I’m posting this story after my labmate commented on how insane and unbelievable it is. I then realized it is probably very bizarre. This is obviously not suitable for the University of Waterloo article about me.
I got into Computer Science via a very peculiar route. When I was in elementary school, I stumbled across Niconico.jp, a Japanese video sharing site, and I came across a peculiar form of art called audio MAD (音マッド). The technique by which this is accomplished is called Manual Vocaloid (人力 Vocaloid). The process takes footage from video sources and remixes them into songs. Around 2010, three prominent sources of footage emerged. On Niconico this is called Inner Gosanke (裏御三家) (nicopedia), where Gosanke means the three most prominent representatives of a certain field.
The ones that caught my particular attention are Airmoto (エア本), and Gachimuchi (ガチムチ, slightly NSFW). Airmoto draws its footage from the propaganda videos of Soka Gakkai (創価学会), a Japanese Nichiren Buddhist religious group that is sometimes considered to be a cult due to its track record of harassment. When Airmoto is remixed with Touhou (one of the “Outer Gosanke”) music, it is often called Touhou Zuhashichibun (東 方頭破七分). 頭破七分 being a Buddhism term to reflect the Buddhist origins of Soka Gakkai. I gradually became interested in making an algorithm which automatically remixes the voices using existing digital signal processing tools, but unbeknownst to me, the problem is an exceedingly difficult one that only became somewhat viable after the advent of Convolutional Neural Networks and Transformers. The failed experience in writing this impossible algorithm lead me into the field of computer science. This is also how I got into theoretical mathematics.
In 2014, Niconico was sued by a member of Soka Gakkai and had to take down many Airmoto videos. Since Airmoto is difficult to be appreciated by non-Japanese speakers, it didn’t see much attention outside of Japan. Here are a few examples I could find:
This form of stimulating and fast paced MADs were a very appealing form of entertainment to the little Leni who was so bored as to learn Latin and Greek.
Outside of Japanese and some special online circles, few people have even heard of this form of art. I mourn the lost era of Niconico when the videos of Airmoto and Gachimuchi flowed like fine wine. I still get nostalgic when I watch Airmoto videos. Without Inner Gosanke and Audio MADs, my life would’ve been drastically different and I would not be doing cutting edge theorem proving research today.
Fun fact: The headquarters of Soka Gakkai International in Canada is in Vancouver near Marine Drive Station.
今夜は砕頭☆!