Starheart is a Musician, Composer, Filmmaker, and VTuber who has been doing live performances in VR over the past couple of years. She started making music videos on Halloween of 2022, and realized that she needed a persistent avatar. VR had already been creating a safe space for her to anonymously experiment with and discover her identity as a transgender woman, and she debuted her VTubing persona of Starheart on April 18, 2023 with a music video called “Elsewhere.” Then three days later she opened for Naku on Phia’s The Virtual Reality Show, which opened up opportunities to play at over 40 different music venues over the past year.
VR has opened up many new opportunities for Starheart to discover the core essence of her identity and new modes of creative expression as an artist, musician, and filmmaker. Starheart is her name and persona, but it’s much more than a character. In fact, she told The Metaculture magazine’s K. Guillory last year that “Becoming Starheart has been integral for finding my musical voice, and is the most authentic version of myself as a performer I’ve ever been.”
I picked up on this thread to hear more about Starheart’s creative journey into VR through her music videos, musical performances, filmmaking explorations and creation of her authentic identity beyond her physical body. Starheart’s “I Still Love You” ended up winning the Best Music Video this year at Raindance, and this episode will be kicking off a series of interviews that I’ll be doing with Raindance Immersive artists to get a better sense of what’s been happening at the frontiers of virtual culture within the social VR platform of VRChat.
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So today's episode, I'm gonna be diving into some of my coverage from Raindance Immersive 2024, where there was 40 different experiences and videos that are being featured, really highlighting what's happening in the social VR platform of VRChat and Resonate and Engage had a few experiences. but there's so much creativity and artistic expression that's happening with these live events and performances and they have this whole section of people who are making short films and music videos within the context of vr chat now and so yeah just a huge shout out to all the curators of rain dance including maria joe hunting fangs trophy gender and joe lee who did an amazing job of putting all these experiences together and hosting a number of different events over the weekend over the past month so I'm going to be diving into about a dozen or so conversations from different artists and creators who were taking part in Radiance this year. But it's also a great opportunity to just kind of check in to see what's happening within the context of VRChat. VRChat is one of the most thriving social VR platforms that has concurrency numbers that are over 100,000 people sometimes. So lots of just amazing stuff that's happening. This episode 1400 wanted to feature the story of Starheart, who makes music videos and is a music performer doing live performances within the context of VRChat and is doing VTubing as well, who really discovered a lot of the aspects of her identity within the context of VR. VR allowed her to really experiment with different forms of feminine expression and also allowed her to explore her creativity and her voice and to do singing performances within the context of different performance venues and small community events that are happening in VRChat. So we do a really broad survey of not only what's happening with VTubing and moving from 2D to 3D with VRChat, but also her own musical journey and creating music videos within the context of VRChat. She actually ended up winning the best music video at Rain Dance 2024. And a real deep dive into identity and identity expression and what's it mean to be able to transcend the limitations of what you look like physically and to really explore different aspects of your identity that have nothing to do with what you look like, but can get into both your avatar representation, but also gender representations, identity representations, and the art that you're creating within the context of these immersive experiences. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Starhart happened on Wednesday, June 19th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:46.274] Starheart: Hey everybody, I'm Starheart. I make music videos and I perform live in VR. So I sing and play piano and direct original music videos and covers and working on debuting on Twitch. So I can live stream and kind of take what I'm doing, you know, in quote unquote person and bringing it more to a flat screen traditional VTuber experience. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack.
[00:03:18.517] Kent Bye: Great. Yeah, we'll be diving into all of that throughout the course of this conversation. But yeah, I always like to ask my guests to give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into VR.
[00:03:28.544] Starheart: Absolutely. So my VR journey started all the way back in 2015 with DK2. And I had friends back in senior year of high school who got the DK2. I think his dad got the DK2. And I was like, oh, I really want to try VR. So I went over to his place. We tried Elite Dangerous. I was immediately captivated. This was right before I went to music school and I did not have the space or time and kind of forgot about VR for many years and didn't try VR again until GDC 2019 when I got to try Moss. The developers there were giving a demo. And that kind of reignited my interest, but I still didn't end up pulling the trigger and getting the whole setup until I discovered VRChat, which finally pushed me over the edge to buy the PC and get the Valve Index and try to explore this world.
[00:04:27.748] Kent Bye: Right. And so as you start to dive into the different communities in VRChat, maybe you just talk a bit about the process of VTubing. There's different debuts of debuting your avatar, you're singing and talking and you're about to have your Twitch debut. And so maybe kind of walk through this process. At what point did you realize that you wanted to go down this path of becoming a VTuber?
[00:04:51.892] Starheart: So I discovered 2D traditional live... Traditional. It's a very new industry. But I discovered the live 2D world just on YouTube when I was watching a bunch of anime stuff back in the pandemic or 2020. And I was just utterly captivated that real-time facial motion capture was already here with people's phones. I was always fascinated with that type of technology and I was super interested in the possibilities because I'm a big fan of Vocaloid and seeing some of those live performance concerts. I really resonated with the combination of the art expression enhancing or extending out from the musical artist that actually composes and arranges these songs. I'm like, what if I could do that in real time? And I saw a video on YouTube talking about the club scene in VR and how there's like 80 people dancing with full body motion capture with live DJs. And I'm like, wait, that's possible? People are doing that today? So it had been several years since I actually had done live performance. And I can go more into that in a bit. But I had been very focused on being a full-time independent game composer. So I kind of wrote off being a performer. But then discovering that there was this avenue that instead of playing bar scenes and stuff to try to get noticed, what if you could play in these virtual environments? And what if I could be a character? And so my songs and my ideas could extend just beyond my physical self. That was incredibly appealing. So in VRChat, I just started playing piano and singing for people just in public lobbies or just with friends if we're hanging out. And ended up getting really excited by some of the tools, the filmmaking tools, having a video background as well. And just trying to experiment, like, what can I do with this? And location scouting, you know, in real life, location scouting is a huge pain in the butt. In VR, you know, there's all these incredibly beautiful environments that you don't have to worry about blocking off people from walking into your shack. You just make a new instance. And the flexibility of exploring and setting up and it all being from home kind of allowed me to start bringing these experiences or these ideas I had in my head to life. So yeah, it was a complete, it turned into an obsession very, very quickly of like, how far can I push this? And explore the 3D side of VTubing. Like a lot of the VTuber community is in 2D. And I think a lot of VRChat creators that stream and make videos tend to lean more on the comedy side, which totally makes sense because a lot of it's very janky and it lends itself super well to that. So I wanted to see, okay, how much can I push the sort of the more legit side of this? Like, can I make it look like an animated film at one point? And what are the limitations to get there?
