Degree Project: Becoming Hatsune Miku

Experimental Design, Web Design, Publication Design

A deep dive into the crowd-sourced community of Hatsune Miku, a voice synthesizer branded as a virtual pop idol, and what it can teach us about the power of hybrid physical/virtual and individual/collective identity to mobilize rigid imagery. At its core, this project is a celebration of a digital community as strange and unique as the contemporary landscape it perseveres through.

Part 1: Book & Figure

This figure uses the body as a site of discourse to explore how the seamless fantasy of Miku’s image becomes increasingly fluid through her hybrid nature. I use a combination of 3D scanning & printing technology to work at the threshold of digital and material spheres as my costumed body is repeatedly translated between the two. In the language of anime figurines, the 1/6 scale figure stands lives in a custom cut display on the cover of a book case. The book case also houses all of this project’s writings in print.

Documentation in progress.

Part 2: Website

This website is the central conclusion of this project, integratating my writing with my visual explorations. The site implements a citation system that allows the user to create a personal archive, or “playlist” of relevant terms while paying homage to the Vocaloid community’s crowd-sourced knowledge base. The model of my 3D scan becomes a navigation system in which the body metaphors in HTML tags are flipped back onto the human figure.

Documentation in progress.

Christine Wang

is a designer based in NYC. Currently at Pinterest and beyond.

About ︎︎︎

Work︎︎︎ Illustration︎︎︎

Christine Wang

is a designer based in NYC. Currently at Pinterest; previously at Regrets Only and Apple.

Work︎︎︎
Illustration︎︎︎