Tomorrow's Miley Cyrus? A hologram live in concert! (CNet)

[Drew Wilson]

Do you get slightly disturbed when you go to see your favorite performer live in concert and, because of your keen sense of visual synchronization, you see that they are miming?

Well, brush off your negative last-century attitude and get with the program.

In the case of Japanese singing star Hatsune Miku, the program in question is Yamaha's Vocaloid Synthesizing Technology. Oh, there's a real person's voice somewhere at the heart of it. But who needs real people when you can have a hologram that will never be photographed snorting coke in a bathroom stall, never sleeps with unsuitably older men, and, most importantly, never talks back to her record company?

As you will see from the videos I have embedded, Miku is not entirely real. Not at all, in fact. She's a hologram. Singularity Hub tells me she's the invention of a no-doubt fascinating organization called Crypton Future Media.

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It's almost as if human beings are out of date or something. :eek:

[Boomer The Dog]

Hey now, well we did have Ananova from Ananova news, the virtual newscaster, I used to like her weird news.

It would be good if this virtual singer had a virtual audience too.

Maybe Humans will go out of date.. I once thought of an improved life form with Humans mixed with the best parts of other species, but maybe it will be cyborgs, or Humans + other animals + machines + computers, that would be interesting.

There's probably a manga of that already..

[Drew Wilson]

You think this would comply?

[mountain_rage]

Its not that big a deal, cookie cutter pop will become further commercialized and even more revolting than it already is today. Its not like real musicians are going to disappear or be replaced. The labels will make their profits and I will continue to dread the music being performed. One interesting use of this rear projected screen (not a hologram) is that it could be used as stage prop to complement an artists stage presence. This is essentially a step up from the screens behind artists, artists could have a camera in front of them and even interact with the screen making for quite the visual effect.

[Signa]

There is something terrifying about those videos, and I don't know if it's because there is a "live" anime chick on the stage. Maybe it's that we've reached a point where our tech level is reaching sci-fi levels, and it just seems wrong seeing something like this be real. I expect to see tech like this in movies, not Japan.