Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the SEM 2026 Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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Click on the session name for a detailed view (with participant names and abstracts).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 29th Aug 2026, 08:11:47pm EDT
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Daily Overview |
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08I: Between Humans and Machines: Technology, Performance, and Musical Imagination in East Asia Location: Persimmon | |
| Presentation 1 | |
A Cyborg Destruction: Feminine Vocality, Techno-Pessimism, and Death of Humanity 1: Colby College; 2: Davidson College In the seminal “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985), Donna Haraway argues that technological advancement ushers in a utopian age that dissolves the categories of race and gender and the distinctions between man, machine, and nature. Post-bubble Japanese media, whether psychological sci-fi anime or vocaloid music, repudiates this stance (Uno 2008); as time goes on, the cyborg becomes less human but more feminized and more racially marked (Eidsheim 2019). This paper considers the music of Vocaloid utaite (cover singer) Ado and her harsh vocal, lyrical, and visual critiques of the Japanese idol industry as a case in which technological advancement reifies and exacerbates the social, gendered, and material conditions that produced it. We explore cybernetic women as a hyper-feminized, posthuman subject in Japanese popular culture by drawing parallels between Ado’s recordings and sci-fi anime Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Serial Experiments Lain (1998). We argue that the fetishized feminine figure, modified by the male gaze and the manipulation of the voice and physical body by technology (Black 2012, Lam 2016), ushers in a society in which intimate, sexual relationships between humans are replaced with parasocial relationships between male and machine (Aoyagi 2005). Ado, and other Vocaloid singers like yama and Kenshi Yonezu, comprise a system wherein humans imitate machines emulating humans, all while losing their humanness in the process. Vocaloid singers’ voices become subjects of fetishization: as the ultimate site to fulfill a fantasy about female bodies, and as a cyborgian projection of the futile future of humanity. | |
