Oct 112016
 

The multi-artist collaboration event titled “Hatsune Miku: Still Be Here” will be showing at the U.K.’s Barbican Centre on February 26th, 2017 from 7:30 PM until 10:30 PM. Please note that this is not an officially operated event, but it is officially authorized. It’s not a concert-style event either, but more of a contemporary art performance.

This will be the third performance of this event in Europe, and has already premiered in Berlin and Austria. You can read a report on the Berlin performance from Vice.

Event Detail & Tickets: http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=20330
RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/920653271413102/

You could argue that all Pop stars are created, but not to the same extent as Hatsune Miku. Starting life as a vocaloid program created by Japanese developers, and evolving into a full-blown virtual Pop star and cyber celebrity with hit singles worldwide and sellout stadium performances, she comes to the Barbican in Still Be Here.

Conceived by artist Mari Matsutoya, with music programmed by producer Laurel Halo, choreography by Darren Johnston and visual production by LaTurbo Avedon & Martin Sulzer, Still Be Here is more than just a mesmerising virtual reality experience. With Hatsune Miku taking form on stage as a 3D projection, looking at once eerily real and like something from a different world, a narrative begins to take shape as she performs. Lyrics question the role of the Pop star in the 21st-Century, the commodification of the female body, and notions of identity.

Hatsune Miku is much more than just an animated star. With anyone able to buy the software and use it to start producing music and program dance moves for her, an ever-growing global community of fans has developed around her. All the music she releases and performs live is created by that community, making her a collectively-constructed Pop star, and a representation of the evolution of digital music technology, crowdsourcing, and creative collaboration. Still Be Here plays on that idea, investigating how Hatsune Miku, and indeed Pop stars in general can be something onto which we project our own desires.




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About jrharbort
A Hatsune Miku fan since December 2007, jrharbort joined MikuFan as the Head Writer in October 2011. Follow on Twitter at @jrharbort.