[00:08:12.878] Kent Bye: Hmm. Yeah. There's so many different strands that we'll be unpacking there from like the V tubing, the music, the music videos, the performance that you've been doing and the identity expression with the avatar and everything. But you had mentioned something around the Vocaloid, which I imagine is some sort of like synthesizer for the voice. Maybe you could maybe elaborate on what is Vocaloid?
[00:08:33.905] Starheart: Yeah, so Vocaloid is actually relatively older software that Yamaha makes. And it was originally targeted towards musicians. It was just a plug-in for your DAW, like Logic, Ableton, whatever. And it was a vocal synthesizer. However, what I don't think anyone anticipated was the box art on these synths. They created these characters to be the face of these different voices. One of being Hatsune Miku, who became known by the whole world. Even if people don't understand her, people will recognize her. You know, her design is very iconic. And I think it was a natural progression from things like gorillas and... Virtual music didn't start with Vocaloid. I think a lot of people are like, oh, this is the beginning. This has been a long iterative journey, but this was a really cool stage for a producer who didn't necessarily, they weren't able to sing on their tracks, but they wanted to add a literal element to their compositions with lyrics. So being able to express their thoughts through these different vocal synthesizers became an incredibly powerful way to communicate their ideas. And it built up a community where, you know, a decade ago they started holding massive bigger than clubs, like stadium concerts with these holograms where a team will take some of the most popular tracks that were made with these characters, get body actors to do the motion capture, face animators to give the characters a lot of expression and outfit designers and effects like particle people. And they come together to build this show of music that people just produced in their bedroom. I loved that. It felt like this indie success story that anyone, and it mirrors the rest of the music industry with everybody making music from their bedroom now.
[00:10:43.735] Kent Bye: Yeah. Well, as I was going through your videos on YouTube, I think there's actually kind of a nice progression going back to Halloween of 2022. Yeah. You posted your first video of Ghosts First Halloween, which the first couple of videos are really emphasizing your musical composition where you're making these tracks and then creating associated music videos for those exploring this combination of having a a piece of music, but also the way that the virtual worlds and the way that you scout and create a whole story or a vibe through the visuals. And so I'd love to have you kind of walk through the beginnings of your development of this VTubing personality through the refining of both the music composition, but also the production of videos within the context of VR. And then we'll pick it up from there, but I'd love to hear about your first foray into using VRChat as a way to shoot these music videos for the music that you're creating.
[00:11:38.157] Starheart: Yeah, so I originally, like my first video being the Halloween video, I had that track just sitting on a hard drive for like two years. And it wasn't going to go in a game that I worked on. It wasn't going to, I'm like, if I just post it on SoundCloud, no one's going to listen to it. What if I made a video? What if I made just like a silly, goofy video of like running around in cool virtual Halloween worlds? And then I had this idea in my head, I wanted this little ghost character to play the drum kit because one of the things that I did with this track was just absolutely annihilate the, like I squashed, distorted the drum kit. I just pictured this little ghost, this adorable little ghost just going bonkers on the drum kit. I wasn't able to pull off that with my knowledge at that time. But it came out of that image and that idea of just a kind of a nostalgic view of Halloween before I found it too spooky and scary. I don't do very well with horror, even though friends forced me to go into horror worlds. But yeah, I like the dress-up part. I like... Some might say the more surface level part of it, but I really appreciated that. And so I thought, oh, this will just be a low pressure way to put out this song that I've just had. And it was also just really cool to experiment with the tools. So, okay, like, how do I film myself here? And so I remember reshooting the entire video because I got the footage back and then I discovered someone made an update to the world that I went in with better lighting. So then I reshot it in their new world because I'm like, oh, I don't want to show off their old version of their world. So let me let me shoot it again. And it was such a quick process. But yeah, that first shot that I did was just me. I think I cut it from the video, but it's just me walking towards this haunted mansion. And I did it over and over and over. I'm like learning. OK, oh, my trackers glitch here. Let me see how I can fix that to try to make it faster. feel very consistent because all those little glitches annoy the crap out of me. They take me out of the story. So already I was trying to tell an immersive story, a story that doesn't take people out of the experience. And then from there, I'm like, okay, well, that was super fun. I have this other track that's just been sitting around that I had this image of this sci-fi bathtub where this girl gets off her terrible soul-sucking job and decides to just immerse her head in this bathtub. And then her imagination goes on this surreal journey through all these weird worlds. That was also super easy to do in VR, where it would have been impossible with my animation skill set at the time to do that myself. Or if you do it hand animated, you know, it'd take a year to do all the environments and the character animation. But it's like, okay, this is a way that I can actually make videos super, super quickly. So that's where it started. But then the third video was Unaware, which was one of my favorite songs to cover by Alan Stone. And I wanted to show what I was doing for other people just in VRChat, just playing piano and singing for people. I wanted to show that on video and post a cool cover of a song I loved in a world that I love that I spent a lot of time in. So I invited all my friends to come see the performance and I had seen a jazz performance in VR. I saw someone post on Twitter. And somehow I got in. It was this live jazz show, and it was one of the first exposures that the Western side of VRChat had to the JP scene. The Japanese scene has really low latency internet, and so they can actually play music together. They can perform live as a band. So there's pop groups, rock groups, jazz groups, funk, whatever. And I didn't know any of that. So seeing three musicians play together was mind-blowing. I'm like, every single discovery just got me more and more and more excited to explore this world and push the boundaries. I got to perform. I want to show what I'm doing with the world. So recorded that, and that actually got a little bit more traction than the other videos that I had posted up to that point. And I think putting a voice to things makes it a lot more relatable and it's a cover, so it's easier for a wider audience to connect with it. But yes, being able to share the live performance side opened up a lot of doors. And at that point, I'm like, okay, I need a consistent character across these videos because the first three videos had three different avatars. Even though I love the flexibility of being able to be whoever you wanted, I wanted something that people could connect the video to video even if i change genres between videos i wanted that consistent personality so i looked very extensively through uh i'm a huge fan of anime art i follow so many artists on twitter and i buy way too many art books so i was like constantly keeping an eye out for an artist that was available open for commissions and would be interested in this i found nebufay And we worked together to design Star Heart going back and forth for a month or two until we came to this design.
