For Every to There Is a fro: Interpreting Time, Rhythm, and Gesture in Play. (November 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McDonald, Peter
• Other Names: Trammell Aaron guest-editor.; Gilbert Anne guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Games and culture. Volume 9:Number 6(2014)
• Page Start: 480
• Page End: 490
• Publication Date: 2014-11
• Subjects: play -- rhythm -- gesture -- phenomenology -- hermeneutics; Games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Video games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Computer games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Interactive multimedia -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 303.4834
• DOI: 10.1177/1555412014549192
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1555-4120

Abstract

This essay looks at the nexus of rhythm, gesture, and time to argue that play has a systematicity of its own, separate from that of games, which rarely comes to our attention. It constructs a genealogy by following the idea of a to-and-fro motion characterizing play through Huizinga's Homo Ludens, to Gadamer's Truth and Method, and finally to Nicolas Abraham's essays on the phenomenology of rhythm. By looking at play as a selection of game acts, it is understood as having a style of its own that opens it up to microanalysis and interpretation. By opening up new rhythms and new ways of comporting one's body, play is understood to have a radical connection with the experience of time, and the analysis ends with some speculation on the nature of their relation.