The IDOL project seeks an escape from loneliness and the outer world through virtualization and the phenomenon of parasocial relationships. The central figure of the project is a virtual Japanese singer Hatsune Miku, who has an audience of thousands of fans all over the world and tours with her live concerts, but who is a computer program – a voice bank for recording songs. The fan-compiled image of Miku is fluid and changes according to the needs of each fan, and her unattainability and perfection in everything is, on the one hand, a ticket to a personal utopia, and on the other hand, a trap into which every sophisticated and overly attached Idol fan risks falling.

Darya Arbuzova

The objects of the exhibition “IDOL”, created with the help of neural networks, are like the transitional states of a transformation of the virtual singer, her true shapeless essence of the digital program. Resembling a network of nerve cells and transparent jellyfish simultaneously, these structures are susceptible to the currents of thought and impulses of the IDOL fan. The delicate glass and plastic elements seem to be non-man-made, independent organisms. The exhibition is reminiscent of a biological environment, but at the same time the grace and fragility of the objects refer to the unrealistic ideality of IDOL. 

In the center there is a shining altar with an oval opening – it is both a screen with the idol and a mirror in which the viewer’s desires are manifested. The shape of the altar echoes the silhouette of the wings of an angel, whose image is often used in anime culture as an aesthetic element. The wings are covered with thin glass ray feathers, which turn into spikes when approached, reminding of the ambivalence of IDOL – of beauty and danger, the tragedy of the unattainability of the ideal.

The phenomenon of a virtual idol has been known since the 1980s and is widespread in Japan, South Korea, and China. In the 2020s, this phenomenon is gaining more development and popularity with new developments in virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

Curator: Nadya October

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