[00:17:40.100] Kent Bye: Nice. And yeah, so you debuted Star Heart on April 13th, 2023 in the video Elsewhere. And we were recounting a latent fall and winter of 2022 in December when you aired the Unaware and then you had a Merry Christmas song. And so at that point, you had said that you were really inspired by this idea of the NPR tiny desk and the little discussion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So before you posted the video in December, were you already playing these kind of informal live performances to your friends? I was. Or was that kind of your first time? Okay, so you were already doing that.
[00:18:13.430] Starheart: That was the first formal, I would say, first concert. The other times I would perform would be very impromptu. I would ask people, hey, anyone want to hear some music? Because my first journey into VR, I didn't really participate in the club scene. I'm not... I wasn't a big club-going person before. I think I didn't have enough context to appreciate a lot of the electronic dance genres. Now I have a huge, massive appreciation for all these different genres, the more that I've gotten into that scene. But at the time, I'm like, I don't think that's my scene. I would go into just chill worlds and talk with friends just for hours and hours. And I do call myself a mere dweller or an ex mere dweller. Like I found it so stimulating to just talk to people from around the world and to hear their experiences and that level of anonymity to escape my own self. from real life was an amazing time. And yeah, I look back on those moments really fondly. And then I would just pull out the piano sometimes and play some music for people and just usually soft stuff and got a lot of good feedback. So I kept doing it.
[00:19:31.411] Kent Bye: When I've heard people talk about mirror dwelling, I usually hear it in the context of people looking at themselves in the mirror, really getting embodied into the virtual avatars. Is that what you mean? Is that you would be talking to people, but you would be talking to them through a mirror? Or maybe you could elaborate on what that means.
[00:19:46.157] Starheart: So mirror dwelling, basically in VR chat, very looked down upon by most people. But the idea is you're in this avatar, but you're not... always like looking down at your body because then you're not looking at your friends while you're talking to them. So mirrors kind of assist that lack of physicality where you can still see yourself and your movements being mirrored, but you're also making eye contact or being able to look at your friends while you're talking. So it's mainly identity and fashion and... Yeah, that's what I would say is the point of Mere Divine.
[00:20:30.150] Kent Bye: Okay. So it sounds like from the time that you started to post in October of 2022 up until like April 2023, when you debuted Starheart, you were kind of like in between different identities and then you settled upon this look and feel of Starheart, which you describe as like a astral demon anime character. Yeah. Yeah. With the music video of Elsewhere, maybe you could talk about this process of like, because it seems like in the VTubing, there's different debuts. There's like debuts of the look, there's debut talking, debut live stream, which apparently you're working on and moving towards in the context of doing the live stream. So maybe you could talk about this initial debut of Starhurt and what that was like.
[00:21:11.792] Starheart: So debuts come from the culture. I mean, it's very cross-cultural, but in the VTubing space, it comes from idol culture in Japan, where you debut a new personality or you debut a new music video. That's just basically sort of an exciting landmark event in your journey as a performer. So I called this my debut because I wanted to try to mark this as a significant moment. And I chose the song Elsewhere that I wrote because it encompassed this yearning to find this home and friends and... a community and and VR was that answer to this yearning. So I felt like it was this perfect song to transition from my old compositions to this new VR world. And, you know, I had tried to commission somebody to make an avatar and that didn't end up working out. So I just learned. I had a friend who was was really good at assembling avatars and I figured it out how to make the first model, not from scratch, but modifying a pre-existing model from Booth to fit as close as I could with my limited Unity skill set to that original design. So it was basically, I had one very, very specific concept in my head for the music video. The story wasn't very fleshed out, but it was, I want to show people that the world before... transitioning and discovering VR and discovering myself was black and white. And there's this old story of these people that had never seen color before, but that's their world. Like there was still bright, there was still dark, there was still texture and depth and hot and cold. And so it felt complete. But then when they saw color for the first time, suddenly their old world looked pretty bleak. And so visually, going from black and white to color and transitioning back and forth based on the moment of the song, whether it's the chorus versus the verse, the chorus was talking about this new world that I had found versus the verses were the yearning for that world. And so they were in black and white. So I loved that contrast and trying to express just how emotional this whole experience had been to finally get to perform again, to find my voice again, to have this creative outlet that felt unlimited, not by release dates, or by people's judgment, or my own judgment of myself. I was having fun for the first time making these videos and performing for people. So that was a crazy week, though. I pushed the release of Elsewhere to be right around the Monday or Tuesday before I... got to perform on Fia's virtual reality show because Naku had seen that Unaware video. I was like, oh, you want to be a guest artist on my show here with the virtual reality show? And so I was like, yeah, of course. And that opened the doors to the whole festival scene, the whole live performance community that I didn't even know about existed. And yeah, so that was an incredibly exciting week to debut not only the music video, but also a really big live performance.
[00:24:55.253] Kent Bye: Wow. Definitely sounds like a pretty significant turning point. And I came across an interview that you did with K. Guillory, also known as AemethVR. Yeah. You told them that Starheart really isn't a character, but that becoming Starheart has been integral for finding your musical voice. And it's the most authentic version of yourself as a performer that you've ever been. Maybe you could just elaborate a little bit more on this process of finding your own authentic musical voice by becoming Starheart.
