iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

And how rewarding to still do anthropological, ethnography-based research, after 2 decades shifting from anthro/ethnomusicology to empirical musicology to cognitive neuroscience of rhythm — it feels like returning to an earlier life, apprenticing as a djembe player for my PhD in the 1990s.

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

How rewarding it was to think and perform (at various conferences) on this, together with Lara & Sam!

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

🔹 Performance in the Round (Polak) Djembe & hand-clapping celebrations in rural Mali — audiency embedded in the music-making itself, no separate audience needed. doi.org/10.1017/rma....

doi.org

Performance in the Round: Embedded Audiency at Music–Dance Events in Mali | Journal of the Royal Musical Association | Cambridge Core

Performance in the Round: Embedded Audiency at Music–Dance Events in Mali

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

🔹Theorizing Audiency (Polak, Pearson & Horlor) Framing piece: 4 theoretical positions on why audiency is embodied, mutually constitutive with performance, performative, & independent of any fixed "audience" group. doi.org/10.1017/rma....

doi.org

Round Table: Audiency beyond the Concert Hall: Theory and Ethnographic Case Studies | Journal of the Royal Musical Association | Cambridge Core

Round Table: Audiency beyond the Concert Hall: Theory and Ethnographic Case Studies

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

The idea: "audiency" treats the audience side of music-making as active, multimodal, embodied doing ("audiencing"), not passive listening — and we push it into settings with no fixed, separate audience at all. If music = performance = action (“musicking”), audiencing deserves the same treatment.

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Happy to share that 4 papers have gone "first view" in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association! They form a themed round table: "Audiency beyond the Concert Hall: Theory and Ethnographic Case Studies" — a long-term collab with Lara Pearson (Cologne) & Sam Horlor (Durham).

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Age-class communities of practice can coexist within the same micro-setting (e.g., village, even family), complicating “culture.” What constitutes culture is shared collective practice—communities of practice. Great work! Anthropology of childhood (not least Lancy) is such an invaluable ressource.

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Reposted by Rainer Polak

Dorsa Amir @dorsaamir.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

When we consider children in cultural evolution, we tend to cast them as recipients of adult culture. In our BBS target article, @sheinalew.bsky.social & I argued there's more: through 'peer cultures', children actively drive cultural adaptation. Our final paper + a rich set of responses is out now!

cambridge.org

Children as agents of cultural adaptation | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core

Children as agents of cultural adaptation - Volume 49

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Each shows cross-cultural similarities and differences, the latter correlating with differences in perceivers' cultural environments. #NicheConstruction

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

We synthesize 4 multi-paper research threads on rhythm perception, ordered low- to high-level: event timing (P-center); beat perception; subdivision perception; rhythm categorization. #RhythmPerception #Neuroscience

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

One testable prediction: cultural effects on perception scale with proximity to the actual practice. Active practitioners — performers, producers, fans, critics, audiencing participants — show these effects more reliably than broad demographic proxies like nationality. #CogSci

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

The term was first proposed in "Rhythmic Prototypes Across Cultures" (doi.org/10.1525/mp.2018.36.1.1). Here we develop it broadly, synthesizing 20 years of cross-cultural rhythm research that took off, after sporadic predecessors, with @eehannon.bsky.social's ground-breaking work’s since 2005.

doi.org

Rhythmic Prototypes Across CulturesA Comparative Study of Tapping Synchronization

It has long been assumed that rhythm cognition builds on perceptual categories tied to prototypes defined by small-integer ratios, such as 1:1 and 2:1. This study aims to evaluate the relative contrib...

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Fig. 7: perceptual niche construction as a feedback loop. Left: individuals tuned by communities of practice. Right: the cultural niche. Top arrow: perception shapes production. Bottom: practice tunes perception. Operating across nested timescales.

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Core idea: culture emerges from, and can be studied as, communities of practice. We show culture as both source and product of perceptual plasticity — a feedback loop we address as "perceptual niche construction," adapting niche construction theory from evolutionary anthropology. #CulturalEvolution

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

A personal experience of challenge, reward, and productivity — and it's striking to me how much this depends on the range of co-authors and their fields, and on how deep my engagement with last author Sylvie was throughout.

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

This radically interdisciplinary paper brought together anthropology (first author's background), ethnomusicology, music theory, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience (last author's background) — different questions, perspectives, methods, standards of evidence. #CogSci

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Rainer Polak @rainerpolak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Excited to share our review is now in press at Physics of Life Reviews. Building on the preprint @sylvienozaradan.bsky.social shared months ago — co-written with A Danielsen, N Jacoby, L Pearson, S Horlor, S Aubinet, and J London. doi.org/10.1016/j.pl... #RhythmPerception #CulturalEvolution

doi.org

Redirecting

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Reposted by Rainer Polak

Sylvie Nozaradan @sylvienozaradan.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

How to think about culture in psychology and neuroscience? What about seeing it as a source and product of perceptual plasticity? Such an inspiring journey to co-write this paper with R Polak, A Danielsen, N Jacoby, L Pearson, S Horlor, S Aubinet, J London. osf.io/preprints/ps... Feedback welcome!

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