we are gamers.

Each week, my friends Micah, Stephen, Vanessa and myself come together to play a game. The game played is different with each visit. It can be enjoyed on a TV as we all bundle up on the couch and scream at each other with each quick movement. The game can also be played on a game board littered with dice and character sheets as we sit Indian-style on the floor, breathlessly anticipating the outcome of what each die roll will be. Every game carves its own story and we, as the players, interact with the story in unique ways. Outside of the game’s format, however, we are only ordinary young adults; each with a story inside, waiting to erupt through a virtual medium of spontaneous and random circumstances.

Stephen, the planner, game master and all-around strategist.

Micah, the philosopher, story-teller and humorist. 

Vanessa, the down-to-earth player, the sympathizer and feminine opinion.

Matt, the tag-along, grunt worker and optimist.

2D and 3D

WB: Tungsten  f/4.5  ISO 1600  1/60s  40mm

WB: Daylight  f/4  ISO 400  1/3200s  32mm

twitch.

It's been a while since I last posted anything for the intent of blogging lately, so I'll just cut the fluff and get to blogging.

If you haven't heard, the last two and a half weeks have given birth to a revolutionary new phenomenon. Someone began an online game of Pokemon Red in which any user that submitted an action command to the host site's chat box could control the character on the screen. You type "up", the game makes your character move up. Type in "start", and you open the menu. It's a very basic concept for getting a community to enjoy a video game together.

Then it exploded. Twitch Plays Pokemon has become one of the most trafficked websites on the Internet lately, and for good reason. At time of writing,  over 38 million users have viewed the live feed since its beginnings a couple weeks ago, and tens of thousands of people are constantly giving the game commands to decipher. It's like having a gigantic room filled with over 50,000 patrons inside, shouting orders for a single man holding a Gameboy Color to put into his game. And the man obeys flawlessly, no matter how repetitious or ridiculous the commands may seem.

If you want to catch up to how a majority of the playthrough in Pokemon Red went, you can read it here. The game was finally beaten at 1am on Saturday morning, which was just yesterday. Here are its final statistics as far as game time and viewing traffic. Today began the playthrough of Pokemon Crystal, which has already developed its own unique story.

Now, that's all a lot of information, but what I want to illustrate from it is that Twitch Plays Pokemon is actually a really cool idea. For me and my friends, we're not among the 50,000 people crammed into a room, trying to control a game that is simultaneously being controlled by 49,999 other players. My friends and I are on the outside in a noise-proofed room, watching the game screen as the Pokemon trainer continues to talk to the same people, run into the same walls and fight Level 3 Rattata with a Level 60 Pidgeot. We're the viewers, appreciating the personality and the story that has emerged from the collaboration of so many people that love this classic game.

A couple of my favorite highlights from Pokemon Red are AATTVV the Venemoth, affectionately nicknamed the All-Terrain Venemoth, and Digrat, the Raticate that knew the move Dig. Dig transports you out of caves and buildings, which Digrat was very good at doing at the most inconvenient times. However, I'm not a supporter of the whole Pidgeot is a Bird Jesus thing or the All-Knowing Helix Fossil. Just personal opinion.

Now, only 6 hours into the new game, we have Lasergator the Totodile (since its Leer attack looks like CRAZY LASER ACTION), Admiral ADiiiiiiih the Sentret (nickname is just ADiiiiiiih) and Oxxy Ozzworm the Caterpie (its nickname is OXXOZ). Oh, and Pidgey, but at this point is seems like people are just trying to make it another Bird Jesus, which is dumb. Hopefully it gets released. All these Pokemon are in possession of a trainer named AJDNNW, which roughly translates to AJ Down.

Pokemon games have always been about the trainer. The trainer finds the Pokemon he likes, catches it, and then trains it with moves that he likes to use. The trainer calls the shots, and Pokemon are his property. That is how every game goes, as each trainer makes his own identity through how he raised his Pokemon. TPP (Twitch Plays Pokemon), on the other hand, completely reverses those roles. How can a trainer made up of thousands of personalities tell his own story? He doesn't. The Pokemon do. The Pokemon are the stars of the show now, and the trainer is just a meat puppet that interacts with the humans because the Pokemon can't do it themselves.

