Abstract
The present chapter looks into an expressive perspective of technique. It starts by discussing some pertinent issues to frame the overall discussion. The notion of reprise developed in previous chapters will be extended into the realm of technique, connecting rhythm and effective action in eurhythmy, a feature of technical activity’s life cycles. In their expressive dimension, musical instruments are impregnated—in their making, sounding, and even presence—with mythical and practical values. Additionally, more or less intangible (in music) and more or less tangible (in luthiery) form-giving processes are constantly actualized by reprise dynamics. This will help specifying how technical (e)motions are linked to expressivity. Since the value of a technical form giving cannot be fully foreseen by people behind it when these (e)motions (and objects) are produced, the eurhythmy that characterizes skilful action refuses to be limited to one particular sphere of valuation.
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Notes
- 1.
Febvre (1935, p. 531, “Technique: un de ces nombreux mots don’t l’histoire n’est pas faite”, my translation).
- 2.
- 3.
Arendt (1998, p. 152, added emphasis).
- 4.
Pye (1968, p. 22).
- 5.
Pye (ibid.).
- 6.
Pye (ibid., pp. 22–23, added emphasis).
- 7.
Todd (2004).
- 8.
Ingold (2000, p. 433).
- 9.
Ingold (ibid.).
- 10.
The reader can get a global idea of the French tradition on technique/technology studies by consulting Loeve et al. (2018).
- 11.
Feyerabend (2003).
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
For a fuller account on the study of rhythm in the aforementioned broader sense, the reader may consult the vast resources available at https://rhuthmos.eu/.
- 15.
- 16.
Michon (2018a, p. 38). The prevalence of the platonic use of rhythm had deep repercussions in the latter development of deeply rationalistic aesthetics, anthropology and psychology. As it will become apparent, this dynamic character of eurythmy will be central for the notion of technique that I seek to present here.
- 17.
Michon (2018b, p. 90).
- 18.
A point treated thoroughly by Merleau-Ponty (1964).
- 19.
Michon (2018b, p. 95).
- 20.
Pye (1968, Chap. 2).
- 21.
Sigaut (2006, p. 133, my translation).
- 22.
Leroi-Gourhan (1965, p. 35, my translation, added emphasis).
- 23.
Mauss (2009).
- 24.
Michon (2015, p. 92, my translation, added emphasis).
- 25.
To sum up Sigaut’s diagnosis, which is nevertheless spread in a number of his works (1991, 1994, 2003/2006): “it is the old dichotomy between thought and action that […] seems unacceptable from the moment one inquires about technical action” (Sigaut, 2006, my translation). Now, Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (1997) leads us into an impasse. From the moment habitus is considered as “attained”, technical activity is no longer possible action and loses its protensive dimension (anticipatory, imaginative, and incomplete form). While Bourdieu’s question goes after what remains invisible when attained, our focus is on the processes wherein the attained gains this character, viz. how it became stable.
- 26.
- 27.
Sigaut (1991, p. 33, my translation, added brackets).
- 28.
Sigaut (1994).
- 29.
cf. Ingold (2000, Chaps. 15 and 16).
- 30.
Truslit, in Repp (1992, p. 276, added emphasis).
- 31.
When referring to morphology from here onwards, I do so in Goethean terms; namely, as constant organic development that when approached fragmentarily can deaden our direct grasp of nature: “[I] f we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent, nothing is at rest or defined—everything is in a flux of continual motion” (Goethe, 1983, p. 63).
- 32.
- 33.
Ingold (2000, p. 291, added brackets).
- 34.
These rhythmic regularities and irregularities appear more clearly in the processes I have addressed in Chap. 3 with the motifs of ‘the principle of dual control’, ‘the myth of the musical eternal return’, ‘to breathe is to keep music alive’, ‘I/me—Playing/ studying’, ‘virtuosity and musicality’, and ‘the mastery of the instrument is the mastery of oneself’.
- 35.
In short, these are practices that seek to transform people that engage in them, which do not necessarily fall within the scope of institutionalized religion: “The philosophy teacher’s discourse could be presented in such a way that the disciple, as auditor, reader, or interlocutor, could make spiritual progress and transform himself within” (Hadot, 2002).
