This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here’s how each of them ends: Sing it loud—… One implication from that intensive Hong Kong experiment: most karaoke singers manage to keep the quality of their singing fairly constant, no matter what. Kinetic excitement— … Then the word “kinetics” takes centre stage, […]
BBC News produced this short documentary about the birth of karaoke. It centers on Daisuke Inoue, the person most often credited with inventing karaoke. (Many other people claim credit, too, and it’s entirely possible that several of them did indeed each independently invent the basics, as happens with many technical innovations!) The 2004 Ig Nobel […]
CBS Sunday Morning celebrates the invention of karaoke—and the awarding, in 2004, of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize “for creating an entirely new way for people to tolerate each other”: Inventions and Inventors, in Song and History Karaoke is in many ways an invention of, by, and perhaps for the people. Since the awarding of […]
Karaoke has penetrated to so many levels of society that it has reached even the some of the scientists who present data at scientific conferences. This study, by Supper, tells how that came about: “Data Karaoke: Sensory and Bodily Skills in Conference Presentations,” Alexandra Supper, [pictured here], Volume 24, Issue 4, 2015, pages 436-457. (Thanks to Tom Gill […]
Here’s a look back to one of our favorite moments from the first 23 Ig Nobel Prize ceremonies: The awarding, in the year 2004, of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize to Daisuke Inoue, of Hyogo, Japan. Mr. Inoue was honored for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other. Here’s […]
Daisuke Inoue, inventor of karaoke, told his story (including what happened when he was awarded the 2004 Ig Nobel peace prize), in 2005, in an interview with Robert Scott Field for Topic Magazine. The Appendix has just reprinted that essay. It begins thus: Last year I received a fax from Harvard University. I don’t really speak English, […]
Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, was awarded the 2004 Ig Nobel peace prize for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other. For the very few of our readers who might not know what karaoke is – we offer this description : ‘It’s a form of interactive […]
Is karaoke a passing fad? Kevin Brown PhD. Associate Professor of Theatre History, Theory, Criticism, Performance Studies, New Media, Non-Western Theatre, and Popular Culture at the University of Missouri, US. believes not. For his doctoral dissertation, he conducted a two-year ethnographic study of karaoke in America, a portion of which is: ‘Liveness Anxiety: Karaoke and […]
“Karaoke Therapy in the Rehabilitation of Mental Patients,” C.M. Leung, G. Lee, B. Cheung, E. Kwong, Y.K. Wing, C.S. Kan, and J. Lau, Singapore Medical Journal, vol. 39, no. 4, April 1998, pp. 166–8. The authors, at Prince of Wales Hospital, Chinese University of Hong Kong, conclude that [AIR 16:1]: “Karaoke therapy may be more […]
“Primary Spontaneous Pneumomediastinum” [article in Japanese], K. Togashi and Y. Hosaka, Kyobu Geka, vol. 60, no. 13, December 2007, pp. 1163–6. The authors, at Nagaoka Red Cross Hospital in Japan, explain [AIR 16:1]: “We report 5 cases of spontaneous pneumomediastinum [air in the space between the lungs]…. 1 patient had a karaoke-related condition. Primary spontaneous […]