Diehard fans turn virtual teen singer into Japanese mega-star
She wears extremely short skirts, sports blue pigtails to her knees and has the boundless energy of a playful puppy. During her 10-year career, she's released more than 100,000 songs in a variety of languages and opened shows for Lady Gaga. And yet Hatsune Miku, who boasts 2.5 million Facebook followers, doesn't actually exist — at least not in the typical way we think of a flesh-and-blood diva. Miku is a computer-simulated pop star created more than a decade ago by Hiroyuki Ito, CEO of Crypton Future Media in Sapporo, Japan.
A virtual music star, driven by fans and voice-synthesis software. Here's a sample video, if you're curious. I can't judge the voice, since I don't speak japanese, but the animation is remarkably good.
takyon: Wikipedia for Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid. Have some fun with Miku! meme (YTP version. Warning: Gets LOUD).
News? Maybe not. However, you're on the right track:
- The Ultimate Escapism
- Logitech is experimenting with a keyboard built for virtual reality
- Virtual reality could be the answer to treating phantom pain (Opioids Haven't Solved Chronic Pain. Maybe Virtual Reality Can)
- VR developers pivot to location-based entertainment
- Watch J-Pop Dance Trio Perfume's Virtual Reality Music Video Ad for Panasonic
- All hail the Godbot: In Silicon Valley artificial intelligence isn't just king, it's literally a new religion
- Sex Robot Samantha Will Free Humanity From Work, Says Its Creator (Sex robot creator claims demand is so high he wants to start mass producing Samantha heads)
Related: Rapper Chief Keef to Use "Hologram" to Perform For Benefit Concert
The Robot Rock Band, Want to Build a Vocalist
Gatebox: Your New Holographic AI Assistant "Waifu"
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"Hologram" technology featuring the Pepper's ghost illusion is becoming a recurring gimmick in concerts, protests, and political rallies. The technique has been used to stage a "holographic" protest in Spain, and was used by current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to appear live simultaneously in 53 locations in 2012, and 88 in 2014. In the concert business, it was used to display a virtual projection of deceased rapper Tupac Shakur at the 2012 Coachella Festival, as well as a similar posthumous projection of Michael Jackson at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards.
Now rapper Chief Keef will reportedly utilize a semitruck modified by HologramUSA to deliver a benefit concert in Chicago from a soundstage in Beverly Hills, California this Friday. The benefit concert is intended to raise money for the families of Keef's friend and fellow rapper Marvin Carr, who was killed in a drive-by shooting, and Dillan Harris, a toddler killed when the suspects crashed into a bus stop. Why not go to Chicago in person? Because Chief Keef, also known as Keith Cozart, has an outstanding warrant for his arrest.
According to Hackaday the robot rock band Compressorhead are planning to build a (robot) Lead Vocalist and produce their first original album.
Animatronic bands playing to pre-recorded background music are Chuck-E-Cheesy. Compressorhead, in contrast, slays it. We don’t know if it’s the fact that they’re actually playing real instruments “live” or if it’s just that the folks behind the scenes are really brilliant MIDI programmers, but Compressorhead sounds really good.
The kickstarter page, set up to support this effort, goes into a little more detail on the plans for the project:
We, being Frank, Markus and Stock, are fulltime artists. What we love, is to build party machines and let them rock. Now we want Compressorhead to be the first Robot Band to record an original album. Together with the Canadian music-legend John Wright (of NomeansNo & The Hanson Brothers) we are producing fantastic new songs for our Rocking Robot Band.
The official Compressorhead page has yet more background and video clips of the band in action, such as this YouTube video of a 2014 performance.
The future is apparently here. And it's creepier than we ever imagined—even when we were playing around with tethering Teddy Ruxpin to the Internet. A Japanese company called Vinclu ("a company that makes crazy things and supports crazy people") is now taking pre-orders from Japan and the United States for a new interactive, artificial-intelligence driven home automation system. Called Gatebox, the new Internet-of-Things product takes Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, Spike Jonze's film Her , and the "holographic" anime characters of Vocaloid concerts to their unified natural conclusion.
Wait, what?
Gatebox, priced at ¥321,840 (about $2,700 US), is squarely targeted at young lonely salarymen and all brands of anime-obsessed otaku—promising the experience of "living with your favorite character." The size of a home coffee-maker, with a footprint no larger than a sheet of A4 printer paper, the device's main feature is a clear projection tube that displays a computer-animated avatar for the AI's "character." Vinclu apparently is planning multiple possible personalities for Gatebox—which, as part of the device's backstory, is a gateway to the dimension the character lives in.
A company like this could release the first strong AI product (kawaii slave?).
Beginner's definition of "waifu" for the uninitiated.
Update: Another article indicates that "[There's also] HDMI and PC inputs to allow the owner to make their own modifications and create their own characters."
