Digital Idols

It’s hard to go anywhere without hearing about the latest pop culture news. Today’s society has the tendency of spreading the news and occurrences of popular celebrities such as the act of  Justin Bieber spitting on his fans or the news of Miley Cyrus doing obscene dance moves on stage. We tend to admire celebrities for their amazing talents involving their skills of singing, dancing and acting because these are all skills that we can witness firsthand and applaud. We applaud their hard work and dedication to have reached the status of fame they currently hold and how well they have sharpened their skills. Yet, currently technology has advance to the point where we can almost replicate celebrities’ talents and social status via digital means. Digital Idol, Hatsune Miku, is a fine example of how technology can produce celebrities through digital means.

Hatsune Miku is a female humanoid persona that is used to market a singing synthesizer app developed by Crypton Future Media that was released in 2007. Crypton’s app allowed for its user to create lyrics of their own preference and then have the Hatsune Miku app give the lyrics life by performing them. Hatsune Miku started gaining popularity for its amazing app capabilities and soon went viral after popular video-streaming websites such as YouTube and Nico Nico Douga spread her character image through numerous videos portraying her and songs created using her sound bank. Users quickly began creating their own customized songs for Miku to sing, by 2011 it has been confirmed that over 100,000 unique songs have been created for Miku to perform.

What makes Hatsune Miku app so popular is not only the capability to bring any song to life, but also the fact that it has a face that can be attached to it. Hatsune Miku is portrayed as a 16 year old girl with long turquois pigtails who sings and dances to your lyrics. Her performances and image spread the internet through fan-made depicted art and uniquely created songs. She has risen to celebrity status through her merchandise including artwork, cds, clothes, and toys. What makes her so interesting to users is that since Miku has risen to celebrity status, giving her a user-created song to perform is the equivalent of giving Beyonce a song to perform.

Hatsune Miku started off a computer image, but after reaching her celebrity status a lot more work was put into expanding her persona. Through the use of projectors and curved glass, Crypton has brought Miku to life and created a 3D holographic image of her to appear in front of thousands of audience members. The 3D hologram of Hatsune Miku has performed lived concerts to huge crowds of fans, and yes these fans actually paid money to go see a 3D computer image perform songs that have been synthesized via computer applications just as they would pay money to see any other type of performer in concert. Fans around the world dress up as Hatsune Miku, outright support her and fall in love with her. While a few years ago, the idea of people admiring a digital persona would be seen as bizarre, with the way technology has grown to this date, the idea is not to obscure.