good with only guitar accompaniment, but what is a shock (to me) is that this manner of presentation seems to fit many of his songs even better than his old pop and roots, guitar-bass-drums arrangements. Call it a ripening, because he is more open now (than in his earlier acoustic performances) to leave space, to go very slowly, to rest without vocal flourishes, and to embrace his sparse guitar style. More than ever, he seems to be as plainly as possible presenting his songs—which is fresh air in this American Idol era of over-singing.
"All Men Are Liars" (2008) (written by lowe)
(Click "watch the video")
"I Read a Lot" (2008) (written by lowe)
"The Beast in Me" (2008) (written by lowe)
"Heart" (2007) (written by lowe)
OLDER:
"So It Goes" (1978: Nick Lowe and Rockpile) (written by lowe)
"Three Time Loser" (1979: Dave Edmunds and Rockpile)
"Cruel to Be Kind" (2007, originally released in 1980?)
Finally, here is a bad radio interview of Lowe and Elvis Costello in 1978.
iphone wind instrument
For those who are not obsessed with new apple products, you may have missed the unveiling of this new iPhone musical wind instrument called Leaf Trombone, played by literally blowing into the iPhone's microphone, and moving your finger over the phone's glass face. It will be available as an iPhone application once the new iPhone operating system is released this summer (OS 3). Bluetooth connectivity is used to connect performers; watch this duet demonstration.
Eastern ASA
The Eastern Division meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics is coming up (April 3-4, in Philadelphia). I'll be commenting on an interesting paper by John Carvalho (Villanova University) which has to do with Jacques Attali's Noise: The Political Economy of Music, and "Strange Fruit" (as in Billy Holiday). The many notable events at this ASA include a special panel on Cognitive Science and the Arts, and, Lydia Goehr will be giving the Monroe Beardsley Lecture.
The Beatles' Jesus Incident
In the mid-sixties, John Lennon said to a friend (who also happened to be a reporter): "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first-rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." Subsequently, all hell broke loose in the U.S.A, where the Beatles were about to embark on their second tour. There were death threats, radio stations banned Beatle records, and there were Beatle-record burning events. Below are links to a 25 minute, British, 1966, news report about the controversy and the Beatles' concerts in Memphis. The documentary includes an interview with the Klu Klux Klan Imperial Wizard [!], who calls the Beatles "mop heads," and says that he can't tell whether they're white or black. The documentary ends with an interview backstage with the Beatles in Memphis after their performances—they are c.r.a.n.k.y.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Here is the portion of the Beatles' Anthology—Director's Cut—that deals with this time period (featuring interviews with the three Beatles and George Martin, filmed around the turn of this century).
1966 Chicago Press Conference (raw footage)
To end this post on a positive note, here are two live performance clips from 1964. When people say that Ringo Starr invented Rock drumming, they have these sorts of performances in mind. Don't miss his playing on the guitar solo of the first track, and notice that his heel is not resting on the kick drum pedal.
Philosophy in the News
I'm sure every philosopher has read these newspaper articles by now; I am posting the links here for any undergraduates who are considering Philosophy as a Major or Minor. The first is from the NY Times (April 2008), "In a New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined." The second is a bit older (November 2007), from the Guardian, "The Rise in Stock of Philosophy Graduates: I Think, Therefore I Earn."
Interviews with Philosophers
Here is an amazing collection of long television interviews with prominent philosophers (now on YouTube); the interviews were conducted by Bryan Magee in the 1970s, originally aired on the BBC. Interviewees include, Quine, Putnam, Searle, Sidney Morgenbesser, and others!
Click on the image above to be taken to the first part of the Hubert Dreyfus interview, "Husserl, Heidegger, and Modern Existentialism."
Fellow Americans, stop and think about the fact that this was on television.
Merleau-Ponty on Eye-Reflections
There is an interesting point made here about the trickiness of Photoshopping the reflections of light in eyes. I left a comment on that weblog (Boing Boing) suggesting that the issue might be even more deep and important than Photoshoppers think. I promised to offer something brief here about what Maurice Merleau-Ponty says about the perception of reflections in eyes in his Phenomenology of Perception (1945).
Just how do we experience a reflection in eyes when we look at someone's face? Merleau-Ponty considers how the reflection in human eyes shows up in experience, and he also describes the impact upon our overall experience of the face. He is ultimately making a point about the perception of actual human eyes, but in the quote I'll give, he makes the point by referring to painting (which is perfect for this Photoshop discussion).
"Only after centuries of painting did artists perceive that reflection on the eye without which the eye remains dull and sightless as in the paintings of the early masters. The reflection is not seen as such, since it was in fact able to remain unnoticed for so long, and yet it has its function in perception, since its mere absence deprives objects and faces of all life and expression."*
Merleau-Ponty's point is that the perceptual effect of the reflection on the eye is to give the face "life and expression." What he says next is based upon idea that there are different ways of perceiving this reflection.
"The reflection is seen only incidentally. It is not presented to our perception as an objective, but as an auxiliary or mediating element. It is not seen itself, but causes us to see the rest."*
The idea is that we can perceive an eye-reflection either as a separable object of attention (as a Photoshopper might), or "incidentally" (as the typical viewer of a touched-up photograph might). When viewed in the latter way, the reflection makes an important contribution to our perception of "life and expression" in a face; namely, it mediates that perception; again, seeing an eye-reflection "incidentally" fosters our perception of the "life and expression" in a face.
If this is right, then a Photoshopper aims to get the reflection correct so that when a viewer sees the photo, the reflection can do the proper mediating of the facial expression. A mishandled reflection can make the face look dull, or just plain weird. Maybe this next point is surprising: the conscientious Photoshopper is seeing the reflection in one way, while the normal viewer is perceiving it in another; the import of getting the reflection right only becomes clear to the Photoshopper when she stops focusing on the reflection and perceives it incidentally while looking at the face as a whole.
My own work is on music, and I use this observation in examining musical nuances, which are the minute "expressive variations" made by musicians. I claim that in order to correctly hear the slightly late note sung by Wyclef Jean or Frank Sinatra, we should not focus our attention on its lateness but rather perceive it "incidentally" and thereby allow that note (with others) to mediate a groove. The experience of a rhythmic leaning or pulling arises when we hear these slightly late notes in this way (not when we focus our attention on them).
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* Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (Routledge, 1996), p.309.
A Symposium on Philosophy of Art
“Genres, Categories, and Concepts in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art,” a workshop-style symposium. (May 16 - 18, 2008. Indiana University, Bloomington.) I'll be Presenting on Musical Nuances. The symposium website is here.
(click poster for full size pop-up)
Windows Music
Here is music created entirely with the sounds of Windows XP and 98. (The sounds we hate most made into something interesting.)