[00:25:23.064] Starheart: So I think it's connected to a lot of different pieces, but mainly I had never felt like singing in real life was authentic. I've always been told that I've been a good singer and I got into music school on singing, but that was never my focus. I'm like, I just don't care. I'll try to learn to do this as well as I need to. But I was so much more interested in composition, like the creation and the craft and learning synthesis and orchestration and all the technology, because I felt like singing is just something that I do. but I can actually dive into this world of composing and I can create worlds, you know, well, you know, sonic worlds. And I connected with that so much more. But what I didn't realize was all the times that I had been singing before that were fun were like musical theater, where I played a character, I wasn't myself. So when I tried to perform as myself, I had no idea who that was. And I found it incredibly inauthentic. to perform. So I always kind of fell back on a fake version of myself. I was in a metal band for a couple of years, which was super fun, great experience to play live with the band and write a bunch of music. And I was going through a really dark time, so it's incredibly cathartic to write these darker lyrics. But that person wasn't me. It was an armor. It was a performance in the personality sort of way. And finally, I kind of got tired of that. So I stopped performing completely. So then I was like, well, I think video game music is my way of having this outlet because I can connect with these characters and these stories and I can express myself authentically through my instrumental music. Until I found virtual performance and I discovered that who I was in real life was also a mask and an amalgamation of other people's perceptions of who they thought I was and me trying to meet those expectations. But VR, being anonymous, and I told nobody that I was in VR for like six months. I didn't share any of those first videos with family or friends. I just wanted to post them on Twitter and share them with the people that I had met in this world because I wanted to see who I would be if no one knew who I was or if no one could have any prejudgments about what I would be like. Like, who am I when no one's looking? It was a really, really exciting question. And would people like? who I was if I was just myself with the way I wanted to be. So that was the journey to even finding like permission to myself to be this character or not even character, to be myself. And then Star Hurt was the extension of myself. This optimistic, like the demon part is what I call her an astral demon. She's a demon born from a star where she's been wandering this empty universe full of lots of strange worlds, just searching for her home. I had this like very ethereal image of this lonely wanderer. And a demon is a little bit of an outcast as well. So I felt not outcasted in my real life, but I felt like I didn't belong. So I think that played into the design. Hmm.
[00:29:15.119] Kent Bye: Yeah. Well, it sounds like that, you know, once you debuted Starheart and went on to Fia's show to do live performance, you said that you were opened up to a whole performance scene that was happening in your chat. Maybe you could elaborate a little bit more of like, where else did you have a chance to perform?
[00:29:31.656] Starheart: So I've done like over 40 performances since then in VR. And so clearly things really opened up. There's people with venues all across VRChat. People that have really small intimate venues or they're like coffee shop sort of style events or people sit on pillows and blankets and things like that. I love that vibe. Like NPR Tiny Desk, that's one of the things I loved about it was how personal... how intimate that was. And I think you go to a stadium show and it's super exciting to see a star that you love their music and stuff, but you don't necessarily feel that personally connected. And I think the best stars are still able to breach that distance of you and the 300 feet between you and them, but it is a different experience than sitting in, you know, within 10 feet of this person and them singing to you. And I loved that VRChat had that limit of 80 people because what that meant was this was at this point, this was not going to get less personal. These performances were always going to be very intimate. And that connection is what I love about my favorite artists. And seeing them not ignore their audience, but really talk to them, really see them. That's the joy of live music is to be there with them and share in their art and them telling you and communicating with you with their music. So, yeah, there's a great jazz club that I've performed at quite a few times now called the Jazz Lounge. And there's... the whole festival circuit or the furry community has incredible tech with hologram technology. And what I mean by that is they scan your avatar in a part of the world and then they can actually put that avatar in other instances. So when we exceed capacity, which I have mixed feelings about, right? As I just explained, but you know, we had two, 300 people come to these festivals They can't all fit in one instance. So they have the performers be this hologram on stage. And so the people in the other instances can at least see you and your movements and your avatar in real time. And it kind of looks like the imposter system that VRChat's implemented. And they're working on higher resolution versions of it. So that stuff is really, really cool. Yeah.
[00:32:08.558] Kent Bye: Great. So you did mention earlier about a transition and I saw that you had participated in some fundraisers for the Trans Lifeline and perform at the Trans Academy. Wondering if you could comment on engaging with the trans community within the context of VRChat.
[00:32:26.485] Starheart: I think it's a wonderful community. You know, being trans myself, I think it's innately interlinked with being star heart and this finding my voice again. It is the same story. Becoming star heart and figuring out who I am in real life as well. That those limits that mask in real life was part of that journey of gender and self-expression and feeling limited by how people perceived me in a very, very, very literal sense. So the freedom to be Starheart is quite hard to describe. And so that's why I've tried to express it through my videos and concerts and stuff. But I'm so, so excited to be a part of this community, especially Trans Academy and raising money for Trans Lifeline and Yeah, just trying to show people that it's possible. And it's not just your body in VR that you can express yourself with and your avatar, but it's the way you make art. And yeah.
[00:33:37.952] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, recounting your journey here, coming in in October of 2020 to Halloween, and then by that following April, you actually had designed and launched and debuted Starheart with this whole astral demon V-singer persona that you're putting out into the world. Yeah. So I'd love to hear any other reflections on what's it been like for you to use virtual reality as a medium and within the context of these communities to like explore your identity.
[00:34:09.560] Starheart: It's been everything. I never ever would have given myself permission to try anything feminine before VR. I was too concerned with what people thought of me. And I was too concerned with what I thought of myself too. I would have been too scared to try nail polish or too scared to a lot of the external expression stuff. And so a lot of that journey in 2022 was wearing feminine avatars just because it's as easy as clicking a button to change into a feminine avatar. I'm like, okay, do I like this because it's different or because I like girls or do I like this because... It feels right. And what does that mean? And what does it mean to not feel like a guy? And so it took months and months and months of just agonizing and writing like hundreds of pages in my notebook and my little notes doc on my computer to just like try to sort out all my feelings of what does this all mean? Who am I? And Would I be happy being a girly guy? And is that my journey? Or is my journey to be non-binary to try to escape the external perception constraints? Or is this actually just internal that I feel... like a feminine person in general. And I would like other people to see that externally. And so figuring that out was just so amazing to not have any risk of judgment from the people in my real life, but to just try it out in VR. and see how people looked at me and so yeah some of that conflict was in my my singing because singing is a very very personal like your voice is who you are in a lot of ways people judge you based on your accent people judge you based on the tone and so many aspects of your voice so elsewhere i didn't have that much experience singing in a more feminine register. So it's more of my older voice. It doesn't sound quite as specific as my voice did in the Unaware cover, but you can kind of hear the progression from the Unaware all the way to I Still Love You and some of my new stuff as well.
