Virtual Influencers Among Us

Virtual Influencers Among Us

We’ll talk about virtual influencers. Virtual influencers are made-up characters. As a rule, they are young attractive people of both sexes that resemble live human beings, and yet they are entirely a product of CGI. They have popular Instagram accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers. They take part in ad campaigns. And of course, they are owned by live people that invest in these influencers: virtual characters never age, they always agree with their managers, and their easily change their image. @lilmiquela was the first to gain popularity; there have been hundreds of virtual influencers since, including Russian ones.
Discussion participants:

Valery Sharipov 
Founder of Malivar media studio that creates and produces virtual bloggers and digital models. One of them is Aliona Pole, the virtual avatar of a mysterious artist, environmental activist and digital fashion designer.

Stas Bashkatov
Founder of HonkFu virtual label, animation art director, producer of a virtual character called Nana (@nana.the.shrimp).

Olga Vad - curator, head of art & science at the Polytechnic Museum.

Moderated by:
Zlata Ermakova - producer of interactive and VR projects of Lateral Summer studio, a game and VR researcher.