The World Is Mine

An icon of futuristic pop culture, the turquoise-haired Hatsune Miku is the most famous virtual singer in the world. Her Vocaloid-generated voice performs at concerts as a singing and dancing hologram-just how she appeared as official backup for Lady Gaga. The phenomenon of Hatsune Miku proves that you do not have to have a body or soul to inspire the masses: fans not only write the lyrics and music for her songs, but they also provide their bodies. Given that talented fans are constantly playing her, she will never die. She is a creative provocateur. A collective fantasy. Social glue. She is the future. Ann Oren enters the fandom world of Hatsune Miku, taking on the identity not so much of the hologram star herself as of a Japanese fan cosplayer. She examines the performative nature of cosplaying (dressing up and playing the role of fictional characters), a hybrid space where reality blurs into fetishistic fantasies and pop culture clichés. Oren's trials and tribulations in the fictional world of Hatsune Miku-told with the help of songs, vague erotic episodes, and encounters with characters with a mysterious ontological status-resemble the adventures of a modern Alice in a virtual Wonderland.