Vancouver Island 2009: Judsen Garside / Pseudo Pop Stars

Pseudo Pop Stars

Judsen Garside

The year 2009 seems so far away to the younger generation that I am glad to be a part of. We will use up one third of our lives just to get there. Out there are aspiring musicians who get to wallow in the mire of agents, producers, record companies, and recording contracts. One hell of a hassle for someone who only wants to play music. Watch what looks at you

My proposition is to use the technology and other resources around us so that we can become our own agents who sign deals, our own producers who put up money for the record, and so on. It would be great not to have to interface with a loudmouth agent who always calls you "baby" and chews gum at the same time and annoys you to death with those gawd-awful guffaw’s.

Meanwhile...a couple of years ago, in Japan, there was an astonishing use of the new digital medium. Both the internet and digital TV were used in the making and production of a virtual rock star. Kyoko Date was thus created. This female virtual rock star apparently wrote her own songs, and then sang them on national television. She quickly amassed a huge fanatical following and was Queen of the rock world. In one form or another.

We also have a virtual personality right here in good old Canada. If any of you out there have watched the CBC recently, you would have found a chippy, full of pep, foul-mouthed, pink bodied, dog faced, female person named Coquette. She is always rambling on about how that person acts too much like a pansy, or how an upcoming show has an extremely weak plot line, yada, yada, yada. She has her own segment that lasts for an almost unbearable thirty seconds. And quite often there is a human celebrity along with her.

There are some flaws in her production, though. If a person looks closely enough they can see that the human is not always looking directly at Coquette. More often than not they are looking too much towards the camera, or above her, or below her or what would seem to be behind her. We have only to develop this technology further until we will not need to have human actors anymore. Our actions will be too flawed, our voices will vary too much, and our skin will be too oily and shiny for properly-lit sets.

What would happen if we combined both of these technologies?

An average schmoe could sit down at a personal computer station, load up their version of "So, You’ve Decided To Become A Pop Celebrity Today! 1.5.3." In this program, the human user will log on and the program will provide a list of options. In this list, there will be individual columns for all aspects of the virtual personality-to-be. These columns will include: Head Type, Body Type, Clothes Style, Voice Style, Instruments, Music Style, Song Style, and the list goes on.

An example: I would like to have a dragon's body with the head of a 15 year old girl who plays all of the instruments in a five piece banjo orchestra. This personality would also take care of all the public relations, contract deals, recording, and touring. You would just sit around like an inert lump of matter watching your bank balance go up.

So, in ten years time we could potentially have an entire race of humans competing to make a bigger and better pop celebrity. All of the television programs and the Internet would be run by pseudo people. We are the ones who need the money and prestige. The identities we create don’t, for one simple fact--they are not in a real world in our sense of the expression. They are in our computers, and therefore don’t really exist in a real state that is relevant to our existence. They are commodities to be bought and sold by the corporate sector that is now everyone and everything.

Will the identities we create end up in a pseudo-virtual void that resembles the television program Reboot? I for one am not sure. All we can do is sit and play video games for ten years until the unforeseen actually happens.