Special Issue Edited by

Zoey M. Cochran (Université de Montréal) and Anja-Xiaoxing Cui (University of Vienna)

Rythmes croisés : vers une pensée intersectorielle (Intersecting Rhythms: Toward Intersectoral Thinking)

Rhythm plays a cross-cutting role in the development of knowledge and in epistemological reflection on different forms of knowing. In its everyday sense, rhythm refers to “the repetition or recurrence, at more or less regular intervals, of a phenomenon, such as the rhythm of the seasons” (Dessons 2002). Yet, since its earliest theoretical formulations, rhythm has remained one of the most difficult terms to define (London 2001). In music, some theories emphasize the notion of flow (Ohriner 2019), others the regular alternation between strong and weak elements (London 2012; Cooper and Meyer 1960), and still others the distinction between rhythm and meter (Cooper and Meyer 1960; Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983; Hasty 1997). In linguistics, rhythm encompasses both prosody and the organization of the subject within discourse, and can no longer be reduced to metric regularity (Meschonnic 1982; Hanson and Kiparsky 1996). In philosophy, rhythm is understood less as mechanical repetition than as a dynamic organization of becoming (Benveniste 1966 [1951]; Deleuze and Guattari 1980; Lefebvre 1992). Cinema and media arts approach rhythm as a temporal and perceptual experience emerging from interactions among works, technologies, and audiences (Barker 2009; Warner 2022). Lev Manovich (2001), in particular, demonstrates how digital media introduce computational temporalities based on continuous data updates, modularity, and interactivity. For Mark B. N. Hansen (2004), digital technologies shift rhythm toward a dynamic relationship between perception, computation, and embodied experience. Rhythm thus becomes an adaptive process rather than a fixed structure.

Since the 1990s, neuroscience has considerably reshaped the study of rhythm, while contemporary research on rhythm in the humanities (including music and linguistics) increasingly incorporates perception, cognition, and interpretation into its analyses (Snyder, Gordon, and Hannon 2024). Rhythmic abilities, at least in the musical domain, simultaneously engage the auditory cortices, motor regions, basal ganglia, cerebellum, and attentional mechanisms (Patel 2007). The theory of neural entrainment describes the brain’s ability to spontaneously synchronize its oscillatory activity with periodic stimuli (Large and Snyder 2009). In music cognition, rhythm provides a means of investigating how the brain perceives auditory events (Vuust and Witek 2014). Rhythmic perception involves attention, memory, anticipation, and sensorimotor synchronization, all of which are increasingly taken into account in analytical methods.

The innovative and intersectoral potential of rhythm also becomes apparent when it is studied beyond the arts and humanities. In sociology, rhythm offers a different perspective on social change through the lens of acceleration: technological acceleration (communication, transportation, production), the acceleration of social change, and the acceleration of the pace of life (Rosa 2013). This acceleration transforms our daily rhythms and our ways of living and being in the world. In the natural sciences, the organization of living systems relies on rhythms, particularly circadian and ultradian rhythms, which are studied in chronobiology (Halberg and Reinberg 1967; Halberg 1969). Ecology examines population rhythms (Vasseur and Fox 2009) and seasonal rhythms (Terasaki Hart et al. 2025), while geosciences investigate the Earth's astronomical and climatic cycles (Hays 1976). In engineering, the study of electrochemical reactions makes it possible to organize them into rhythmic systems (Rusin et al. 2009). In robotics, rhythm serves as a principle for movement control (Yazdani et al. 2018). In civil engineering, the study of rhythmic human movements helps assess the periodic loads exerted on structures (Gaspar et al. 2016). Finally, biomedical engineering draws on the analysis of human rhythms to investigate biological synchronization (Kofidis et al. 2002). Today, rhythm is both ubiquitous and difficult to delimit. The diversity of disciplines in which it appears does not merely reflect the term’s multiple meanings; rather, it reveals its considerable power as an operational concept and its capacity to foster genuinely intersectoral thinking.

This inaugural issue of Écrans croisés aims to explore rhythm in the contemporary era. How can rhythm help illuminate and advance a research hypothesis specific to a given discipline? The issue seeks to demonstrate the conceptual and analytical potential of rhythm, particularly its capacity to foster dialogue across a wide range of fields, from the natural sciences to the arts, and from engineering to the humanities.

