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Japan's Latest Rockstar Is a 3D Hologram
kkleiner writes "Hatsune Miku is a Japanese pop diva who's just started to play massive stadium concerts to sold out crowds. Her hair is blue, she dresses like Sailor Moon, and she'll only appear in concerts via a 3D 'hologram.' Oh, and did I forget to mention that she's completely fictional? Created by Crypton Future Media, Hatsune Miku and her virtual colleagues have gone on limited tours in Japan."
Erm... yes, that's great and all. Except Hatsune Miku has been around since 2007, and versons of the the Vocaloid software that powers "her" has been around a good bit longer (since 2004 or so, I think). I'm pretty sure I heard reference to special-effects-heavy concerts more than a year ago.
The software can be used, with a lot of practice, to do reasonably convincing versions of Japanese language songs. Attempts to use the Hatsune Miku vocaloid to do anything in English are usually hilariously awful. Fans of the game portal may be amused to note this rendition of the game's famous closing song... erm... Steal A Lamp.
In fairness, there are Vocaloids which can handle English much better, but this story seemed to be specifically about Hatsune Miku.
Oh well so much for that starving artist spiel
Man, this is old news... she's been active for several years now.
s1m0ne ...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258153/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1m0ne
The Gorillaz already did this.
I bet she lip syncs, too.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
Really? What stadium?
I mean just a little reality check here. ... that would be "I heard of her" not "oh my god she's so popular..ponies..". Sheesh.
1. "She" isn't, and has never been in any of the top music 50 charts in Japan.
2. I just asked around, nobody in my office has ever heard of this. (My Japanese office... full of IT workers...). Maybe someone who:s not here has heard of her, but
For J-Pop, Perfume (and that stupid ABK group) are popular right now. Utada Hiraru and Amuro Namie continue to release hits and refuse to go out of style. There are a lot of others, but nobody (Except perhaps extreme nerds who specialize in that kind of stuff) knows who Hatsune Miku is.
Only online can stuff be blown so out of proportion by people who don't even live here.
So Sharon Apple in Macross Plus was a hologram. She was an experimental AI but her emotions were provided by a human. Eventually she fell in love and gained her own emotions, and then tried to try to kill everyone after hacking into every military computer on the planet...
what was my point......OH YEAH...dont trust singing Japanese holograms.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
until holograms start givimg good head.
Pop idols have a huge tendency to disappoint their fans with their human behavior and accompanying personality deficiencies. Lo and behold, they're not actually idols. I can see the appeal in having a digital, holographic entity to fawn over. She'll never let the fan down with any scandalous behavior, she'll always have a perfect voice, and she'll never age.
What the fuck is wrong with that audience? Is there some kind of poisoning in Japan's food supply causing widespread hormonal imbalance? It isn't natural.
I'm just sayin...
Let's use this thread to post our favorite Miku videos.
Song of Grass and Snow
Sinners in the Hands of God
My Life is Over
No Thank You
Kurutto Odotte
On the other hand, it's not really that different from Gorillaz.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Music is entertainment. If we can feel for an trash compacter or a deer, then why not for an animated human being? Not real? TV/Movies ain't real. Every pop-star opens a concert with "I am so happy to be here, you [insert locale here] are the greatest". Can't be true so the sentiment is false, fake, a performance.
Is the best singer selected, or the one with the prettiest face. Sometimes the producers get lucky and get both and then she turns into a publishity disaster because she can't keep mouth shut or her legs closed.
Remember "My fair lady"? You can clearly hear that the singing is dubbed over. But it works because Hepburn is pretty and acts the part out well but can't sing. Well, not good enough. We all were so happy for Susan Boyle, but lets face it, the reaction initially is what keeps any producer from attempting this for real with an unknown. Do not like it? Then change human nature. Even opera stars got to look the part these days. Used to be fat old women singing the parts of beautiful young girls and nobody cared if it was the bearded lady as long as she had shaved recently.
So, these producers got the perfect star. She won't cause a sex scandal, won't get sick, won't refuse to sign a new contract, can perform in two places at the same time, doesn't need rest, won't forget her underwear unless scripted etc etc.