[00:36:42.352] Kent Bye: Yeah. So is this something that you were thinking about or exploring even before you got in VR? Or do you think VR gave you the permission to explore in a way that you had never even considered before?
[00:36:53.962] Starheart: Well, both. So I found a video by Straz, who I believe works at VRChat, made an incredible video. Right around the same time I discovered those videos about the club scene, I saw this video about exploring gender in VR. And I didn't know it at the time, but that's really one of the reasons that I decided to get into this, was to have that permission to explore. Because I think inside I knew that I wanted to explore this. I just didn't know how.
[00:37:33.683] Kent Bye: Well, I think when also we think about identity, it's also within the context of who we're in relationship to. So who's your identity at work? Who's your identity with your family, your social gatherings, your religious organizations? So there's many different contexts. And I feel like there's something about VRChat that provides this unique spot that allows for those fluidity of context for you to explore your identity and relationship to other people. people in those communities and for you to be accepted in those explorations. And so I'm wondering, did the Trans Academy come across your radar as you were starting to do these types of explorations, or was it even created when you were starting to get in?
[00:38:17.286] Starheart: I had no idea it existed, or if it did, I don't know their establishment date. No, so this was completely separate from Trans Academy. The first time I made, like I knew about them since Fia made her video about Trans Academy, but I didn't get to visit until I got invited to do, I opened for TFM Johnny at a fundraiser in collaboration with Trans Academy and met so many nice people there. I'm like, oh, you guys are so sweet. Yeah, there's such a good group. And that's when I finally visited and performed at some of their events.
[00:38:54.677] Kent Bye: So, yeah. It sounds like at least when the early explorations, even before you came across the Trans Academy, that you had managed to connect to a number of different small peer groups and friends and create this safe haven or space for you to really feel connected to people enough for you to do this type of exploration, it sounds like.
[00:39:13.951] Starheart: My personal journey wasn't that I needed people to, I didn't need a ton of people to talk about transitioning and stuff like that. I just wanted people to not think I was weird for wearing a feminine avatar. Like that's all the permission I needed because then I got to be myself. They didn't make a big deal out of me just being myself because they're, oh, that's just them. Right. So yeah, even just that was all I needed.
[00:39:45.154] Kent Bye: Okay. Well, that helps to really flesh that out. I know I've seen Strauss's documentary. And as I'm diving into VRChat for Raindance, I'm digging into a lot of these different issues that I haven't had a chance to really dig into that much on my podcast since I cover lots of stuff in and around in VR, beyond VRChat. But it's really quite fascinating to hear more about your own journey, but also explorations of gender. Yeah. So thanks for sharing all that.
[00:40:11.507] Starheart: Absolutely.
[00:40:12.828] Kent Bye: Nice. So you debuted Starheart on April 18th, 2023, and then you went on this whole tour. Then you debuted another video in July of 2023, which was the Feeling Good, which that had a different kind of vibe to it. Love to have you dig into that song that you were performing.
[00:40:32.870] Starheart: Yeah, so I got invited to open for this concert. And this was the third formal performance that I had been invited to do. And so I wanted to make a really big impact with the song. So I produced an original backing track for Feeling Good and performed it live. With this like synth intro. And then I go into feeling good, which always gets a good response when I perform it in VR. But I'm like, okay, this will be a good cover. People really enjoyed this at the concert. So that weekend, talked to actually the guy who helped film the moving shots in my cover of Unaware. So I talked to him again and I found some worlds. And this was just supposed to be much more straight ahead, non-narrative content. performance video, like a live cover sort of deal. And it wasn't live recorded. Like I, I wanted to get a good vocal takes. I, you know, I did six or seven takes and comp them together to make my favorite, you know, getting those high notes as good as I can. And Yeah, so I put out that video, and that's what really made a splash. And what was cool about that was I got to debut this new outfit. I keep using the word debut. We'll just call it. I got to show off the new outfit that I'd been working with my VTuber mom, Nebufay, who helped me design the original character. She helped me come up with this new outfit. So at this time, I had learned a lot from the first avatar of Starheart. So this one... I actually got Blender figured out and tried to make a more on model version of Star Heart to the original reference art. And yeah, so this outfits came out super, super cool and a little bit more elegant, a little bit more classy and fit the mood of feeling good.
[00:42:29.969] Kent Bye: Yeah, as I was watching the video and hearing your performance, it has quite a moving, emotionally moving and evocative feel to it. And it's got quite a range. And yeah, it's just a really incredible performance. Thank you. Then at your one year anniversary for doing videos on YouTube, you released the Star Hard Shadow where you get into... this really awesome chiptune vibe, the music and kind of more of a music video that is starting to really explore a little bit more of telling a story with taking us on a journey. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about the celebration of the one year anniversary with Star Hard Shadow.
[00:43:10.342] Starheart: Well, I had to do another Halloween video because it was so nostalgic looking back at like this insane year that had happened, discovering the communities and meeting new friends. And I mean, I couldn't even believe how much had happened. post Star Heart's debut, even even those months between. Yeah, I mean, so I was like, OK, I got to do a Halloween video. We got to bring back Ghostie. And I want to experiment. This was really an experiment for a more narrative approach to a video. So I had written stories and stuff like that in the past, but I had never finished a vr short story so i had this like sketch of the track that i ended up producing i was like the first 30 seconds of it i'm like okay i could totally turn this into another spooky halloween electronic chiptune thing so i ended up completing that in a couple days polished that up and then a friend that i had made who was experienced with vr chat camera work and stuff Fangs, who's on the Raindance team, she helped film this video. So I did all the location scouting and I learned how to turn on the sword and I made the little treasure chests spawn into wherever I wanted into the worlds with lighting and So it was also an experiment with more emotional expressions, and then got my friends to play Dark Star Hearts. So it was my first experience directing someone else as well, you know, as a part of this video. And she has incredible physicality, so she was super easy to direct. Like, okay, you need to be menacing. But you're this shadow, this darkness version of Starheart that she's going to forgive in herself. You know, it's a really sappy, goofy story. Following in the theme of my previous silliness with the previous Halloween video. But yeah, that was an incredibly fun experiment. I had a great time making that.