TPP also gives rise to a new genre of gaming altogether, called group-playing. I personally don't know if group-playing was "a thing" before TPP, but I know that is sure is a thing now. A game like Pokemon is the perfect platform to play this style on, too, since it's all strategic and not time-based at all. Imagine if the same concept was practiced on a Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog game. There would literally be no progression thanks to the limits of the game. Pokemon allows you to take your time, train, nickname things every once in a while, tragically release your Charmeleon from your team and explore a giant world.

After Pokemon Crystal is beaten, what happens next? Pokemon Emerald? Or will there be a new saga introduced to the group-play mode? I find it so very fascinating, seeing what happens when so many people take hold of one avatar. A game that was meant to be played alone has taken leaps and bounds we never would have dreamed because of the minds of thousands.

Daylight

ISO 100  20mm  f/3.5  1/1000

ISO 1000  40mm  f/4.5  1/125

diva.

Another essay I wrote for my English class, this time about the Vocaloid program. I already tried writing an in-depth article about this topic in a blog post a while ago, but I feel this one is much better.

Ones, Zeroes and A-Flats

            On August 31, 2007, a 16-year-old girl was born. Her birth began the most curious age of pop culture revolution in multiple countries. She entered into multiple homes and recording studios to give people the voice they never had. The girl, Hatsune Miku, came to life. Her music has topped music charts. She has performed multiple concerts in Japan and America to thousands of people. Her popularity and talent have all been thanks to one simple tool: a computer program called Vocaloid. Hatsune Miku exists as a musical computer program that artists can use to insert vocal tracks into instrumental compositions to create a pop song, or any other genre of music. Her popularity as a program and an idol has exploded since her creation over six years ago and continues to grow, along with other voice styles that sing and dance alongside her. Fans of this vocal innovation quickly assume that the fad of a virtual pop star began with Miku herself. The concept and ideas behind the Vocaloid computer program, however, have been evolving some years before Miku’s introduction into pop culture.

            The idea of a virtual singing artist has been around since the 1960s. Many bands were practicing with synthesizers in their studio work. The band ELO became popular from their computer-sounding vocals. HAL, the space station computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey sang Daisy Bell. Many technicians have mixed digital and vocal sounds together to make new sounds; however, the result has always sounded more robotic than real. Making a computer reproduce the sound of an orchestra instrument has been accomplished, with fine-tuning upgrades being made constantly. The most elusive sound to digitally recreate has been and probably always will be the human voice.

            The first fruitful attempt to find the bridge between human and robot sound came from Pompeu Fabra University in Spain (Werde). The way the program works is by capturing a singer’s voice by having the singer repeat a large list of lingual expressions, and then using the program to give musical pitch to those expressions. Articulations such as vibrato and pitch-bending can then be inserted into the lyrics to add more human-like qualities. This operation, backed by the Yamaha Corporation, unveiled its fruits at the German Musikmesse music fair in 2003. The demonstrations of this new Vocaloid program stirred every music producer and mixer at the fair. What they heard from the Vocaloid program was the first step toward real human sounds produced by an electric machine. A Vocaloid-sung version of “Amazing Grace” flew around the Internet. Musicians eagerly awaited the release of the program for public use in January of 2004.

            The birth of the Vocaloid program was highly anticipated, but wasn’t as popular as its creators had hoped. The first two Vocaloid programs were produced by a British-based company called Zero Limited and were named Leon and Lola (Oppenneer). The programs were considered “Virtual Soul Vocalists” since their original purpose, their programmers thought, would be as back-up singers to the big names that the public already listened to (Werde). Producers for bands such as the Gorillaz and The Automaters agreed to experiment with the program in their music. The Vocaloid program won Electronic Musician magazine’s Editor’s Choice award in 2005 for Most Innovative Product (“Vocaloid”). In 2006, Lola’s voice was used in the soundtrack for the popular Japanese movie Paprika. The idea of a computer singing like a human was an attractive one, to say the least.

            One independent company, Crypton Future Media (CFM), jumped into the Vocaloid scene. Their first program, named MEIKO, was released in November 2004. Before, the Vocaloids had simply been voices to insert into a song; but with the release of the MEIKO program, an anime-style girl in a red dress donned the cover. The voice had been given a mascot. Initially, the character and the voice were meant to be by themselves. However, the fans of the program enjoyed the concept of the voice having a character behind it, and MEIKO saw a lot of success on the market. Two years later, CFM released another program similar to MEIKO called KAITO, being a male voice (and mascot) to balance the female one. KAITO did not see as much success as MEIKO did.

