Countless flowing green wigs risked spontaneous combustion on a 36C Melbourne evening as thousands of J-pop fans queued outside John Cain Arena on a recent Friday night. But the heat was irrelevant to the night's headline pop attraction, Hatsune Miku. She can't sweat because she's a digital animation - a 16-year-old "Vocaloid" virtual pop-star on her first Australian tour.
Miku, as she's known to fans, is a 157cm-tall avatar of a teenage girl with green pigtails. She represents a digital bank of vocal samples created by the ominous-sounding Crypton Future Media using Yamaha's Vocaloid voice synthesiser technology. Users input lyrics and melodies that are "sung" by the bank's sampled voice (Hatsune Miku is voiced by the actor Saki Fujita); some Vocaloid producers "tune" the software to be convincing, while others embrace its artificiality.
This story is from the December 06, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the December 06, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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