The sound between laughter and discovery
Text: mmr｜Theme: When music meets the Ig Nobel Prize, where will the boundary between science and art go?
“Things that first make people laugh, then make them think.”
- Ig Nobel Prize philosophy (Improbable Research)
1. Prologue: Where science and music meet
The Ig Nobel Prize is known as the ``eccentric little brother’’ of the Nobel Prize. Since its creation in 1991 by the American satirical scientific journal Annals of Improbable Research, The award has been given to research that makes people laugh and think.
In addition to fields such as physics, medicine, peace, and literature, this award is held in fields such as physics, medicine, peace, and literature.
Research on sound'' andmusic’’ has often attracted attention.
This is because the science of sound is not just a wave phenomenon.
This is because it deeply penetrates into human emotions, society, and physiology.
Tracing the history of the Ig Nobel Prize, ``Research that deals scientifically with musical phenomena’’ appears repeatedly. There is the science of “measuring the world through sound” and There is an intersection of art that allows us to “feel the world through sound.”
2. Sound as an experiment - the moment when science meets music
2.1 2013: Transplantation experiment of mice made to listen to opera
In 2013, a research team led by Niimi Masanori at Teikyo University, He gained attention for an experiment in which he made mice with heart transplants listen to music. This result was awarded the Ig Nobel Medicine Prize.
The study compared mice in the following groups:
- Group listening to opera (Verdi’s La Traviata)
- Group that listened to pop music such as Enya
- Silent control group
As a result, it was reported that the survival period after heart transplantation was prolonged from an average of 7 days to 27 days in the Opera group (Teikyo Univ. Med. J., 2013). Music, especially classical structure and rhythm, It is said to have suggested that it may affect immune response and stress tolerance.
This research aims to treat music as a medical stimulus. It was highly praised as an idea that transcends the boundaries between art and science.
2.2 2017: “Vaginal Music Player” Research
In 2017, a study by the Institut Marquès in Barcelona, Spain Winner of the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine. This team developed an intravaginal speaker called “Babypod”, We investigated how fetuses respond to musical stimuli in the womb.
According to research, compared to when the sound is played through a speaker from outside the mother’s body,
It is said that when the vibrations were applied directly via the Babypod, the fetus showed a response of moving its mouth and tongue.
This result suggests early development of fetal auditory response.''
Scientifically supported the possibility that music is related to physiological development.
It also attracted a lot of attention in society as an example of visualizing theconnection between life and sound.’’
2.3 2020: Crocodile calls and resonance - an evolutionary experiment in acoustics
In 2020, research by Takeshi Nishimura and colleagues at the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University Received the Acoustics Prize. The research team placed crocodiles in a helium and oxygen mixed gas (Heliox) environment. Analyzing the formants (resonant components) of the cry. As a result, we confirmed that the resonance structure also changes as the air density changes.
This was an experimental demonstration that voice resonance depends on body size and vocal tract structure. In other words, biological communication called “cries” This made it clear that it is based on physical and acoustic principles.
3. Music itself and the Ig Nobel Prize - the “experimental spirit” of composition, performance, and audience
3.1 The intersection between music’s “structure” and “science”
The Ig Nobel Prize stage itself is full of musical humor. At the award ceremony, scientists present their papers in opera style, A presentation format with a “rhythmic structure” of “24 seconds presentation + 7 word summary” will be used. This is the moment when the boundaries between scientific papers and musical performances become blurred.
This “structured humor” overlaps with music’s sense of rhythm and order. Music also exists at the intersection of reason and play.
3.2 Music as a “social experiment using sound”
John Cage’s 4 Minutes 33 Seconds'' (1952) is known as music that does not make any sound.
From an Ig Nobel perspective, it can also be interpreted as anauditory/psychological experiment in a silent environment.’’
“Generative music” proposed by Brian Eno,
This is an example of transplanting the scientific concepts of chance, algorithms, and time structure into art.
Just as science discovers the “laws of the world” through experiments, Musicians also explore the “laws of listening” through experiments. The two share the same spirit of inquiry with different methodologies.
3.3 Audience as “subject” – between emotion and data
In recent neuroscience research, fMRI has been used to measure brain activity while listening to music. Efforts are underway to analyze the mechanisms by which pleasure and empathy occur. At the Ig Nobel Peace Prize 2019 (Netherlands/Polish Studies), The award was given to a study that investigated ``angry reactions when hearing unpleasant sounds.’’ How do people react to sound? The question is, It is no longer limited to psychology, but has spread to social and cultural fields.
3.4 Musician’s “Ig Nobel-like idea”
Concert that converts brain waves into sound'' by **Sigur Rós** from Iceland,
Ryuichi Sakamoto's "acoustic work that converts environmental sounds into data and reconstructs them" is
It is truly a fusion experiment of science and music.
This brings to light the image of the musician as ascientist who observes the world through sound.’’
4. Chronology: Ig Nobel Prize and the history of sound and music research
5. Conclusion: Beyond the boundaries between science and music
Behind the novelty of the Ig Nobel Prize lies the ``purity of the question.’’ This is somewhat similar to the way artists question the world through sound. Music and science - when these two fields intersect, A new “harmony” is born between human emotion and reason.
References
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