The Creators Project: What is the future of the pop star? For the masses, it's listening to their music digitally while observing them virtually through pics and videos on social media. Far less often are these pop stars seen performing live. So, if this star-to-fan experience is for the vast majority of people a mostly virtual exchange already, would it be so very different if the pop stars of the future were completely artificial entities—virtual reality avatars with songs, speaking voices, patterns of behavior, and so on? In a way, this is what artist Mari Matsutoya did this past Friday with her Still Be Here performance staged at the art and technology festival Transmediale’s "conversationpiece" edition in Berlin.
3 comments:
The article I commented on last week in relation to Hatsune Miku was more concerned with the excitement that would come from Miku touring, while this one deals with the ramifications of a pop concert starring a hologram. The idea that a concert concerning a virtual pop star that can instantly change outfit, voice, and even form is interesting, as human singers always have their off nights, are subject to wardrobe malfunctions, and have off nights. A digital popstar has none of these human concerns. There is also an interesting rumination on the uncanny valley, and whether or not it is possible to get rid of. I think that solely by virtue of being at a Miku concert, that valley will always be there, since we will know that we are watching a virtual star sing digitized lyrics. There is also a fun element of collaboration that can come with these concerts, since all of the Miku info is on a program called Vocaloid, and people can upload data for Miku to perform onto a massive database that she is stored on. In the future, we may see concerts that are entirely open-sourced, in which rabid fans create the setlist, outfits, and dance moves, all without leaving the comfort of their desk.
Beyond the short term gimmick of a live performance of a technology imitating humans for the pure novelty I don’t really see the future of virtual pop stars. The interesting part about this concert for me is that it points to an audience that is interesting in seeing concerts for the spectacle and not only to see a specific human artist. Think the itunes song visualization software but designed, not selected based on an algorithm. Not confined to your screen either. This could allow concerts to become an incredibly complex and three dimensional music video that doesn’t even necessitate a live performer. Or a live performance aspect might not be tied to the lyrics being sung but more tuned to a dance concert but with the pomp that is generally confined to pop music right now. Wherever this goes I think it will be pretty damn cool to watch.
This is almost the plot of the Disbey Channel Original Movie, Pixel Perfect. In the movie, Phil of the Future (I don't remember his real name) wants a girlfriend or something and is also very smart, and creates a holographic girl. She is programmed to be perfect, to have a perfect voice, to dance perfectly, etc. She becomes famous and puts on tons of "virtual" concerts (because she is a hologram) and eventually she goes to robot heaven. Anyways, this situation is 100% not like that, but I still think it's funny.
Anyways, somethin I'm worried about here is the rampant sexualization of of young girls, especially by "otakus" or anime fans. Has tune Miku is a popular character on the Internet because of Vocaloud, and the sheer amount of terrifying images of her make me very worried for whoever ends up going to this concert. I don't know how old this fictional character is, but she looks like she's twelve.
I believe the technology and animation used to create this concert is pretty great, however. I don't really know how this compares with other digital concerts (the Gorillaz did this several years ago, and we all remember the Tupac hologram) in terms of production, but I think this kind of combination of media and performance is certainly interesting. With all these new advancements, will Pixel Perfect become the norm? Will we literally create digital pop stars? Digitized presidents? The future is scary, but also kinda cool.
Post a Comment