Contributions may explore, among others, the following areas of inquiry:

• Rhythm as an integrative concept capable of revealing shared patterns and underlying logics across heterogeneous phenomena;
• Definitions of rhythm (cadence, cycle, flow, recurring patterns, pulse, repetition, synchrony, variation, speed, etc.);
• Rhythm as a temporal and lived experience of phenomena (duration, memory, emotions);
• The perception and cognition of rhythm: mechanisms of rhythmic perception, rhythm and attention, rhythm and emotions, cerebral, bodily, or artistic rhythms;
• Audiovisual rhythms at the intersection of image, sound, and perception (visual, sonic, narrative, bodily, perceptual, or technological dimensions);
• Interactive rhythms: when viewers or players become producers of rhythm through interactions with media and technological devices (film, installation, virtual reality, video games, etc.);
• Rhythm and digital technologies: computational temporalities, data updates and data flows, modularity, algorithmic rhythms, social media, artificial intelligence, machine/human rhythms;
• Rhythms of living systems: circadian, cardiac, respiratory, hormonal, neural, and metabolic rhythms, and the body as a polyrhythmic system;
• Social, urban, and political rhythms: overlapping temporalities (mobility, work, economy, residential life, institutions, ecology, etc.), urban rhythms, urban polyrhythmia, work rhythms, social synchronization and desynchronization, and rhythm as an instrument of control or power;
• Acceleration, saturation, and the crisis of contemporary rhythms: acceleration as a rhythmic phenomenon, exhaustion or saturation of contemporary rhythms, the tension between acceleration and deceleration, temporalities of contemporary work, resistance to acceleration, and the politics of desynchronization;
• Rhythm and complex systems: multirhythmic systems, relationships between micro- and macrorhythms, synchronization phenomena, the coordination of heterogeneous temporalities, and dynamic and oscillatory systems.

Écrans croisés is a new digital intersectoral journal established through the cinEXmedia partnership, under the direction of Santiago Hidalgo and Marie-Josée Hébert (Université de Montréal). It aims to provide a space for dialogue across disciplines, communities, and research practices, fostering exchanges among different bodies of knowledge, theoretical approaches, and methods, particularly around issues related to images, sound, screens, and digital media. In this spirit, Écrans croisés publishes both the qualitative and quantitative findings of intersectoral research projects, as well as interim reports on ongoing research and reflections on how this type of research is conducted. The journal welcomes contributions that develop theoretical concepts related to intersectorality and generate new heuristic insights, as well as articles examining artistic creation, the design of practical tools, the development of shared models for action, and social innovations grounded in a variety of settings. The journal primarily publishes in French but also welcomes submissions in English, which may subsequently be translated into French.

The journal welcomes both scholarly articles and research-creation contributions (sound essays, audiovisual works, visual art projects, etc.). All contributions will undergo double-blind peer review. Research-creation projects must be open to revision in response to reviewers’ comments. For any questions regarding the submission of these contributions, please contact the journal's editorial team at ecranscroises@umontreal.ca.

Articles must be between 35,000 and 40,000 characters, including spaces. The journal follows the Chicago author-date citation style.

Complete submissions must be sent by January 31, 2027, to all four of the following email addresses:

Biographical Notes on the Special Issue Editors

Zoey M. Cochran has been a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal since 2025. An opera singer and musicologist, she investigates the intersection of prosody and musical rhythm to rethink the relationship between text and music through research-creation methods.

Anja-Xiaoxing Cui is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Vienna. She approaches rhythm from the perspectives of music, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience.

Selected Bibliography

BACHELARD, Gaston. 1963 [1936]. La dialectique de la durée. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

BARKER, Jennifer M. 2009. The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.

BENVENISTE, Émile. 1966 [1951]. "La notion de 'rythme' dans son expression linguistique." In Problèmes de linguistique générale, t. 1: 327-335. Paris: Gallimard.

BERGSON, Henri. 1889. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Paris: Félix Alcan.

BREGMAN, Albert S. 1990. Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound. Cambridge: MIT Press.

CONE, Edward T. 1968. Musical Form and Musical Performance. New York: Norton.

COOPER, Grosvenor, and Leonard B. Meyer. 1960. The Rhythmic Structure of Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

DELEUZE, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1980. Mille plateaux. Paris: Minuit.

DESSONS, Gérard. 2002. "Rythme." In Le dictionnaire du littéraire, edited by Paul Aron, Denis Saint-Jacques, and Alain Viala, 556-557. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

DESSONS, Gérard, and Henri Meschonnic. 1998. Traité du rythme, des vers et des proses. Paris: Dunod.

FASSLER, Margot E. 1987. "Accent, Meter, and Rhythm in Medieval Treatises 'De rithmis'." The Journal of Musicology 5(2): 164-190.

