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Jesse Silverberg - Simulator of mosh pits

22/02/13 || Habakuk

This is both the weirdest and most brilliant shit I’ve seen researched in a metal context lately:

So basically there’s this guy, Jesse Silverberg. He’s studying Physics at Cornell University, an Ivy League Uni in Ithaca, New York, and him and his research gang looked at… mosh pits. However not like in those social science studies that go something like “the post-materialistic youth vent their frustration with boring modern life” or whatever – This is a whole different ball game. Simply put, they took video footage of metal shows, did some motion tracking to analyse the patterns, and you know what, my fellow pit attendants: You behave like a fucken gas cloud in 2D, hahaha.

The outcome was published in a four page article entitled The collective motion of moshers at heavy metal concerts. And to give you an understanding of the utter brilliance in there, dig a couple of excerpts:

“…we use a Vicsek-like model to simplify the complex behavioral dynamics of each human mosher to that of a simple soft-bodied particle we dub a a Mobile Active Simulated Humanoid, or MASHer.”
Hahaha, I see. And there are two types of MASHers, active and passive ones, which are uniformally mixed at the beginning. Now put on some Suffocation, and enter them into a simulation. And I quote:

“Analogous to previous work, we include the following ingredients in our model: (1) Hertzian soft body repulsion (2) self-propulsion (3) flocking interactions and (4) Gaussian random noise.” I am literally sitting here laughing out loud while reading a scientific article. Is this awesome or what?

“With sufficient time the flocking-interaction leads to a spontaneous phase separation with a dense population of active MASHers confined by passive MASHers.”
Sounds familiar? Well, yes. You have the grandpas and high school kiddies standing at the sides and in the middle, one big MASH pit. Lo and behold, the simulation “quantitatively reproduces” the motion tracking from the videos they analyzed. Here’s an example. I’m officially dying here, hahahaha.

Now when you, in the simulation, play around with how much MASHers follow their neighbor (“flocking”), the little fuckers actually start a circle pit! Pardon me, “a highly ordered, vortex-like state”. And yes, you can do that yourself. If your band sucks and doesn’t get a crowd moving, you can simulate your personal moshpit here.

So, my dear soft-bodied particles, I took it on myself to get in touch with Jesse and asked a couple questions to the man.

Global Domination: First of all, How on earth does one even get an idea like this?

Jesse Silverberg: About 5 years ago I took my girlfriend to her first metal concert. Typically, I would dive right into the mosh pit, but this time I stayed back to keep an eye on her. Being on the outside for the first time, I was absolutely amazed at what I saw – there were all sorts of collective behaviors emerging that I never would have noticed from the inside. This became the inspiration several years later for a course project, which has since evolved into the full-blown study. Incidentally, my girlfriend hasn’t been to another metal show since.

How many guys worked on the study, and what do you guys “normally” do?

Matt and I are both graduate students in the Cornell University Physics Department. Our advisers, Prof. Jim Sethna and Prof. Itai Cohen (also in physics) helped encourage us as we chipped away at the project. Normally, Matt and Jim work on the statistical properties of matter from a theoretical perspective, while Itai and I experimentally investigate the physics of “soft and squishy” materials.

It’s no secret that many metalheads resemble gas bags on many levels, but still – could you elaborate on that gas cloud bit a little?

The molecules of air that we breath every day bounce around randomly. At the microscopic scale, it’s impossible to tell exactly where every gas molecule is and where it’s going. At the macroscopic scale, we describe the gas with statistics, and it turns out that the description we use for gasses matches the behavior of people in mosh pits. In other words, people bounce around like the molecules in a gas.

Are you guys actually just into metal, or was there some sort of weird scientific interest in this?

In situations of panic, individual people behave differently than they would if they were walking down the street. Consequently, when large groups of panicked people are put together, you often end up with unintentional injuries or worse. The idea then is to study how people behave in mosh pits, and to use these lessons to develop an understanding of how people behave in similarly extreme circumstances, i.e., during a riot, protest, or escape situation. In turn, this understanding should lead to principles that can be used to build safer buildings, stadiums, etc.

If you could include a soundtrack to your simulator, which songs would you choose for it?

I’d pick:

For the Fallen Dreams – A Plethora Of
All That Remains – Two Weeks
As I Lay Dying – Forever
Parkway Drive – Five Months

To hear Matt’s selection, down by the buttons at the bottom labeled “Mosh pit”, “Circle pit”, “Force Chains”, “Crystal”, click the play button.

Well, that’s about the opposite of my choice, but I’m not going to argue with a guy who simulates moshpits. Also, HORSE the band and physics students? My world view remains intact! So Jesse, is science metal?

Not only is science metal, it’s brutal. Probably one of the most brutal jobs out there. You spend 99% of your time trying and failing. And let’s be honest — it sucks to fail. But hey, at the end of the day, you know you gave it your best, and that you’ll be back the next day trying to make the damn thing work again. If that’s not metal, I don’t know what is.

Name the top 5 metal albums you blast in the lab.

Recently? I’ve been catching up on some newer stuff:

All That Remains – A War You Cannot Win
iwrestledabearonce – It’s All Happening
Suicide Silence – The Cleansing
Dethklok – Dethalbum III
Glassjaw – Our Color Green

Damnit, that’s not what’s considered cool on this page! But we are not exactly a physics lab. Anyway, spikes in mosh pits – blessing or curse?

In the pit: Curse. No doubt. Now, if you had asked about spikes in the bedroom…

Somehow I’m glad I haven’t. Can we hope for an enhanced version of the simulator in the future, which takes into account Metalcore kid MASHers that perform karate kicks and basically behave like total idiots?

Personally, I was leaning more towards crowd surfing — the scientific parallel there is related to cellular biology and how molecular motors transport cargo across the cell.

…and after a bit of toying around with the simulator, I think the “force chains” mode actually depicts a Moronic Active Simulated Hobo quite well already. Any idea about what your next project is going to be?

Yeah, but I’ve got at least 92% more failure to work through first!

You do just that, haha. Thanks a lot for your time, and good luck for the rest of your studies man. Not that you’d need that, but it never hurts!

…and if anybody wants to read more, start here.

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