[00:45:22.210] Kent Bye: Well, I know October of 2023, when you had released the Star Heart Shadow, it was like just a few days before the Rain Dance 2023 was kicking off. And I know in talking to Joe Hunting, you know, he was starting to curate both short films and music videos within the context of VRChat. I know that Fia has also featured some of the different videos and music videos that people had been creating. And so were you aware of other broader communities of other folks that were doing stuff within the context of like making these types of videos within VRChat at that point? And was like Rain Dance on your screen? Maybe you could just...
[00:45:55.875] Starheart: Yeah, so post Feeling Good, I had gone to like a virtual film fest held by Ariel Emerald, another director here in VR. She hosted, yeah, just like different cool community videos or films, specifically films. being made in VR. And I just remember, like, sitting there in that theater watching these films and getting the same sense I had as a kid watching movies and being swept away to these other worlds and just remembering the joy and... I really, really wanted to be a filmmaker when I was growing up and it broke my heart to learn how the whole industry doesn't make Lord of the Rings every year or things like it. You know, those types of movies are so rare where they have these amazing casts and crews that spend two years on these little intricate details. And that's why I gravitated more towards games because I just saw more people world building and sort of the virtuosity of the escapist experience in games. But yeah, so watching those films brought all those memories back. And yeah, I had been really interested in film photography and things like that, but hadn't done a serious attempt at a narrative. So that really lit a fire under my butt. I'm like, okay, I got to start getting into this. I really want to make narrative stuff because I think there's so much possibility with Starheart. And doing like my own, telling my own story through these sort of metaphors, not being as quite as literal. I'm not quite ready to tell my real life journey to get here because I think I'm still processing and figuring out what's led me here in the first place. Yeah, just getting excited by that. And so I think that's one of the reasons that I made Star Hearts Shadow, but it was too late to submit to Rain Dead. So I submitted the Feeling Good video, but not being narrative. It wasn't the right fit for the festival. So yeah, but I do remember talking with Joe about Star Hearts Shadow. And so I started to get on their radar at that point.
[00:48:11.129] Kent Bye: Okay. And so we're kind of leading up to the last couple of videos that you have here, the composing music for VR game that you released around four months ago, like January 30th of 2024. And it's your talking debut where you're actually like talking about this music that you composed for Rave Gazebo. So it kind of gets into a little bit more of your day job as a musical composer, diving into the different types of music that you've been working on for other VR projects.
[00:48:39.505] Starheart: Yeah. So this was a difficult decision to release this music under my real-life name or try to do it under Starheart. And I decided to go with Starheart because I felt like I could connect with my community that I had been building and all my friends that I wanted to share this with. And it being a VR game, I thought it would be a good target audience as well to talk about and show people. Plus, I mean, it was a complete selfish... motive to like, hey, look, I compose music and here's me showing how I do it. I'm not just a performer, you know? Yeah, but it's me and just like my utter joy of just scrolling through this massive Logic project with all the adaptive stems that I had built out for this very experimental game my friend Greg put together.
[00:49:32.349] Kent Bye: Yeah, experimental game and a little bit experimental and ambitious track as well as you're walking through it. I was impressed to see how dynamic of the composition it was as well.
[00:49:41.317] Starheart: Yeah, perhaps a little too ambitious in terms, I think the track lost cohesion when you're actually playing it in the VR world, but it's a chaotic mess and it's very fun.
[00:49:54.980] Kent Bye: Right. Well, that brings us to the video that you premiered at Reign Dance of this year, I Still Love You, which premiered on June 15th, 2024. And so it's kind of a film noir. You talked about at Reign Dance how you built out the world, but you had already had the music, but you also wanted to really explore this narrative exploration. And yeah, just walk me through this process of creating both the music and the video for I Still Love You.
[00:50:23.001] Starheart: Yeah, so this started production immediately after I finished composing music for a VR game video. I really, really, really wanted to get into Raindance because I'd loved going to all the screenings. I'd made so many friends there and I was so excited to explore more narrative visions. And I had had this track that I had performed a couple of times or several times in different performances in the past. And so I was really just so excited to share the best version of this song that I could. And so I started with the script and like coming up with the story. I'm like, I'm not going to limit myself in terms of story. Like I want this to be Whatever comes to my mind and I'll figure it out. And part of that figuring it out was learning how to build worlds in VRChat. So that became a whole saga and why it took the full four months to create. Or four or five? You know, I was making changes right up until June 1st. So yeah, so recording the song... I had recorded back before I actually debuted Starheart. I had worked with a guy to help record the drums and the upright bass for this song because I was hoping to release Elsewhere, I Still Love You and another one as an EP as my debut, but then things got delayed with avatar creator falling through. And so it's kind of been this, okay, well, I got to learn this myself. Like my Unity knowledge from game development is implementing audio, not making worlds and lighting. And my environment design was very, very, very basic. I did a 2D pixel art game where I tiled a couple of rooms and built some levels, but... 3D is a whole nother world. So this is such a fun way to explore that. And I had done some stop motion films as experiments in the past and just found a lot of fun in the lighting and the contrast and that stuff. So it's something stuck out in my head. I'm like, okay, everyone's shooting for these mega widescreen, like everyone wants to look as high budget as possible. But I think you lose a lot of the details or control and time with the details if your scope is just absolutely enormous. So the technical limitations I gave myself were I want lower dynamic range, really high contrast stuff. And I talked about this in the Q&A, but I wanted almost no camera movement or any camera movement to be incredibly grounded in reality. We've seen drone shots a billion times in real life. They're not as exciting anymore. Yes, we could do them easy in VR, but they're kind of easy in real life now too. So what if I just nail the composition? If the camera can't move, then your lighting composition has to be spot on because you can't distract yourself with fancy camera moves and okay I want the outfits to all be within this like 1940s 50s sort of aesthetic more 50s I was super inspired by Twilight Zone and that sort of style and then Yeah, so the story of the song is me coming to terms with this old love that I had that I kind of found out she wasn't who I originally thought she was. And so mourning the loss of this person. So I wanted to expand the metaphor out a little bit to be, you know, it's not just a breakup, right? I've been fascinated. What would it be like if... you were dating a spy and you didn't know who that person was. And suddenly they just vanished one day because they got another assignment. And so I turned that into the jewel thief because I thought, oh, it'd be super fun if it was this metaphor of stealing Starheart's heart with this crystal heart. And so once I finished the script, I started building the museum world and figuring out how to do that and filmed a little test video, which got me into Rain Dance. just super, super exciting.
