Post-human performance (was Aidoru)

When I wrote this post in 2010 under the title Aidoru (Idol in the English → Japanese transliteration), I thought Hatsune Miko would only last a few years, replaced by some other hologram idol. Instead, she's still there, alive and kicking, and most importantly, she hasn't aged at all 😛

Here I'm reposting it and adding a few thoughts.

She sings, she dances (or at least moves to the beat), she's the latest Japanese teen idol, and she's virtual. Hatsune Miko (初音ミク) has a real audience, a real band, but is, apparently, a hologram. In reality, it is a 2D projection on a transparent screen.

Her voice is synthesized using the Vocaloid Yamaha software. Hatsune Miko is actually the second fully-fledged vocal character developed for Vocaloid (the first released in Japan) in 2007, and her name combines first (初, hatsu), sound (音, ne), and future (Miku ミク). The voice is that of actress Fujita Saki (藤田咲) who lent herself to recording hundreds of Japanese phonemes with a controlled intonation.

The Hatsune Miko phenomenon is not the first of its kind. It follows the great fame of Kyoko Date (DK-96), who was the first net idol in 1997. The phenomenon of stars in Japan dates back to the early 1970s and reflects the Japanese rise of French singer Sylvie Vartan with the film Cherchez l’idole (1963, released in Japan in 1964).

The development of Japanese idols is very interesting.

In the 1970s, idols had an almost mystical aura. Only the public part of their lives was known, and it was always perfect and expertly orchestrated, while their visible personalities were false and carefully constructed. Nothing was known about their private lives, except for a few essential details (such as a marriage), and what was revealed about their private lives was equally constructed. Their working conditions were terrible: they were tightly controlled and earned very little, because most of their money went into the pockets of their producers, that is, those who created them.

In the 1980s, the status of idols began to approach that of ordinary people, partly because living conditions in Japan had improved significantly, but also because control had loosened somewhat and they were allowed to show a bit of their personalities. The major labels, in fact, were beginning to experiment with competition between various stars, and therefore some differences were bound to emerge. A bit like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones: the latter appeared a bit different. Wilder than the first ones, and they probably really were.
They also started earning a little more, but still little compared to the business they generated.

The 1990s saw many changes. Instead of being portrayed as superior, idols became ordinary people who simply had something extra (an X-Factor?). In some situations, they could even be sad, a little out of shape, and admit to waiting for the sales to buy clothes. At the same time, their life cycle as idols became faster.

But the big leap came when, seeing the huge success of anime and video game characters (e.g., Lara Croft), the major studios began working on virtual characters. The idea was born from the observation that contact between fans and stars was always mediated by something (the internet, TV, film, press). You don't meet a music or movie star by chance in a shopping mall or at a restaurant. And in reality, the star system doesn't sell a person, but rather a totally idealized image. Most fans have never seen their idol in the flesh, only through the media. A few manage to glimpse them, from afar, at a concert or while entering a hotel, and that's all. A tiny minority manages to touch them, getting an autograph after a long wait in front of their house, but this is a negligible number.

What the Japanese star system has understood is that, if things are like this, the star doesn't have to be a real person. It could just as easily be a virtual character. For fans, nothing changes at all. And, note, there are no economic considerations behind this idea. While it's true that virtual stars shouldn't be paid, it's also true that, in their place, you have to pay design and animation teams, which can cost even more. The point is that a virtual character is completely controllable and poses no problems. It doesn't have any reprehensible behavior, unless you want it to. It's never in a bad mood, it doesn't get big headed, it can always work and be on TV even the morning after a concert, fresh as a daisy.

Finally, consider that the virtual stars that have been created are certainly not theater actors accustomed to tackling Shakespearean tragedies, nor are they classical musicians, but, typically, singers targeting teenagers. They have, at most, the conceptual depth of a Justin Bieber.

Here we see Hatsune Miku together with Megurine Luka (ルカ巡音). The latter's surname combines the words "Meguri" (巡, "around") and "Ne" (音, "sound"), while the name Luka evokes the Japanese homophones "nagare" (流, "flow") and "ka" (歌, "song") or "ka" (香, "perfume"). The result of combining these words can therefore be "a flow of songs that spread like perfume" [from Wikipedia with my corrections].

Megurine Luka is a step ahead of Hatsune Miku. In fact, she is nothing other than the incarnation of the third Vocaloid application, launched in 2009 along with the character that represents it.

This Japanese tendency to "embody" software from the moment of its launch is unique in the world. In the West, in fact, the possible incarnation comes later, when the software, typically a game, has already achieved global success and then the character becomes real, played by an actor/actress, not virtual (the most emblematic case is that of Lara Croft).

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