Hatsune Miku: Real or Illusion?
Modern pop music is more illusion than reality. Sometimes it is hard to know when the artifice ends and the real person begins. I'm confused and I'm not sure how much our kids truly understand the extent to which pop stars are manufactured for their enjoyment (and by enjoyment, I mean consumption).
But the Japanese popstar Hatsune Miku is beyond even what the most savvy of marketers could pull off. She is a completely artificial 3-D hologram created by Crypton Future Media. You can purchase this singing avatar and write songs for her to perform. But what is amazing is that Miku has done "live" shows with live musicians in the background and thousands of fans singing along to her hits. She is a bonafide rock star in Japan.
Miku's first English song is coming soon, thanks to her over 51,000 Facebook fans. My kids have already been exposed to manufactured pop stars (hello, Miley and American Weekend) and lots of Japanese Manga-like animation thanks to Pokemon and other cartoons.
I am just wondering if kids will be able to tell the difference between a completely computer-generated popstar and a "real" one. In this day of autotune and airbrushing is a completely technological Miku the next logical step? Will our kids accept her as a legitimate pop star? Will they care that she is not real?
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