Coachella fans crowded together to watch a hologram sing. It never showed up.
Hatsune Miku is a global icon — but she isn't real, and that's become a problem
Japanese virtual singer Hatsune Miku performs onstage during a concert at the Zenith concert hall in Paris, on Jan. 16, 2020.
CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images, Getty Images
By Timothy Karoff
April 13, 2024
Fans of Hatsune Miku arrived at the singer’s Friday night set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival to encounter a bitter disappointment: Their idol had been flattened.
For any other Coachella performer, the jump from three dimensions to two would involve a surreal, painful death. But thankfully, Hatsune Miku isn’t real, she’s just lines of computer code.
Specifically, the popular digital artist is a Vocaloid, an AI-backed program that artificially generates songs that imitate the human voice, and then presents those songs in the guise of a 16-year-old anime girl with knee-length turquoise hair. Since she was first conceived by Japanese music software company Crypton in 2007, Hatsune Miku has toured around the world, “performing” in concert as a hologram to thousands of adoring fans.
But on Friday, their beloved hologram was no hologram at all. Hatsune Miku had been flattened into an LED screen, a simple flickering image on a giant screen. It did not go well.
Coachella may have been a low point, but the trouble really began a week earlier, when Hatsune Miku’s long-awaited North American tour began. Fans, some of whom spent north of $200 on tickets, walked into her Vancouver concert expecting to sing along with their favorite anime hologram. Instead, Miku appeared on a flat screen. The surprise sparked outrage, and thousands of fans demanded refunds.
Why wasn’t Miku in her full, multidimensional, projected glory? “People who pay hundreds of dollars want more from their Vocaloids,” read a story on the Verge.
Still, Hatsune Miku loyalists were hopeful for something bigger at Coachella. It was supposed to be one of the virtual pop star’s biggest crossover performances and one that had been in the works for four years, when Miku was first booked for the festival’s ill-fated 2020 lineup. Some fans theorized that Miku was appearing on a screen at the shows leading up to Coachella simply because the projection setup was already in Indio.
But for those paying close attention, there was a bad omen. An article in the Coachella Valley Independent on Miku’s upcoming performance, published on April 4, was updated just days before the festival to remove the word “hologram.”
When Miku fans filtered into the festival’s Mojave Tent stage on Friday, those fears were realized. A huge, imposing black screen stood in the middle of the stage, with keyboards and a drum kit pushed off to the sides.
Tia Thompson, one of the festivalgoers in attendance, told SFGATE that seeing Miku live was one of the reasons she bought a Coachella ticket.
“I’m pretty disappointed because that’s the whole cool part about seeing an anime girl on stage,” she said. “... But since it’s on a screen I could kind of just watch it at home.”
Onlookers, watching on Coachella’s free livestream, roasted the setup on social media.
“IMAGINE PAYING $500 AND ONE OF THE ARTISTS YOU WANTED TO SEE WAS MIKU AND THEY PULL OUT THE 150" SCHOOL POWER POINT SCREEN,” one X user wrote.
Japanese virtual singer Hatsune Miku performs onstage during a concert at the Zenith concert hall in Paris, on Jan. 16, 2020.
CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images, Getty Images
But if the 2D Miku was a major letdown, at least some of the disappointment washed away when fans saw her appear onscreen. Ray Liu, who arrived wearing a full Miku outfit complete with dyed turquoise hair, said he had been a fan of Miku since he was 10 years old.
“Because she’s virtual, she can be a perfect idol,” he said. He was undeterred by the lack of a hologram show.
Tucked into the wings of the stage, a live band picked up their instruments. The screen lit up in a pulse of lightning blue and flashed the name “Hatsune Miku.” Miku popped onscreen like a character spawning at the start of a Super Smash Bros. match, accompanied by a dazzle of virtual sparks.
Miku isn’t human, and her voice doesn’t sound like it. She sings — “sings” — like a computer’s imitation of a teenage girl’s anime voice. It’s bizarre, and it’s completely enthralling. At some points, she belted out lyrics (all in Japanese) like a mewing cat; at others, she sang in soaring, ethereal tones.
All the while, Miku danced around her digital black box, hitting arm twirls and nailing choreography that had been calibrated perfectly — algorithmically, even.
Hatsune Miku fan Ray Liu at the digital artist’s show at Coachella on Friday, April 12, 2024, in Indio, Calif.
Timothy Karoff
When other artists (see: nondigital entities) at Coachella do outfit changes, they run offstage, jump out of their pant legs and scamper back. Hatsune Miku simply reloads. At the end of each song, she blipped out of sight in a flurry of sparkles, leaving the screen temporarily black. As the band started the next track, she would flash back to “life” in a new outfit. One moment, she was in her normal schoolgirl-style outfit, and the next she was wearing a dress that looked like a globe, complete with the outlines of the continents.
As Miku shifted shapes she shifted genres, swinging between bubblegum pop, J-rock and even a brief jolt of heavy metal.
Many fans arrived at Miku’s set with turquoise braids woven into their hair, mirroring the virtual pop star’s signature look. A number waved green glowsticks in the air. While plenty of fans recorded on their phones, one used the lo-fi camera on his Nintendo 3DS to capture a video.
CHIBA, JAPAN - Sept. 1: A life-size figure of Hatsune Miku displayed on Sept. 1, 2017, in Chiba, Japan.
Taro Karibe/Getty Images, Getty Images
“Miku-chella!” a man behind me cheered between songs as he lit a joint.
After her last song, Miku didn’t walk offstage. She simply fizzled back into the black abyss.
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Originally Posted by YinOrYan
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