Friday, September 3, 2010

Hatsune Miku, Virtual Girl Idoru

.



I'm on the road again.   But above, courtesy of My Son The Otaku, is a video by Hatsune Miku.  Which is of interest primarily because she doesn't exist.  Ms. Miku is one of a suite of voices (admittedly the most popular one) available on the Vocaloid Singing Synthesis Software.   Available from Yamaha.  Like so many other things, it's been a big hit in Japan, less so here.

What I find particularly intriguing about Hatsune Miku is that people are writing many, many songs for her and posting them online, some of them are actually pretty popular.  But nobody knows who owns the copyright for them.

If only William Gibson were alive to see this day!

There's a lot more I could say about the Copyright Wars and Japanese-derived pop culture.  But I've got three hundred miles to go today.  So I shall content myself with merely observing that the above video is not typical of Hatsune Miku's work.

A far more typical video is the one below.



*

2 comments:

Ben said...

Hey, random message from the internet: Gibson's alive and kicking! (And writing, which is the important part).
But yes, this made my day. Yet again, WG sees the future.

Irene Grumman said...

Jeff Prucher's blog sent me here. I have enjoyed your stories in mags for many years. "Idoru," is a haunting story, so I was attracted to this post. I look forward to traveling to the past by reading your archives.