RESEARCH

Live-science

Unlike other species, humans, especially experts, are able to communicate their feelings and thoughts to others through their own skillful expressions. People have been expressing themselves in public since before there was any record of art. And I believe that expressive activity will continue, in different media and formats, thousands of years from now. In this sense, the overwhelming emotions of the audience caused by a live performance and the physiological changes in the fascinated audience are universal phenomena. However, the scientific study of these cognitive experience processes is limited. Live-science is a science that aims to investigate the cognitive-experience process between the performer and the audience. Please see here for the purpose of the establishment of this discipline, which was born on January 1st, 2020.

Cognitive Science of Theatre

In theatre, the integrative human intellects are involved as the audience members are captivated by the performers' expressions, inducing sometimes laughing and crying. Nomura Lab's research is based on a socio-cultural approach to such communication in the theatre and is studying this by fusing the methods of psychological and numerical experiments. The followings are examples of research conducted in the Seminar on Cognitive Science of Theatre.

  1. Rakugo expression and multisensory perception (e.g., space, color, season, skin texture, crowding, and food texture)
  2. Collective emotions in live performance (e.g., laughter, emotions, chills, immersive experiences)
  3. Quantifying the Appealing Power of Visual Expressions
  4. The propagation of laughter in the theatre and the phenomenon of bursts of laughter (simultaneous elicitation of laughter)
  5. Estimation of interests in video and audio-visual works by physiological indicators (gaze, blink, body sway, and posture)
  6. Impression assessment of performers (e.g., teachers, actors, story-teller, politicians)
  7. Detecting highlights of movie, stage and sports
  8. Fieldwork on the formation, maintenance, disintegration, and reproduction of informal groups (e.g., fan activities)

If you wish to join the Nomura Lab as an undergraduate, graduate student, or researcher (JSPS PD, New Academic Area Research), please contact Nomura in advance.

The process of becoming an expert rakugo storyteller (Dr. Nomura's life's work)

It takes a long time for a storyteller to become proficient. There will be a lot of things that will not fit into the research framework. In addition, each person's proficiency has his or her own unique character. As I grow older, I hope to walk with him and her as a person with a research perspective.

  1. Fieldwork research on the process of Rakugo mastery
  2. Extraction of the concept of "art" as an assembly of beliefs of the storyteller referred in discourse on professional storytelling performance
  3. Quantification of the "MA: Meaningful intervals" of storytelling and comparison of them over time within a rakugo storyteller
  4. A nonlinear time series analysis method for reconstructing the appealing power of speakers' expressions as a common input
  5. Analysis of the master-apprentice network that influences the proficiency of rakugo storytellers
  6. Epistemology for becoming proficient performer