A 3D Hentai Camgirl Is Taking Over Chaturbate, and Human Models Are Worried (probably NSFW)
A 3D anime woman with a black strap across her nipples is giving a lecture on YouTube about whether hentai is art or porn. "I think there's a higher demand for the odd and the fantastical," she says. "With art, it's flexible, you're allowed to explore your sexuality. And with real titties? No offense, but it's bound to the cruel weight of science, gravity, and bones that only go one way."
ProjektMelody is a virtual avatar of a woman who claims to be the world's first hentai camgirl. When she's not on YouTube, she gives regular, live shows on the camming site Chaturbate, where she dances and fondles herself for tips. She's not real, but there's a real person in there somewhere, moving her arms and speaking into a microphone to any of her 14,300 followers currently in the live chat. She only started streaming three days ago.
On Chaturbate, her location is listed as "Virtual Little Tokyo," and under smoking and drinking preferences, "literally impossible." Her birthdate is listed as July 7, 2000, but more accurately, Melody came into the world in July 2019, when ProjektMelody joined Twitter.
In the last three days since her first stream, Melody has gone from 700 Twitter followers to more than 20,000. The "more rooms like this" tab on her Chaturbate page returns an error: "Sorry, we don't have any rooms similar to projektmelody yet." That's because other cam models are human. Her sudden rise in popularity has made some who aren't working behind a full-body avatar question what place an anime avatar has on the platform.
Motion capture technology is used to animate the virtual troublemaker.
There is a Projekt Melody channel on YouTube.
Related: Gatebox: Your New Holographic AI Assistant "Waifu"
A Different Kind of Virtual Reality, or "Only in Japan" (Hatsune Miku)
The Virtual Vloggers "Taking Over" YouTube
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @03:49AM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Funny) by julian on Monday November 06 2017, @04:33AM (1 child)
We get it, you grew up in the 90s.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @09:10AM
You got it wrong, I never grew up from the 90s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @04:17AM
I keep missing her concert when she's touring the ARKS fleet. :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @04:53AM
Kadarshians of the world, your days are numbered.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @05:16AM (6 children)
Only in Japan? What about Gorillaz? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillaz [wikipedia.org]
Their entire band is virtual, which is a step further than the particular linked Hatsune Miku video.
Hatsune Miku does seem to be a much bigger deal though.
Also Hatsune Miku has done plenty of shows outside Japan: http://mikuexpo.com/na2016/ [mikuexpo.com]
Anyway, I think the readers here would enjoy knowing that there is an "Internet Explorer-tan", an actual official Microsoft (contracted) production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHTUlF7NA2o [youtube.com] (and she is not the only Microsoft associated anime girl)
These days I think it would be hard to find something that not at least indirectly associated with an anime girl somehow (Feel free to take that as a challenge).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @06:02AM (1 child)
Soylentnews?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday November 06 2017, @06:10AM
mfw [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday November 06 2017, @06:03AM
The community driven success (where fans compose many of the songs, and some of them become super popular) and complete voice synthesis (Vocaloid software) are differences. I would also compare the concerts to each other.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @09:33AM
That's just Microsoft Embracing a concept (OS-tan [wikipedia.org]) that already existed, and is by no means limited to Microsoft software.
Apparently there is a specialized wiki [ostan-collections.net] for them as well. Aside from MS, you can find OS-tans for various Linux flavors, Macs, Mozilla software etc.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday November 06 2017, @03:00PM (1 child)
Hatsune Miku's been around for awhile now, and actually there's an entire group of related characters associated with different products.
The most interesting thing is actually the licensing. The main reason she's been successful isn't because she's particularly original, it is because her creators are so loose with her licensing and encourage users to generate content and share it... using the software they bought from the creators, of course.
I didn't read the article, but it's interesting to note they had trouble getting actual singers to help with the project. The singers themselves could see where this was leading and didn't want to create their own competition. In retrospect though, I think it's the recording companies that are the most concerned.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday November 06 2017, @04:25PM
I know that news doesn't necessarily have to be super-fresh to be notable and culturally relevant.
TFA from MalayMail has dateline "TOKYO, Oct. 30", but Hatsune Miku was released in 2007 [wikia.com], and the underlying Vocaloid software is from 2004 [vocaloidotaku.net]. A search on YouTube.com today for Hatsuni Miku [youtube.com] returns over four million results, some of them fully ten years old [youtube.com].
"Oh, you never heard about
diet coke and menthos[xkcd.com] Hatsuni Miku? There's this cool article..."(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 06 2017, @05:39AM (2 children)
Japanese for "Idol Singer". Most are selected by the entertainment industry then marketed to stardom.
It's also the name of a book by one of those cyberpunk authors about an american fan who travels to Japan to investigate a romance between an american rock star and a Japanese hologram.
It's quite a good book. My favorite part takes place at a Love Hotel.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @09:37AM
Not really; it's just Japanese pronunciation of the word "idol" (アイドル). Sure, they usually sing, but AFAIK it's not an absolute requirement. They do photo shoots, movies, etc. Source: I live in Japan.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2017, @12:48PM