- 36.
Smith (2002, p. 4).
- 37.
Although nowadays music popularly serves as entertainment (even becoming a tool to avoid silence; i.e., elevator music), this has hardly been the case historically. Without necessarily taking any of its playfulness away, music has been inseparable from much of human knowledge (i.e., math, geometry, architecture, astronomy, etc.) and everyday life (i.e., rituals, ceremonies, feasts, work, etc.). Also see Godwin (1993), Merriam (1964).
- 38.
Sudo (1998, p. 28).
- 39.
When addressing myth, I am following the work of Leszek Kolakowski (1989), particularly concerning the relationship between myth and value.
- 40.
Borthwick (1970).
- 41.
- 42.
Loopuyt (2018, p. 23, my translation).
- 43.
Loopuyt (2018, p. 102, my translation).
- 44.
- 45.
Not unlike moving creatures’ dorsiventrality, or the enantiomorphy manifest in minerals or chemical elements.
- 46.
Buob (2013, p. 80, my translation).
- 47.
Here, I am using ‘sympathetic’ in two ways. The first is that of ‘sympathetic resonance’, as it happens with strings (or any vibrating object) that are excited according to the frequency of others, despite not being attacked directly. The second is incorporated in Theodor Lipps’ (1923) notion of Einfühlung, where our engagement with things is in fundamental continuity with feeling. Lipps actually uses rhythm to illustrate this point in a way that reinforces the use of eurhythmy described above: “The reproductive force of rhythm is not directed upon the particular contents of […] former experiences, but upon the mode of psychical movement which is realised in them. The result is reproduction of a general condition of my being corresponding with the rhythm, the perception (Vorstellung) of a unifying or embracing (umfassend) ‘general mood’ (Gesammtstimmung) of freedom and necessity, of passionate pushing forwards or quiet moderation, or seriousness or cheerful play, etc.” (Lipps in Lee & Anstruther-Thomson, 1912).
- 48.
Sanz (1976, p. 2: “Otros han tratado de la perfecciòn de este instrumento, diziendo algunos, que la guitarra es un instrumento perfecto, otros que no; yo voy por un medio, y digo, que ni es perfecta, ni imperfecta, sino como tu la hizieres, pues la falta, ò perfeccion està en quien la tañe, y no en ella”; my translation in the main text).
- 49.
Covarrubias Orozco (1610, Centuria II, Emblema 31, my translation). Image retrieved from https://archive.org/details/emblemasmoralesd00covar/page/254/mode/2up.
- 50.
Boesch (1993).
- 51.
Boesch (1993, p. 13).
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
Boesch (1993, p. 8).
- 54.
Matsuda (in Robinson, Ed., 2017, pp. 73–77).
- 55.
- 56.
Mills (2000, pp. 195–196).
- 57.
Hopefully the costs of reducing the expressive array used in scientific practices makes us react and consider the consequences of the massive contemporary loss of languages along with their people.
- 58.
Loopuyt (2018, pp. 41–42, my translation).
- 59.
Loopuyt (2018, 108, my translation).
- 60.
The interested reader may also consult Racy (2003).
- 61.
For an in-depth argument on the restrictions imposed by the distinction between function and form in architecture as well as in other fields, see Spuybroek (2016). Here is a condensed account: “The idea of a vitalised geometry goes directly against Alberti’s notion of how to make structures beautiful. According to Leon Battista Alberti, pulchritudo and ornamentum come on top of structure. First you have the structure, then comes the process of beautifying it. In the Gothic, beauty is already in the figures, it precedes structure. Life is the urge for composition and the striving for configuration, which is remarkably close to Whitehead’s remark that beauty is the teleology of the universe. Therefore in the Gothic we cannot distinguish beauty from utility; beauty is a beauty that works. Things are active, they work, and while they do so they come together and produce structure. This means that structure, the becoming of things, is a result of beauty: things feel for each other and that brings them together” (Spuybroek, 2017, p. 150).
- 62.
Buob (2013, p. 73, my translation).
- 63.
Bellow (1970, p. 73. Open access image available at https://archive.org/details/illustratedhisto0000bell/page/72/mode/2up).
- 64.
