Quantification of Multimodal Interactions as Open Communication in Manzai Duo-Comic Acts

Abstract

Manzai comedians cleverly manipulate their verbal and physical communications and "open up" their seemingly "closed" conversation to the audience. This form of communication is called "open communication". Our study tried to analyze the structure of open communication in duo-comic Manzai acts by examining the non-verbal information used by comic duos. We analyzed how a comedy duo's multi-modal interactions changed with the presence/absence of an audience, giving the same performance by recruiting two comedian pairs. Analyzing the video and motion capture data, it was found that Manzai-shi use physical, bodily movements like the body torque and joint attention as clever techniques to stimulate laughter.