Yes, some of you may hate the fakeness and prefer "real", but as said, what is real? Most music gets polished before release and is written to be sold. So the artists writes what he thinks will sell. Only a tiny handful produce music absolutely only because they want to with not a single thought for the audience. And even if that audience is a non-paying one, pandering for regonizition makes the product just as "fake". That is why so many people complain about the Tate. Why does every piece of non-commerical art have to to be so bloody big? Status? If you produce art for the status, you are no different then when you make something for the mass market.
If you do not like this type of music, don't listen to it. There will be other types produced, so why begrudge those that like this their own music? It is still written, still performed, still sung. What is fake about it? I think a lot of people are upset because they can see the mechanism in the Turk they thought was real. All pop music is fake, this one is just a bit more obvious about it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... when you've got Lady Gaga?
Now, instead of having singing idols cosplaying into game characters, we can directly have singing game characters. And we don't have to worry about it getting old. I am sure fans will be pleased. As for me, I couldn't care less.
you arent an 'extreme nerd' then ... a very unfortunate statement to make, in slashdot ...
Read radical news here
Gorillaz is a real band hiding behind cartoon characters; Miku is completely computer-made, even the voice (albeit sampled from a real voice actress). Also, Gorillaz's character design is far cooler!
Circumcision is child abuse.
To much anime is bad for the brain...desu.
Sorry. Couldn't help it.
That the mpaa and riaa should be worrying about. Not piracy... virtualization!
Once we replace all your 'artists' and 'actors' with software... What point is there in ANY of you guys even existing anymore?
Of course popular sentiment and majority support of 'real' artists would have gone a long way to keeping you guys working long into the future....
Still think it was smart to sue all your customers and piss off everyone?
haha! fools! we're gonna replace all of you with software since we despise you!
And shortly after that, all women will be replaced with software when breeding isnt involved... Japan is working hard at this even now.
But that's another rant... http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html
I, for one, welcome our new all-singing, all-dancing holographic overlo... whatever...
Anyhow, what do you substitute for "overlords", when the invaders you submit to are female?
I'd like to make Hatsune Miku deliver video lectures for a calculus class. Can I do that?
Who do you reckon wrote the songs? A computer?
I disagree. I think these are all after-effects of radiation.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It's like Justin Bieber - an artificial product of the entertainment industry. OK you can't reboot Bieber.
I think Gibson wrote about it first in idoru.
The way it moved was everything but human, and it definitely elicited a "AAUGH KILL IT KILL IT WITH FIRE" reaction to me.
But still, virtual beings can be rockstars now.
Well. That's something. Not entirely sure about what, but that's something.
for the lip-syncing controversy. I wonder if a hologram will leave the stage the same way as a real person, too.
overladies?
full size live anime characters are creepy. let the freakshow begin. http://xspblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/otakuterrortrain.jpg
He was called Max Hedrum
Somehow she seems more real than Britney Spears ...
I am anarch of all I survey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmYU4CeuZQ0
For those of you who don't know, this singing synthesizer technology is called Vocaloid. The impressive thing about Vocaloid is that it can synthesize the singing of a whole song without requiring a real human singer. Miku actually got popular by the vast amount of fan made viral musics spread in YouTube. This just show us the power of user generated content and the value of "open source" music, because anyone with the Vocaloid software can use Miku's voice to "sing" easily.
The technology may not be perfect yet, as the singing still sound a bit unnatural. But as technology advances, we can expect it to mimic human voice more closely or even make it hardly distinguishable. Combining this with the virtual intrument technology, just imagine how much creativity we will have when average joe can produce studio quality music with just a computer.
..the Japanese developed virtual artists like that.
http://chinyankeat.tripod.com/dk96.htm
That implies you may be able to boot Bieber. Good news for music lovers with big clumpy boots.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
This will be the end of the music industry! For real this time!
Could have used this back in the late 80s...Wouldn't have had to wait 3 hours for some pretentious asshole named Axl Rose to finally get on stage. He could have sent his virtual presence up there instead.
what is wrong with someone living in his/her parents' basement ? or, playing with action figures of anime, and hanging out in maid cafes ?
Read radical news here
..the Japanese developed virtual artists like that. http://chinyankeat.tripod.com/dk96.htm (sorry for the double post, wasn't logged in)
It's quite possible to generate plausible-sounding new stuff given samples of existing artists' work. Markoff chains FTW!