GASPAR, Cássio, José Guilherme Santos da Silva, and Luis F. da Costa-Neves. 2016. "Multimode Vibration Control of Building Steel-Concrete Composite Floors Submitted to Human Rhythmic Activities." Computers & Structures 165: 107-122.

HALBERG, Franz. 1969. "Chronobiology." Annual Review of Physiology 31, 675-725.

HALBERG, Franz, and Alain Reinberg. 1967. "Rythmes circadiens et rythmes de basses fréquences en physiologie humaine." Journal de physiologie 59: 117-200.

HANSEN, Mark B. N. 2004. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.

HANSON, Kristin, and Paul Kiparsky. 1996. "A Parametric Theory of Poetic Meter." Language 72(2): 287-335.

HASTY, Christopher. 1997. Meter as Rhythm. New York: Oxford University Press.

HAYS, James D., John Imbrie, and Nicholas J. Shackleton. 1976. "Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages." Science 194(4270): 1121-1132.

KOFIDIS, Theodoros, Payam Akhyari, Jürgen Boublik, Panagiotis Theodorou, Ulrich Martin, Arjang Ruhparwar, Sebastian Fischer et al. 2002. "In Vitro Engineering of Heart Muscle: Artificial Myocardial Tissue." The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery 124(1): 63-69.

LARGE, Edward W., and Joel S. Snyder. 2009. "Pulse and Meter as Neural Resonance." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1169: 46-57.

LEFEBVRE, Henri. 1992. Éléments de rythmanalyse: introduction à la connaissance des rythmes. Paris: Syllepse.

LERDAHL, Fred, and Ray Jackendoff. 1983. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge: MIT Press.

LONDON, Justin. 2001. "Rhythm." In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., edited by Stanley Sadie, and John Tyrrell, vol. 21, 277-309. London: Macmillan.

_____. 2012. Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

MANOVICH, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.

MESCHONNIC, Henri. 1982. Critique du rythme: anthropologie historique du langage. Lagrasse: Verdier.

_____. 1995. Politique du rythme, politique du sujet. Lagrasse: Verdier.

MEYER, Leonard B. 1973. Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations. Berkeley: University of California Press.

OHRINER, Mitchell. 2019. Flow: The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PATEL, Aniruddh D. 2003. "Rhythm in Language and Music: Parallels and Differences." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 999: 140-143.

_____. 2007. Music, Language, and the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

REINBERG, Alain. 1998. Le temps humain et les rythmes biologiques. Monaco: Éditions du Rocher. 

ROSA, Hartmut. 2013. Accélération: une critique sociale du temps. Paris: La Découverte.

RUSIN, Craig G., Hiroshi Kori, István Z. Kiss, and John L. Hudson. 2009. "Framework for Engineering the Collective Behavior of Complex Rhythmic Systems." Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 48(21): 9416-9422. 

SACHS, Curt. 1953. Rhythm and Tempo: A Study in Music History. New York: Norton.

SNYDER, Joel S., Reyna L. Gordon, and Erin E. Hannon. 2024. "Theoretical and Empirical Advances in Understanding Musical Rhythm, Beat and Metre." Nature Reviews Psychology 3(7): 449-462.

STROGATZ, Steven H. 2003. Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. New York: Hyperion.

TERASAKI HART, Drew E., Thảo-Nguyên Bùi, Lauren Di Maggio, and Ian J. Wang. 2025. "Global Phenology Maps Reveal the Drivers and Effects of Seasonal Asynchrony." Nature 645: 133-140.

VAN NOORDEN, Leon. 1975. "Temporal Coherence in the Perception of Tone Sequences." PhD dissertation, Eindhoven University of Technology.

VASSEUR, David A., and Jeremy W. Fox. 2009. "Phase-Locking and Environmental Fluctuations Generate Synchrony in a Predator–Prey Community." Nature 460: 1007-1010.

VUUST, Peter, and Maria A. G. Witek. 2014. "Rhythmic Complexity and Predictive Coding: A Novel Approach to Modeling Rhythm and Meter Perception in Music." Frontiers in Psychology 5, article 1111.

WARNER, Rick. 2022. "Audiovisual Rhythm and Its Spectator: Moonlight as Example." In The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory, edited by Kyle Stevens. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190873929.013.27.

WÖLLNER, Clemens, and Justin London (ed.). 2023. Performing Time: Synchrony and Temporal Flow in Music and Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

YAZDANI, Masoud, Hassan Salarieh, and Mahmoud Saadat Foumani. 2018. "Decentralized Control of Rhythmic Activities in Fully-Actuated/Under-Actuated Robots." Robotics and Autonomous Systems 101: 20-33.

Informations

PDF of the Call for Contributions

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