METRO_ART rhythm perception · Locatelli

NECS Conference 2026

The METRO_ART Research Project on the Perception of Rhythm

Its Roots in Filmology and the History of Theories

SpeakerMassimo Locatelli

InstitutionUniversità Cattolica
del Sacro Cuore

Date19 June 2026

Overview

Aim of this presentation

Aim 1

Briefly reconsider some definitions of “rhythm” in film and media studies

Aim 2

Even more briefly discuss some methodological problems

Aim 3

Assess the specificity of the METRO_ART Research Project on the Perception of Rhythm within this horizon

Definitions of RHYTHM

Complex and multimodal

from Greek ῥυθμός, rhythmos, “any regular recurring motion”. The lexical origin of the word is from the motion of the waves: a rising and a lowering that are always repeated in the same way.

Aristotle’s circle uses it to describe proportion in the ancient architecture of the Sardinian civilization.

Definitions of RHYTHM

Creative and lyrical

For Sergej Eisenstein “the fundamental law of organic construction is the law of alternation, of periodicity, of cyclical recurrence” (Nonindifferent Nature). Nonetheless, for him, “rhythm is never merely temporal; it is the dynamic organization of forces within the work” (Aumont, 1987, p. 173);

Jean Mitry (2000, p. 22) underlines the structuring potential of lyrical language: “The meaning of phrases in lyrical language is intimately related to and uniquely dependent on their rhythm”.

Definitions of RHYTHM

Rhythmic and “rhytmed”

For Mitry (1963, p. 352), rhythm is a relationship of intensity within a relationship of durations. The intensity of a shot depends on the amount of movement (physical, dramatic or physiological) it contains and on its duration.

Mitry (1965, p. 169) distinguishes between a rhythmic structure (the musical meter that imposes itself on the significant material) and a a “rhythmed” structure (film subordinates its rhythms to the things seen – to the necessary organization of the data).

Definitions of RHYTHM

Gestaltic and active

Mitry introduced in film studies the work of Paul Fraisse, the Michotte scholar who devoted himself to chronopsychology.

Following Fraisse (1979, pp. 67-68), rhythm has Gestalt qualities, that is, it does not lie necessarily in the perceived event, but in perceptual grouping through intensity and succession. But also (Fraisse 1975, p. 232): “Rhythm is a Gestalt, but it is much more: a preferential mode of uniting perception and action”.

Definitions of RHYTHM

Attentional and participatory

In contemporary debates on musical rhythms both the cognitive and the sensorimotor dimensions described by Fraisse are still underlined: on the one side, rhythm is defined as “the serial pattern, variable note durations in a melody” (Schulkind 1999, p. 896), determining recognition and memorization.

On the other side laboratory research delves into the embodied dimensions of rhythmical experience, which music psychology mainly recognises in beat-timing and entrainment (Penhune and Zatorre 2019).

Definitions of RHYTHM

Learnable and recallable

Contemporary musicology tends to integrate both dimensions: Justin London proposes a model, the Many Meters Hypothesis, which considers meter as a kind of “learnable” entrainment, a synchronization of our attention and a response to the rhythms of the musical environment which we are exposed to (London, 2004) .

From a purely neurophysiological point of view, it has also proved possible to describe a double circuit that integrates a typically bottom-up path, that of listening to music, with a typically top-down path, that of memorisation and recall (Yue e.a. 2019).

Definitions of RHYTHM

Filmic and experiential

Research on film sound and film music fits generally into the same context.

In Annabel Cohen's work (Congruence-Association Model, e.g. 2013), rhythm takes on an organizing role within a multimodal perceptual-cognitive streaming.

Karen Pearlman solicits a "somatic intelligence" of rhythm in film and the moving image (2009, p. xviii), allowing us to extend its semiotics from a logic of control and sense strata to a logic of dynamic resonance and bodily fluctuations.

Definitions of RHYTHM

Filmological and neurofilmological

Like in classical Filmology (1940s and 1950s), Neurofilmology recovers and updates a dialogue between the humanities and the sciences of the mind.

Neurofilmology presents itself as a theoretical-empirical research framework on cinematic experience, and considers the theoretical component as a meta-empirical tool for the epistemological orientation of empirical research. (Eugeni 2023)

Problems

1. Reductionism

a) The first and more general methodological question still regards the old, vexed question about research design in a cultural context. Hard science wants clear data. The need of reduction of variables and factors for a scientific validation constitutes a hindrance per se in film studies, the reign of polysemy.

See Eisenstein again: “montage is conflict”, and also D. Lash (2025, p. 479), insisting on a “contestatory” value of film rhythms.

Problems

1. Reductionism (“musicological” version)

b) Metrical rhythm is mostly connected to serial, temporal patterns: a sort of musicological exactness or structuralism.

But: Going back again to Paul Fraisse (1975) - Gestalt reorganization is not a mathematical question, but takes the two forms: differentiation, which sharpens the differences, and assimilation, which tends to diminish or suppress minor differences. See the linguistic metaphor we used instead of the metrical one.

Problems

2. Media specificity

Some keywords in rhythm research are not immediately transferable from music to film.

a) Anticipation is a fundamental character of rhythmic experience (Huron 2004), governing our expectations and our bodily participation (e.g. to music or to dance).