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
It was Norman Spinrad actually.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
I find the concept of a holographic band to be outrageous. Truly, truly, truly, outrageous.
This was forever ago, but "BINKY" was a similar concept. It had a full band, though. http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Rocks-BINKY-Brown-Chapter/dp/0316115436
Hatsune Miku can do English songs fairly well if the people using her are smart enough, some of them are fairly listenable. As she only sings Japanese syllables she's always going to have a bit of a Japanese accent. Here's a sample of some of the better done ones, some:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HATpOha7DFg - Heaven is a place on Earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaSZ0siQjXA - Never ending story (duet with an english vocaloid)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6m2NzdN7o0 - I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)
Norman Spinrad's 1987 novel Little Heroes also had virtual pop stars. Not a great novel, by any means, but he beat Gibson to it by 9 years.
The idea isn't that new at all.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Dethklok, that's all I have to say... DETHKLOK RULES!!!
Most pop artists today are 1 dimensional douche bags, so having a 3 dimensional pop artist is actually a step up from most of the pop artists being pushed on us.
Also, Hatsune Miku has been an incredibly popular subject in the resin figure modeling world. She's been around for a few years, I had no idea that she was a pop star though, I just thought she was the "logo" for some sound software.
~Syberz
I can't be the only one reminded of NG Resonance from Deus Ex: Invisible War...
Maybe Meg Whitman will post links to this Rockstar in her twitter feed.
Although your suggestion may be completely valid. I'll take a guess that you haven't really studied much about Marcov chains, if you don't know how to spell Andrey Marcov's name.
I was really surprised to see a post about Hatsune Miku on Slashdot today. I run a worldwide digital music store for Japanese music called HearJapan. We work directly with Crypton Future Media and have released over 300 vocaloid releases. I sell a lot of Japanese music but I think vocaloid is the most interesting. From a business perspective it is great because all of the musicians who write music for vocaloid are amateur musicians and most of them come from the DTM scene (desktop music scene). Because of the popularity of Hatsune Miku the music they create using her voice sells amazingly well. To my knowledge, vocaloid music is the only music that an artist can make and expect to sell a good amount of music without any massive financial backing and a huge corporate orgy. They also embrace a community sharing culture where the song creators will upload their unmastered songs to sites like nico nico douga and have people rate them. They choose the best songs, get them properly mastered and then sell the songs. I also love it from a creative perspective because they write the lyrics through the perspective of these anime characters so there is a lot of creativity. The music itself is incredibly creative and can range from chiptune, to traditional Japanese or from electropop to heavy metal, or from shoegaze to house music. There is a wide variety and for users who haven't heard of this before I recommend you check it out at my site. We have translated all of the artist bios and album descriptions, a great place to start: http://www.hearjapan.com/store/genre/1/74/vocaloid
Idoru, by William Gibson.
Not, 80's but that is the first book that came to my mind.
Games could benefit a lot from synthetic voices...
Take The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for example. The faces of the characters that you meet are reasonably personalized thanks to a face-creation/rendering engine, but the bodies all look the same (there's one male and one female) and there are only a few voice actors. Imagine an RPG where all the characters that you meet have their own unique faces, bodies and voices. (The leading characters could still be voice acted by real actors, of course.) Once you have face, body and voice generation working you would easily be able to auto-generate characters on the fly. You could have a believable virtual megacity (or any mass scene, like a huge battlefield) in your game, with millions of unique characters, all generated as your character explores the game world.
I think you're thinking of Idoru by William Gibson, where a Bono-esque rock star falls in love with "an artificial celebrity creation of information software agents". I'm sure someone did it before Gibson, but Idoru is the book that always sticks out in my mind when I read stories like this.
Fair enough. Nor have you any idea about how various people and nations use different spellings of Russian names.
Wikipedia calls him Andrey Markov, which is a "phonetic" version built for English speakers, for instance; you call him "Marcov", simply replacing cyrillic characters with their latin counterparts as any Russian would, but then you write "Andrey" not "Andrei" which means you are going the Wikipedia way also.
Ok. That being said, perhaps you have something of value to add to the discussion?
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Did anyone else notice that the lead guitarist, bassist, and drummer are all left-handed? A little odd, or the video is flipped.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Didn't they do this in South Korea like 10 years ago?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It was Norman Spinrad actually.