Bellow (1970, p. 74 Open access image available at https://archive.org/details/illustratedhisto0000bell/page/n109/mode/2up).
- 65.
One might say that with this move the instrument slides into the genre of the vanitas, coming closer to reminding us of death and transience over the figures of life and the perennial I have been emphasizing.
- 66.
Smith (2002, p. 11).
- 67.
Simondon (2012, pp. 252–253, my translation).
- 68.
A reticulated surface, as it can be seen in living organisms (often used in botanics or zoology to describe a rippled, irregular connective tissue) is characterized as a honeycomb-like structure. In gothic architecture, it has been used to describe the tracery constituted by various ribs that configure coalescing and divergent patterns, as the ones you might get when twisting a net (as one would squeeze a wet towel) that opens up towards its ends.
- 69.
- 70.
Simondon’s distinction between closed and open objects can clarify what is meant by indetermination here. When an object is closed, it is perfectly operational and effective when leaving the factory or the makers’ shops. Yet after this period of freshness, it gets old even without being used by a decaying process. The closed object becomes outdated and dull, not because of its wear, but because “its closure has made it lose touch with current reality, with the actuality that has produced it” (Simondon, 2014, p. 401, my translation). On the contrary, what he calls an open object is one that can be constantly actualized by the user, who can adapt her or his skilled gestures to repair or intervene the object in such way that its technical cohesion is maintained. The open object remains engaged to the gestures of the user, who knows his or her way around it, to the point of being able to fix it. It remains ‘alive’ in a sense, thanks to its ‘concreteness’. Even if we must replace or improve its parts, the instrument holds its integrity thanks to its very milieu. For instance, ‘decorative instruments’ can ‘open up’ the realms of marquetry, inlay, ornamentation, use of materials, and so forth; but ‘close down’ their sound quality. One could liken Simondon’s idea of concretization to what other authors (Ernst Cassirer, Ignace Meyerson, or Jean-Pierre Vernant) meant by an ‘objectivation process’. This has little to do with ‘objectivity’, but rather with the process through which form gains its value-specificity.
- 71.
Godwin (1995).
- 72.
- 73.
Cassirer (2013a, p. 328, emphases in the original).
- 74.
Polanyi and Prosch (1975, p. 85).
- 75.
This is not fundamentally different from the distinction between readiness-to-hand [Zuhandenheit] and present-at-hand [Vorhandenheit] that came to be relevant to Heidegger’s (1962) study of our relationship with techniques and our encounter with things, more generally.
- 76.
- 77.
Lassègue (2012, p. 141).
- 78.
In Humboldt’s (2000) case, the distinction serves as a tool to assert the mutability of language (in terms of energeia), which shows itself over a longer idiomatic life span, where it refuses to be reduced to a ready-made system that is simply implemented by its users. This is just one of the consequences of approaching speech/language forms from their potentialities and instabilities.
- 79.
Cassirer (2013b, p. 276, added brackets).
- 80.
Lassègue (2012, p. 142).
- 81.
Cassirer (2013b, p. 308).
- 82.
“By Natura naturans, we understand a being that we can conceive clearly and distinctly through itself, and without needing anything else beside itself (like all the attributes which we have so far described), that is, God. The Thomists understand God by it, but their Natura naturans was a being (so they called it) beyond all substances.
The Natura naturata we shall divide into two; a general, and a particular. The general consists of all the modes which depend immediately of God […] the particular consists of all the particular things that are produced by the general mode. So that the Natura naturata requires some substance in order to be well understood. […]
Now, as regards to the general Natura naturata, or the modes, or creations which depend on, or have been created by God immediately, of these we know no more than two, namely, motion in matter, and the understanding in the thinking thing. These, then, we say, have been from all eternity, and to all eternity will remain inmutable. A work truly as great as the greatness of the workmaster. […]
[S]ince it [Motion] more properly belongs to a treatise on Natural Science rather than here, we shall not consider in this place, but we shall only say this about it, that it is a Son, Product, or Effect created immediately by God.” Spinoza (1910, pp. 56–57).
- 83.
Cassirer (1991).
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Rojas, P. (2021). Technical Rhythms and Harmonies. In: Reprising Craftsmanship. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80132-8_4
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