            With the fans fueling the flames of Vocaloid’s popularity, CFM decided to take another step in the industry. They wanted to produce another Vocaloid program to build on the hype that MEIKO and KAITO had created. As CFM held auditions for new voices to capture for their next Vocaloid program, they ran into the problem that singers were afraid the program would be merely copies of their own singing style and ultimately replace the real singer (Yuhana). The company decided to shift their focus from trying to capture the voice of real, professional singers and instead focused on Japanese voice actors. These actors were in the habit of changing their voices every day for their different roles, so creating a unique voice was a perfect job for the voice actors to fill. Saki Fujita rose to the occasion, and recorded her voice for the next upgrade to the Vocaloid program.

            Hatsune Miku. 16 years old. 158 centimeters tall and weighs 42 kilograms. Her singing genre is Idol Pop and Dance music. Her suggested tempo is at 70 to 150 beats per minute, and her musical range is from A3 to E5. Her “character item” is a leek (Oppenneer). On August 31, 2007, a program, this time under the new series name of Vocaloid 2, was born with physical and emotional attributes. The emotion, technique and realism of the program’s “voice” were astounding to those that first heard it. Miku’s fan-made music quickly flooded the Internet on Nico Nico Douga (Japan’s video-sharing website) and YouTube. Behind her followed more Vocaloid personalities such as Kagamine Rin, Kagamine Len and Megurine Luka. MEIKO and KAITO were resurrected from their mediocre sales run and ascended to join their fellow mascots.

            Many bands attribute their popularity to the voice of this digital pop diva. Ryo was an illustrator and amateur synthesizer that began posting his songs starring Miku to Nico Nico Douga. As his songs gained more views, he joined himself to other illustrators and musicians that had the same love for using Vocaloids in their work. The band supercell was formed (Santos). “Vocaloid technology doesn’t require one to worry about the range and the key for the person singing,” Ryo explains. “It may be a difficult thing to understand for those who just listen, but I sense unlimited possibilities with the Vocaloid technology” (qtd. in Santos). In another interview, Ryo tells how Vocaloid changed his outlook on music. “I always remember the uplifting feeling I got when I discovered Vocaloid and the new ways it allowed me to create music. That may be the reason and it’s what I can never forget” (qtd. in Jessieface).

            Bridging the gap between the digital and the real has been a goal since the birth of the computer. Voice, the most difficult sound style to replicate digitally, had always been so elusive until now. The Vocaloid program has taken its steps from back-up singing to “performing” on stage as a pop diva through a process of approaches from many angles. Ultimately, it was the fans of the program and the Vocaloid’s new purpose as a singer with its own personality and style that changed the way the program has been developed since 2007. It has also changed the way people create music, implementing a voice with flawless characteristics and pitch. The age of the virtual pop diva has begun.

Works Cited

Jessieface, Kay. “Interview with Ryo from Supercell.” JaME World. JaME World. 9

Nov. 2011. Web. 3 Feb. 2014. <http://www.jame-world.com/us/articles-80560-

interview-with-ryo-from-supercell.html>

Oppenneer, Mark. “Seeking Hatsune Miku.” Seeking Hatsune Miku. N.p., 19 Jan. 2011.

Web. 3 Feb. 2014. <http://seekingmiku.wordpress.com/>

Santos, Carlos. “Interview: Ryo from Supercell.” Anime News Network. Anime News

Network. 21 June 2011. Web. 3 Feb. 2014. <http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2011-06-21/interview-ryo-from-

supercell>

“Vocaloid.” Yamaha. Yamaha. Web.  3 Feb. 2014.

            <http://www.yamaha.com/about_yamaha/research/vocaloid/>

Werde, Bill. “Could I Get That Song in Elvis, Please?” The New York Times. The New

York Times. 23 Nov. 2003. Web. 3 Feb. 2014.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/arts/music/23WERD.html>

Yuhana, Okada. “Until There Was ‘Hatsune Miku’.” ITmedia. ITmedia. 22 Feb. 2008.

Web. 3 Feb. 2014. <http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/0802/22/news013.html>

Portraiture

Broad

Short

Butterfly

Split

Loop

Rembrandt

Stephen