Fan virtual idol, sterile aesthetic alternative crazy
Reporter Hu Jiefei
The two-dimensional cute pet "Huangdu Fungus" attracted a large number of fans, "Hatsune Miku" officially entered Taobao live broadcast, "Luo Tianyi" released an album, held a concert and even boarded a satellite TV show... Suddenly, the spring breeze came, and virtual idols began to enter intensively. The public eye. What kind of cultural mentality does these virtual images, which are still a little unfamiliar to mainstream people, but are becoming popular?
Live broadcast, shoot magazines, hold concerts,
What real stars can do, virtual idols can do
In a 1,000-square-meter filming studio in Jiading District, Shanghai, multiple cameras record images against a model of the virtual idol "Ling Ling". The lighting and setting team assists; meanwhile, it is more than 40 kilometers apart in Shanghai. In an office building in Xuhui District, a 100-person technical team is working overtime to test the imaging effect of "Ling Ling". Under the hands of the engineers, the walking posture and the accuracy of the finger dance are very close to those of real people.
Advanced face, thin body, flowing hair, clear skin pores... On May 18 this year, the girl "Ling Ling" officially announced her debut on the social platform. As soon as its official announcement video was released, netizens were frightened by the flexibility of its fingers and the fidelity of its hair. Some netizens exclaimed like real people.
"We are doing a very challenging but valuable thing." Computer vision and computer graphics expert Chai Jinxiang's company provided technical support for "Ling Ling". In the future, "Ling Ling" will appear in magazines, release records, shoot MVs, and be promoted and operated like real idols.
What is a "virtual idol"? To put it simply, it is based on a certain algorithm, through painting, animation, CG (computer vision design) technology, etc., in the Internet and other virtual scenes or real scenes to achieve non-real person image singing and dancing performances. They do not have real bodies, and cannot produce an ID card that can prove their identity, but they have their own image and dubbing. The design team will carry out multiple packaging in terms of appearance, personality, clothing, tone and tone.
What can virtual idols do? Singing, dancing, live broadcasting, filming magazines, receiving endorsements, live broadcasting goods...it can do everything traditional idol stars can do. For the audience, virtual idols are not much different from real stars except that they are not real. They have independent social media accounts and can "circle fans" and work like real people. Some head virtual idols with large fan bases even have social status and can serve as ambassadors and award-giving guests.
Sterile aesthetics:
A star who will never grow old, a personage who will not "collapse"
"There are enough real-life stars, why do you need virtual idols?" "What is there to worship the'paper man' that only exists in the picture?" For many people who have never been in contact with virtual idols, chase virtual idols It's really hard to understand.
But for some "senior fans" in the virtual idol circle, this question is not difficult to answer. Zhou Lingling, who has been in the traditional "rice circle" for a long time, said: "The risk of a real idol's collapse is too high. But the virtual idol is not. It will never grow old and there will never be negative news."
Zhou Lingling said that she had spent "large sums" of money to watch a concert of a certain "Little Fresh Meat" and bought a large amount of its peripheral products, spending tens of thousands of yuan before and after, just to increase his commercial value. But never thought, after more than a year of real feeling, he suddenly announced his love affair. "It's like a bolt from the blue, the more I look at him now, the more ugly he feels, he is still a fan of virtual idols." Zhou Lingling said.
For another part of fans, the sense of participation and shaping is particularly important. Compared to the real world, which is difficult to distinguish between true and false and full of ambiguities, fans of virtual idols prefer to immerse themselves in virtual dreams that are always glamorous and full of goodwill.
In the second half of 2019, the virtual idol "Hatsune Miku" held a concert in Shanghai. The netizen Da Lizi, who is keen to graft original songs to "Hatsune Miku", was still a student party at the time. Even though he knew there was nothing on stage, he still gritted his teeth. Purchased the front row tickets for more than 1,000 yuan: "From character, image, song, dance to MV, fans can deeply participate in it. It is this sense of equality that makes me feel particularly obsessed."
Han Siqi, a doctoral student at the School of Art at Peking University and an independent film and television commentator, believes that "fans" real or virtual idols are interlinked to some extent, and their basic psychology includes projected identity, value compensation, projected emotional fantasy, and "cultivation" achievements. Sense and so on.
"Young people in the two-dimensional era desire sterile aesthetics. They tend to choose virtual characters who will not let them down, so that they will be safer in emotional identification. As for whether the idol is true or false, it is not so important." Han Siqi said.
Nowadays, virtual idol fan groups are becoming a new force that cannot be ignored. A report on virtual idols in 2019 shows that fans’ participation in virtual KOL (key opinion leader, also commonly known as “net celebrity”) content is about 3 times that of real KOL. Times. On social media, real KOLs need to post 4 times the amount of content of virtual KOLs to get the same number of fans. In terms of the efficiency of capturing fans, virtual idols have already outperformed real stars.
Virtual characters are mirror images of reality?
At present, as technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality continue to mature, the level of realism of virtual idols is rapidly increasing. They have been upgraded from the early cartoon images to the three-dimensional images of today, and their distance with the public is also getting closer. Like whether artificial intelligence can replace real people, discussions about whether virtual idols can be accepted by most people and whether they can become the norm in the real world have become more and more heated.
In Chai Jinxiang's view, the virtual world is a mirror image of the real world. All singers and internet celebrities in real life can exist in the virtual world in the future. However, there are also views that despite the current technological advancement, virtual idols still have unavoidable shortcomings when compared to real idols. Especially in terms of looks, movements, and interactive capabilities, some viewers will still feel that they are "reliable."
According to Sun Jiashan, a scholar of the Chinese Academy of Art, the popularity of virtual idols has its basis in reality. The celebrity system and celebrity culture have undergone a major cycle of generational changes. The new generation of young people is eager to participate in the creation of the star’s image and influence the production process of entertainment industry products. This kind of phenomenon is not unique to our country, and similar cultural phenomena are also happening around the world.
For example, Sun Jiashan, such as the overseas virtual idol "Lil Miquela", is set to be a Los Angeles girl with a "ball head". It is cut with ordinary bangs, has teeth between the teeth, and has small freckles. It shares its work and life like a girl on social networking sites. It will speak out for minority groups, which makes it have millions of fans. The emergence of "Lil Miquela" satisfies the needs of minority groups to complete collective and imaginative identification by participating in the creation of virtual idols, and also provides emotional outlets and voice channels for related groups.
"In the final analysis, whether it is a virtual idol or a real idol, what really attracts people is the values and culture behind it." Chen Yan, the founder of Next Generation Culture and has many years of experience in the operation and promotion of real idols, believes that in the current social context , Virtual idol is a brand new thing, it makes social culture more diverse and rich.
Han Siqi believes that with the development of the Internet and technology, the relationship between virtual and reality will become less and less distinct. Instead, they will penetrate and influence each other, and they will continue to interact with each other. In the future, the world will become more real and illusory. (Published in "Ban Yue Tan" Issue 14 of 2020)