But it is also a less-researched topic in visual perception studies. Colley and coll. (2018) proved the reinforcing function of visual stimuli (like seeing a virtually designed conductor while hearing music) to synchronization.

Problems

2. Media specificity

b) Rhythm studies mainly insist on beat timing, which is more likely to be found in auditory experiences. Visual cues in film and the media are usually based on continuous, interval timing (scenes, sequences), but discontinuous items (frames, single movements).

Nonetheless, a sense of beat can be extracted from a continuous visual stimulus, if properly designed for (Grahn 2012).

Problems

2. Media specificity

c) Entrainment – intended as well as a bodily reaction to beat-timing and a neural resonance – strongly depends on bodily participation (‘moving to rhythm alters subsequent perception of that rhythm, as well as neural entrainment’, Levitin, Grahn, London 2018, p. 62).

It seems that visual stimuli (like intermittent flashes of lights) cause a neurostimulating but “only” passive experience (Johnson e.a. 2024).

Otherwise, dance studies prove a strong entrainment in front of bodily performances (Calvo-Merino e.a. 2005)

The METRO_ART research project

Problem 2a (anticipation)

The film-theoretical background I've referred to assumes that film experience is strongly embodied. By placing the actor’s body at the center of our research design, we can approach the issue of rhythm with greater awareness. In this sense, we can connect to general studies on rhythmic anticipation in other related disciplines: musicology, psychology of music, dance studies (Pearlman opens up to the possibility of understanding the rhythms of editing through musical training: “actively perceiving rhythms”, 2009, p. 8).

The METRO_ART research project

Problem 2b&c (beat timing and entrainment)

Movement and bodily intensity, the field of kinematics, seems to be the place where to find a clear border between the different layers or sense strata of rhythm experience. Here too, by placing the actor’s body at the center of our research design, we can approach the issue of rhythmic embodiment with greater awareness. Dance studies involves kinematics as a measure of both creativity (professional dancer) and enjoyment (even by only looking at a dance show!, cfr. Orlandi e.a. 2020).

The METRO_ART research project

Problem 1a (general reductionism)

Working with an interdisciplinary team, with experienced psychologists and neuroscientists, reassures us in terms of procedural correctness. Otherwise, the choice of very simple, basic variables (short movements of a dancer) has been subjected to a complex factorial elaboration in order to obtain more generally applicable data.

The METRO_ART research project

Problem 2b (exactness)

Indeed, after the first round of classical 2D images, in order to distinguish a general rhythmic structure from context related perceptions, we could explore a different perceptual environment delving into virtual reality and 3D.

References

Bibliography

Beatriz Calvo-Merino e.a., ‘Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills: an FMRI study with expert dancers’, Cerebral Cortex 15, (8) 2005.
Annabel J. Cohen, ‘Congruence-Association Model of music and multimedia: Origin and evolution’, in Siu-Lan Tan e.a. (eds.), The Psychology of Music in Multimedia, Oxford UP, 2013.
Ian D. Colley e.a., ‘The influence of visual cues on temporal anticipation and movement synchronization with musical sequences’, Acta psychologica, 191 2018.
Yue Ding e.a., ‘Neural Correlates of Music Listening and Recall in the Human Brain’, Journal of Neuroscience, 39 (41) 2019.
Ruggero Eugeni, ‘Neurofilmology: Semiotics, cognitivism, audiovisual experience’, in Amir Biglari (ed.), Open Semiotics. Volume 3. Texts, Images, Arts, L’Harmattan, 2023.
Paul Fraisse, ‘Is Rhythm a Gestalt?’, in Gestalttheorie in der modernen Psychologie, ed. by Suitbert Ertel, Lilly Kemmler and Michael Stadler, Steinkopff, Darmstadt 1975. Id., Psicologia del ritmo, Armando, Roma 1979.
Jessica A. Grahn, ‘See what I hear? Beat perception in auditory and visual rhythms’, Exp. Brain Res., 220 (1) 2012.
David Huron, Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, The MIT Press, 2006.
Micah A. Johnson e.a., ‘Lightening the mind with audiovisual stimulation as an accessible alternative to breath-focused meditation for mood and cognitive enhancement’, Sci Rep 14, (2024)
Dominic Lash, ‘Towards an account of rhythmic phrasing in narrative film’, Screen 66 (4) 2025
Daniel J. Levitin, Jessica A. Grahn, Justin London, ‘The Psychology of Music: Rhythm and Movement’, Annu. Rev. Psychol., 69 2018.
Justin London, Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meters, Oxford UP, 2004.
Jean Mitry, The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, Indiana UP 2000.
Andrea Orlandi, Emily S. Cross, Guido Orgs, ‘Timing is everything: Dance aesthetics depend on the complexity of movement kinematics’, Cognition, 205 2020.
Karen Pearlman, Cutting Rhythms: Shaping the Film Edit, Focalpress, Burlington 2009.
Virginia B. Penhune and Robert J. Zatorre, ‘Rhythm and Time in the Premotor Cortex’, PLoS Biology, 17 (6) 2019.
Matthew D. Schulkind, ‘Long-term memory for temporal structure: evidence from the identification of wellknown and novel songs’, Mem. Cogn. 27 (5) 1999.
Thorbjörn Swenberg and Simon Carlgren, ‘On-Beat/Off-Beat: Visual Responses to Audio-Visual Asynchrony in Music Videos’, Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 1 2021.