• Ideas
  • Mar 20, 2017

Still Be Here: A Performance with Hatsune Miku

Still Be Here (2017) performance at the Barbican, London, 2017, by Mari Matsutoya, Laurel Halo, Darren Johnston, LaTurbo Avedon and Martin Sulzer. Courtesy Barbican.

There is a tension in the language that flows around and through Hatsune Miku. The phenomenally popular Japanese virtual popstar, created in August 2007, is referred to simultaneously as “she” and as the product and property of various corporations and creators. The Vocaloid software that synthesizes her voice was developed by Yamaha, whose synthesizer range’s turquoise color scheme also informed her image as designed by manga artist Kei Garō, and her dance routines are developed with MikuMikuDance, a piece of custom freeware. In a turn redolent of sci-fi cinema, her developers, Crypton Future Media, consider her the first of a “series”; her name translates to “first sound from the future.”