Christine Shihua Wang
is a NYC-based designer in identity, editorial, and motion

About

Poker Hall of Fame

[Identity]

Degree Project: Becoming Hatsune Miku

[Experimental]

Pinterest Academy[Motion]

Milkman

[Book]

Knoll Workplace Research Library

[Identity]

Journal

[Book]

Huanglong

[Identity]

Shipwreck Graveyard Map

[Book]


Also see: Illustration Archive

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Becoming Hatsune Miku

A deep dive into the crowd-sourced community of Hatsune Miku—a voice synthesizer “Vocaloid” branded as a virtual pop idol—and what it can teach us about imagining new ways of being. 

Hatsune Miku, whose name translates to “the first sound of the future,” is unique in that the majority of her 100,000+ songs are fan-produced. This project explores how Miku’s crowd-sourced image allows fans to access the power of that sound and imagine narratives that subvert gender expectations and hierarchies of control. Included are essays and conversations with three members of the fan community about their unique experiences with Vocaloid and its culture.

This project is part physical, part digital, and part in-between. A 3D scan of my body in generic Miku cosplay serves as the touch point between these spheres, becoming the navigation system of the project’s digital presence (website, 3D renders) and the figurine-like enclosure of the project’s material facets (print, 3D structures).

View at christinesworld.github.io/degreeproject/ (desktop only).


 

The figure and book case are rooted in the culture of collectable anime figurines, which depict popular 2D characters as dynamic, colorful small-scale statues. I started from a 3D scan of my body dressed in a generic Miku costume, rendered in 3D and then printed at 1/6 scale. Through the repeated translation between physical and digital, the rendered body becomes full of glitchy artifacts, evidence of its entanglement between the two spheres. The figure lives in a custom-cut hole on the cover of the book case, which becomes a container for the project’s essays and in print. These books reference their online counterparts through the accordian-style “long-scroll” binding. 




The website revolves around the digital-native Vocaloid fan experience. Image and video superimpose the reading experience by nature of Vocaloid’s audiovisual foundation and as homage to the danmaku scrolling comment system of Vocaloid‘s primary platform. Every culture-specific term, song, and reference is defined on-click and collected in a glossary to help navigate the sprawling crowd-sourced Mikuverse. Most importantly, each item can be collected, curated, and saved externally for future reference. My 3D scanned body becomes a navigation system in which the body metaphors in HTML are flipped back onto the human figure.

sound on!