Norman Spinrad's Little Heroes, to be exact. Great book - I'd link to it on Amazon but it's only available from third-party sellers.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Come on, Eve from Megazone 23? Anyone? Sheesh, I must be too old for Slashdot already... Get off my lawn!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It's only a matter of time until ... you'd have songs written and sung pretty much entirely without human intervention.
Justin Bieber?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
William Gibson's Idoru.
I might be the only person to think this, but I think it would be really fun to write an AI for something like that so instead of just a holographic dance movie, she would be able to react to the crowds and do things like point to members of the audience or make gestures to get the audience more into it if they aren't already.
Bad 80s reference in 3...2...1...
"Showtime Synergy!"
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
Apparently Japan has invented a computer controlled holographic display? Isn't this the holy grail of 3D display technology? We can finally have 3D TV's without the glasses once this technology becomes widespread. Does anyone know how they did this?
That by 2020, most actors will be digital, not real. by 2030 I don't think we will have very many movie and TV actors at all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Megurine Luka sings English better - "Chicago" aren't my favourites, but this is a pretty "reasonable" karaoke style performance from a bot...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kcpW0HmIbg&feature=related - Hard to say I'm solly...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wq4knHg9zE - Amazing Glace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7iC4_qBL5A&feature=related - Every Breath You Take
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csrmPbwz1II&feature=related - Fly Me To The Moon (memories of Neon Genesis Evangelion)
Vocaloid, the technology behind Mitsuke, is not exactly voice synthesis (much less singing synthesis). It consists of a large database of sound samples of a human performer. These samples are then processed and stitched together by a song's creator.
Ages ago, the members of Soft Cell, an 80's synthpop duo, said they expected that in the future, there would be the capability to synthesize the human singing voice, making even the vocalists unnecessary. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, that has not yet happened.
For a quick listen at the actual synthesis if the singing voice (quite different from synthesis of spoken voice, which has essentially been mastered), see this fellow's PhD thesis.
Can anyone point to more recent examples of singing synthesis?
How am I the only one whos noticed this? Shes GREEN.
It was 90s, but Idoru by William Gibson (Neuromancer) included a virtual j-pop idol someone wanted to marry.
Why use a hologram when you can use robots? :)
http://pinktentacle.com/2010/10/dance-of-the-hrp-4c-cybernetic-human/
The Japanese have always been into this type of animation. There are stores full of comic books, figurines, and other sometimes sexually explicit items. It all dates back to pre-modern times when the underage innocent schoolgirl was the pinnacle of sexual attraction for Japanese men. Many older comics feature schoolgirls in compromising positions.
Enter the modern age, when such attractions are viewed as sick and perverted. This has caused a cultural shift in Japan, so now they express this desire in other ways, and this pop star looks like one of them.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Fuck you, you dirty hippie.
I support extending the tax cuts because one day I'm going to be wealthy.
Just like I'm going to Heaven when I die...
She won't cause a sex scandal
You're joking, right?
Methinks you underestimate the Otakus. Just do a search on "Miku porn".
Another example of Rule 34. If it exists, there is porn of it.
Not only animated, but apparently live action cosplay as well.
That's what a lot of your ancestors thought about Neanderthals, too.
Surprize! You didn't get all of them.
I'm not red-headed. really...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Although your suggestion may be completely valid. I'll take a guess that you haven't really studied much about Marcov chains, if you don't know how to spell Andrey Marcov's name.
Wikipedia appears to disagree with you. Unless you think you've got enough evidence to overturn it?
See the week or so starting here a few days after the strip begins in June of 2000.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Don't worry, we're getting closer and closer.
Popular music is formulaic anyway. I guess this is the next step; making the performance a visible formula.
So I went to the Vocaloid site and listened to all 3 demo songs on there... wow... that sucks something fierce. This is coming from me who actually likes j-pop (TM Revolution, Tamaki Nami, High and Mighty Color, Takahashi Hitomi to name a few).
~Syberz
Welcome to 3 years ago.
Looking at that concert footage, anime styling is really weird when brought to reality. She looks like some sort of rubberized alien android. It doesn't look out of place in anime, but in the real world, it is a little freaky.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]