Reconfiguring Voice in The End: Virtuosity, Technological Affordance and the Reversibility of Hatsune Miku in the Intermundane

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the technological affordances of vocal production software in performance through a case study of Shibuya Keīchirō's The End (2012). In the performance of this ‘humanless opera’, desires for pliability and fantasies of control are realised through the affordances of a singing voice synthesis software known as Vocaloid. By reflecting on The End's thematic focus on death and existentialism and on notions of vocal virtuosity, and by exploring the socio-technical processes by which the protagonist, virtual pop star Hatsune Miku, was constructed, the article provides an alternative narrative to vocal production and intermundane collaboration as it relates to the fluid and reversible configurations between voices, bodies and technologies in performance.