[00:54:50.133] Kent Bye: Yeah. It's really cool to also hear a little bit more about your process of creating it because you were also not only acting in it, but also directing it. And so just the ways that you were able to have like these static cameras, but then to use all sorts of different overlay technology within SteamVR with overlay to be able to monitor everything and control stuff so you could both be on screen but also see the shots. Maybe you could talk about this process of taking more control over the directing while you're actually embodied and acting within it with all these virtual technologies that allow you to do things that you really would have a much harder time doing in physical reality.
[00:55:29.787] Starheart: Absolutely. So yeah, being able to monitor your own performance and your own framing and your movements and checking for tracker glitches, checking for all of that stuff. In VR, I use a tool called XSOverlay, and it allows me to make... a virtual screen that doesn't actually get picked up by the in-game camera. And I can make 20 of them if I wanted to. Well, I'm sure GPU would have a problem with 20, but you know, I can make them as big as I want. So I would make these screens enormous so I could check I mean, I was basically had my own little movie theater as I was filming this video. So seeing these compositions, I could be much more detail oriented than checking on like a little camera monitor. And then, yeah, directing and acting at the same time was a little bit challenging, but yeah, restricting myself to very little camera movement allowed me to focus on the performances and getting it to feel right.
[00:56:30.698] Kent Bye: Hmm. And it's got this film noir look really leaning into this narrative component with some twists and some nice facial expressions that are coded in there to give a little bit more expressivity. Because, you know, typically within VRChat, that can be one of the things that's lacking sometimes is a real emotional valence that's coming from the facial movements. Yes.
[00:56:54.042] Starheart: So that experiment from Star Heart Shattered, the Halloween video of like, because I wanted to see if I could transition between different expressions. I wanted to carry through those experiments into a more emotional story.
[00:57:10.676] Kent Bye: So yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of VR might be and what it might be able to enable us.
[00:57:19.758] Starheart: Yes, the big question. I see a lot of... I'm specifically in the music art side of it. I love the tech. So many people focus only on the tech side of it. Yeah, I think there's so much more to it than that. I see VR being a place where it's already happening in Japan, the extension of meeting your bandmates or meeting your dance partners or meeting creative collaborators. in VR and then going on to be well-known or even famous through live performance, through these virtual concerts as more and more people are able to participate without a lot of technical knowledge. I think that's the big limit. But if a singer-songwriter is able to start performing with zero technical knowledge, they just are able to quick customize an avatar to fit what they love or what they feel like and play for people. And then they get quote unquote discovered or whatever. I think that's an incredibly exciting proposition that we could reshape the music industry in the virtual world. Instead of these record companies right now trying to push virtual performers as this like corporate, entity of like, oh, well, we have full control over their likeness. So we can make them do brand deals. We can make them do these concerts. But it's like, I don't think that's why people would be interested in a virtual performer. Like the tech of it isn't compelling enough for people to care about, oh, they're virtual. No, people connect with VTubers and these VTubers have millions and millions of followers and And people get their cars wrapped as these VTubers. People resonate with the idea that it's a real person behind this. And it's the combination of the art and the expression. And so I naturally see VR as the 3D continuation of the 2D VTuber world. We'll have more personality driven people doing all sorts of stuff, whether it's what we're already seeing with filmmaking and live performance. But we'll have race car e-sports drivers that you can actually go and meet in person in VR. You're not just watching a Twitch stream, but you're participating in the events. Or maybe it's not cars. Maybe it's pod racers or, you know, with that subject. Like it can be anything. We can't even imagine. But to me, that social VR is incredibly key to that stage of this being the next stage of the next continuation of this world.
[01:00:17.914] Kent Bye: Yeah. One thing that came up as you were saying that, there's an interview that I've done with someone from Japan talking about VTubing, where a lot of VTubing was really born out of. One of the things that he said is that Japan is a very community-driven culture. So sticking out as an individual was actually not really looked upon as... So that VTubing kind of being born in with the culture where you're really trying to suppress your own individuality and identity in order to fit into the collective. It's really taken off into that context of Japan to allow people to have this outlet to be anonymous and really express their identity in a way. And I feel like that's also a big driver for why I think VR is insanely popular within Japan today. I think also because there's a lot of science fiction and other type of media that is not looking at VR as a dystopian nightmare, like the Matrix or something like that, where we're trapped, but that it's actually something where we can really explore these more exalted potentials of our humanity. And so I feel like the culture has more positive examples of VR, but also the VTubing culture that's being born out of that as this method and mode for allowing people to really get to their core essence of their identity in a way that allows them the freedom to explore. So I think that's really reflected in your story as well.
[01:01:44.099] Starheart: I'm glad you see that connection because I really, really connect with that. Not wanting to stick out, you know, I felt like it was so selfish or so self-serving to perform back before I discovered the whole VTubing world where I think people genuinely care more about your arts versus you as a person when you're a VTuber versus like a face streamer or a face performer. You know, you can't control what you look like in real life to a large extent. But I love that interchange. I love that the artists and the model riggers and all the people that assemble these worlds that people can create are of equal importance to the person that actually is behind the VTuber.
