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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
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!
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.
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.
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 ...
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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.
I'd like to make Hatsune Miku deliver video lectures for a calculus class. Can I do that?
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.
full size live anime characters are creepy. let the freakshow begin. http://xspblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/otakuterrortrain.jpg
Somehow she seems more real than Britney Spears ...
I am anarch of all I survey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmYU4CeuZQ0
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.
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.
This will be the end of the music industry! For real this time!
Ironically, if the music industry had a dollar for every time this was said, RIAA lawsuits would fail to justify themselves.
what is wrong with someone living in his/her parents' basement ? or, playing with action figures of anime, and hanging out in maid cafes ?
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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.
Miku actually got popular by the vast amount of fan made viral musics spread in Nico Nico Douga.
FTFY
But... the future refused to change.
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.
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...
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
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.
And her bassist doesn't even wear a tutu. Not interested.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
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.
Amusingly enough, Max Headroom was portrayed by a human actor in heavy makeup and a suit made of fibreglass, the computer technology of the time not being up to the task. Even the geometric backdrop they used was originally a cel animation and didn't become rendered until later episodes.
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
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.
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!
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
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
yeah. sure you will. sure you will. like all those 1 out of every 100,000 which have become wealthy. keep working and clamoring your life away.
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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]
He was being sarcastic. If you adapted a less victimized and more pragmatic/"exploiting" attitude, you might find that things in life get easier without much more effort on your part. You don't have to cast out your morals, just practice thinking "how can I turn this to my benefit? Or failing that, escape with as little loss as possible?" without factoring any silly things like your "identity" into the process.
Emotions! In your brain!
aaaah sarcasm. something 'very rare' and hilarious, and never seen before, on the internet. and, yes, everyone has to spend their mental energy to discern whether or not some random schmock on the internet is practicing sarcasm at that particular moment or not ...
i dont give a flying fuck whether it was sarcasm or not. if someone wants to talk, s/he should directly talk and speak their mind.
i dont need to turn anything to my benefit either, for, i am not 'victimized', or living in anyone's basement. these however, doesnt prevent me from making an observation, and seeing what is wrong with what's going on.
noone should need to 'turn' anything 'to their favor' in a system that supposedly gives equal opportunity by the way. and definitely not 1 out of 100 k.
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I think when most people say that, they mean equal opportunity of attempting to twist things your way (without transgressing on others, mind you.) And most people do understand sarcasm intuitively, but I've heard up to 1/4 have problems with it. I agree with you, in any case, that the american system is failing something horridly. But I'm swedish, and even here the basic law is that you must exploit your resources if you want to get things done for yourself. The socialism ensures that people don't eat each other alive when they fail, or in fear of failing.
Emotions! In your brain!
The socialism ensures that people don't eat each other alive when they fail, or in fear of failing.
that. and that is what differentiates the quality of society you are living in, from the one in america.
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