Bio
Roman Kalinovski is an artist living and working in Brooklyn. His artistic practice combines traditional and digital media to create a posthuman Baroque aesthetic in which any distinction between the real and the fictional has become meaninglessly blurred. He holds degrees in studio art from Syracuse University and Pratt Institute, is currently an artist in residence at Babycastles, and writes art criticism for artcritical.com.
title
"Posthuman Performance and Distributed Celebrity" Feat. Hatsune Miku
Abstract
Hatsune Miku is an international pop star who has played sold-out concerts across the globe. She is also a piece of software, the public face of Yamaha's Vocaloid speech synthesis technology. Her voice can be purchased in multiple languages and used to sing practically any song imaginable. Her body can be downloaded as a 3D model, either "officially" sanctioned or one of many fan-created versions, and used in digitally-choreographed dance routines. This talk will give a brief history of Miku and the Vocaloid software that has turned a human voice into a cyborg voice with unlimited potential and malleability. It will also focus on the character of Miku as a posthuman pop star whose celebrity complicates traditionally accepted conceptions of fame as arising from singular, complete, and irreducible subjectivities. Miku represents a different model, one of distributed celebrity, with the creative power behind her rise to stardom spread across the globe on countless computers, singing infinite songs, written by a legion of fans and followers.