[01:02:35.569] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[01:02:41.572] Starheart: Oh, uh... Yeah. Right now... Generative AI is a big topic with Adobe and Instagram backlash and Cara getting really popular and all that stuff. And so I wanted to comment because I think VR is a big intersection of people just interested in new technology. And I want to say in terms of art, let's not forget that art is fun to make. I'm not sure why... And people are wanting to offload that onto computers. It's like, I'm not very pessimistic about it replacing artists. Industry people, that's another topic. I think a lot of people are losing their jobs because of that. And that's the scary part. But I did want to put that out there that I acknowledge how amazing and cool it is, these new technologies in terms of generative stuff. But I just, I think it's pretty irrelevant when it comes to making art.
[01:03:47.915] Kent Bye: Yeah, reminds me of that Joanna Misiojuska quote where she says, I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To do my art and writing so I can do my laundry and dishes.
[01:04:02.704] Starheart: Exactly. Yeah, I'm an optimist. I'm excited. Yeah, there's a lot of darkness, but yeah, I see a lot of light at the end of the tunnel. A lot of color in the black and white world.
[01:04:16.747] Kent Bye: Cool. Well, Starheart, thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast to help recount your journey into becoming a VTuber, Vsinger, and creating your whole Starheart persona, this astral demon Vsinger. Yeah, just a real pleasure to hear about your own creative process and your journey into finding your true authentic voice through Starheart.
[01:04:37.877] Starheart: Thanks so much, Kent. I had a great time getting to go back and recall this whole journey.
[01:04:44.096] Kent Bye: So that was Starheart. She's a musician and a live performer who's using virtual reality to explore not only live performance and musical creation and music videos, but also getting into VTubing to explore other aspects of her creative identity and ways of expressing herself. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, Well, just a really powerful creative journey of using virtual reality to be able to escape the constraints of your physical expression and just how she's been able to experiment with her identity within the context of VR, where it's literally like a button click and you can have different gender representations, identity representations, and Yeah, just try on different identities absent of any connection to anybody that knows you from your previous life. And so there's this freedom to be able to explore with different types of identity expression, but also how much of that identity expression not only fed into her own creative journey of expressing different aspects of herself, but also just giving her even more courage to discover different aspects of her own gender and gender expression and eventually leading to transitioning into becoming a transgender woman eventually. So I was really struck with this conversation of how much ground we were able to cover across so many different topics of identity, identity and expression, just what's happening within the context of these live performance venues and the scene within the context of VR, but also just her own creative process as a musician. With this hesitation to not really wanting to make it about herself as a person in her physical reality, her IRL identity, that even though she went to music school to study singing, she really wasn't performing all that much. And that there is this freedom of becoming Starheart. She talks about it. as a character but it's not really as a character because it's really an extension of her own identity not only that avatar representation and this persona that she's crafting through the v2 being kind of metaphors of premiering this aspect of her identity and that aspect of her identity but also these worlds that she's creating and these scenes in these music videos where she's had a long interest in filmmaking and that Social VR and VRChat was allowing her to get past a lot of the constraints that you have with filming, which is traveling and location scouting and all these other things that rise all the different production costs. There's enough of a community participation in creating these different worlds and sites and venues. that really inspired her to take some of her old tracks of her music and start to create these music videos. And then from there, doing all these different live performances, and then really realizing at some point that she needed to have a consistent identity across all these videos. And so creating this identity of this astral demon Vsinger, which is kind of like alluding to these different aspects of her being this lone wanderer, not necessarily outcast or exiled, but more of not really feeling like she belonged in a way, and that this was a character where she can really lean into that and start to tell aspects of her story, but through these metaphors, through her songs and her music. And so she's really in the process of telling different chapters and aspects of her story, leading towards this live streaming as part of her debut that she's working up to next. So yeah, I just found it to be quite a compelling story and to see her progression of her art and to just go back and to watch all the different videos and to have a chance to really kind of line up her own personal evolution and just how virtual reality as a medium is allowing her the freedom to find these new aspects of her own creative expression, which I think is super powerful. And yeah, definitely recommend checking out the video by Straz called Identity, Gender, and VR Chat. Why is everyone in VR an anime girl? And also the virtual reality show did a whole piece on why there's so many trans people in VR chat, gender identity, and self-discovery. Digging into the trans academy and some of the different trends of gender and identity expression as well. There's also a really great video on gender that I'd highly recommend checking out by Philosophy Tube. It's called I Read the Most Understood Philosopher in the World. It's about Judith Butler and a lot of her work around gender. And yeah, just a really solid overview of a lot of the more philosophical reflections on gender. So definitely check out that piece on Philosophy Tube that came out back on May 17th, 2024. Also, a trend that I see quite a lot is for people to really get inspired to get into more and more levels of immersive development from downloading Unity to get your avatar so you can have an expression of your identity, but also diving a little bit into Blender and 3D creation, but also like in Starheart's case, wanting to go even beyond to this kind of kit bashing approach of taking these different assets and putting them together in these different scenes that she's doing within the context of shooting her music videos. So She actually ended up winning the best music video at Rain Dance 2024, a song called I Still Love You. And she actually went in and created a lot of those scenes and the different lightings have this whole kind of film noir look. And yeah, just really crafting this dynamic of going to this museum with her girlfriend at that time who ends up being a jewel thief and stealing the crystal heart. And yeah, just these kind of metaphors of being able to talk about these relationships and loss of love through these songs like that. And so, yeah, just a final point about this conversation is I'm just really struck by how Starhart really sees VTubing as a 3D continuation of what's been happening in the 2D VTubing world. And that a lot of times what being a VTuber gives her as a performer is that people care more about your art versus you as a person when you're a VTuber versus when you're like a face streamer or a face performer because you can't control what you look like in real life and physical reality to a large extent. And so these avatars in these worlds are like, just as a vital part of your extension of your identity. And that in a lot of ways, by exploring these different virtual mediums, she's been able to really find her own true authentic voice in a way that there's not really necessarily a separation between the star heart as a persona and a character versus like the true essence of who she is. So that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Wishes of VR podcast. And if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listen-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash wishesofvr. Thanks for listening.
