ABSTRACT
Phenomenological analysis of movement discloses four qualities of movement: tensional, linear, areal, and projectional. Linear quality has two aspects: linear design and linear pattern. Linear design describes the linear contours of a body, obviously a body at rest as well as in movement, but the author concern here is with a moving body. Linear design specifies how, in the course of moving, body parts and the moving body as a whole are curved, straight and twisted, and horizontally, vertically aligned, or any combination thereof, as the examples of trudging up a hill and sitting down indicate. Linear patterns created by movement are not perceived or perceivable but are, through and through, imaginatively constituted phenomena. Becoming aware of movement's linear character also makes us aware of the spatio-temporal aspect that is integral to animate movement, and indeed of its spatio-temporal-energic aspect. As noted earlier, linear quality is one facet of the totality of movement and is separable only analytically.
