Towards Lefebvrian Socio-Nature? An Exploration of Rhythm, Nature and Science

Synopsis

An online article by James Evans and Phil Jones, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, that takes the form of a film. The film is presented with discussion led by different talking heads, shots from a variety of locations and rhythmic diagrams that are used to emphasise the points that are made in the article.

The abstract says: "The first thing you will notice about this article is that it is actually a film. We did not set out to make a film, it just ended up that way. We started out making music out of environmental data, wondering why we only ever look at scientific data, why we do not listen to it. Wandering around the city passing through the transformed landscapes of channelised rivers and broken industrial spaces, we wanted to reveal the socio-natural rhythms of this hybrid city. The text you see below represents the shooting script for a film that explores Lefebvre’s notion of rhythmanalysis in the context of socio-natural rhythms. The video accompanying it is far more interesting, including the environmental music that we produced by feeding scientific data through samplers and drum machines. The video questions the nature of scientific representation and whether the notion of rhythmanalysis can be stretched to explore rhythms beyond the human. Furthermore, the process of actually making the video, submitting it to this journal, and responding to the referees’ comments made us question the very nature of what constitutes an academic paper in the twenty-first century. (10 minutes)

The accompanying video commentary (also at http://www.blackwell-compass.com/home_video#gecofilm) is the authors’ attempt to deal with these issues. They discusses using the medium of film for an article and address peer-review comments. (10 minutes)

Language

English

Country

Great Britain

Year of release

2008

Year of production

2008

Subjects

Geography

Keywords

cities; data collection and analysis; social geography; rhythms

Online availability

URI

http://www.blackwell-compass.com/home_video#gecofilm

Delivery

Streamed

Credits

Writer

James Evans; Phil Jones

Contributor

James Evans; Phil Jones

Distributor

Name

Blackwell Compass

Web

http://www.blackwell-compass.com/home_video#philfilm External site opens in new window