Vocaloid Technology and Japanese Anime Culture Essay Example For Students

Vocaloid Technology and Japanese Anime Culture Essay In modern Japan, popular musics are always related to idols as being one of the Japanese social mainstreams. For the consumers, most of the idols are popular due to their stage appearances and visual attractions rather than their musical or vocal skills. However, there is one additional technique that Japanese use to produce unique idols and tend to distinguish them from other common idols. They are manufacture idols, which are good examples of how Japanese make new innovations in their pop culture. Manufacture idols system is a combination of anime-like characters and the technology in Japan. Both of these factors are huge in Japan and are well combined in other field of works. With the great novelty and the visual attractions behind the idea, manufacture idols become very popular in Japan; and because anime and technology are two widespread cultures in Japan, their combination make the manufacture idols system carry a very uniquely Japanese style. Japan has huge technological industries as its recent technology fast developed. The Japanese are likely and even proud to use technological productions, and many of the creative ideas are based on their technology. We will write a custom essay on Vocaloid Technology and Japanese Anime Culture specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Similarly, Manufacture idols came from a technological software called â€Å"Vocaloid†. Vocaloid is originated from the singing synthesizer system which dates back to â€Å"a research by Kelly et al in 1962 when there have been various singing synthesizers proposed since then, whether they are commercial or noncommercial† (Kenmochi, 2012). However, Kenmochi (2012) also indicates that â€Å"those singing synthesizers have not been widely used in musical creation, although some musicians experimentally utilized them in their music. Later on, Japan became one of the countries that tended to develop this type of technology. â€Å"Since 2007, there has been a big boom of musical contents using singing synthesis software especially in Japan† while â€Å"amateur musicians use singing synthesis software to create their original compositions. (Kenmochi, 2012). Vocaloid was developed by Yamaha Corporation which is a Japanese multinational corporation, and it came out as a commercial singing synthesis software and are widely used in Japan. Yet, According to Kenmochi and Ohshita’s article (2007) Vocaloid is not released by Yamaha Corp. â€Å"Yamaha licenses the technology and software to third-party companies. Those companies develop and release their own singer library bundled with the Vocaloid software. Since 2004, five products have been released with Vocaloid version 1 so far: â€Å"Leon†, â€Å"Lola†, and â€Å"Miriam† from Zero-G Limited, UK, and â€Å"Meiko† and â€Å"Kaito† from Crypton Future Media, Japan† (Kenmochi Ohshita, 2007). These first released Vocaloid characters (known as Vocaloid 1) have different voices and appearance, and they are divided to different language categories as some of them were released by the British company and others were released by the Japanese company. The voices of these characters were not completely artificial. Instead, the producers collected the sample voices from certain singers or voice actors first, and then produced the singer library. Musicians with certain musical knowledge and technique could make musics by using Vocaloid, and they could choose to make musics for certain characters based on their preference on looks or voices. Vocaloid consists of three parts. Score Editor provides an environment in which the user can input notes, lyrics, and optionally some expressions; Singer Library, mentioned previously, is a database of samples (mostly diphones) extracted from real people’s singing; and Synthesis Engine receives score information, selects necessary samples from Singer Library and concatenates them. Kenmochi Ohshita, 2007) Later on, more and more characters came out in Japan released either by companies such as Crypton Future Media or on the Internet. These new characters are known as Vocaloid 2 and the second generation of Vocaloid software, and they embodied the same technology used in Vocaloid 1. Eventually, in 2007, Vocaloid technique and its characters became a huge boom in Japanese pop culture. Many music production teams in Japan started to make songs for these characters, and these producers are known as characters’ masters. Moreover, as the first Vocaloid 2 character Hatsune Miku came out followed by various Vocaloid characters, more and more amateur musicians (especially those who like electronic musics) joined to make Vocaloid musics; more anime fans started to support such products; and more other audiences appeared to be interested in such innovations. Different characters came out with different Vocaloid software and are released by different companies and medias. The productions began to play a big role in the music market in Japan. Like Goto says in his research â€Å"As music synthesizers generating various instrumental sounds are already widely used and have become indispensable to popular music production, it is historically inevitable that singing synthesizers will become more widely used and likewise indispensable to music production† (Goto). How technology naturally involved in Japanese music is indeed incredible. As we perceive in the naming of Hatsune Miku which could translated to â€Å"the first sound from the future†, we simply discover how Japanese producers and audiences strongly pursue the advanced technology. However, the fascination of the technology is not only manifested in the scientific technique that is used in Vocaloid, but is also displayed in the way people make the anime characters doing vivid musical movements and expressions like humans. As Hatsune Miku and other Vocaloid characters were developed to music and game market, besides the technological success in some human-like elements reflected in their singing such as breathiness, portamento, etc. hey are required to have dance movements, gestures and even facial expressions. Nevertheless, as she sometimes appears in 3D image, Hatsune Miku is very different from both real humans and most of two dimensional anime figures. Thus, she is like a robot on the computer that is more likely to be stiff, and it is very hard to make her and other characters move as smooth and lively as humans or two dimensional anime characters do. Yet, creators took efforts to make their characters mimic the musical gestures and expressions of humans. .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .postImageUrl , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:hover , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:visited , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:active { border:0!important; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:active , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Japanese Gardens in the United States EssayFrom my perspective, this process is very similar to another scientific process relates to movements of musical robots although it is easier to make 3D characters do human-like movements than a real robot. Similar to the Vocaloid characters, Japanese also concern about the vividness among the robotic movement of musical robots. â€Å"Humanoid robots are polyvalent, and thus are perfect platforms for synthesizing the work from specialized, disparate domains. The idea is to develop a general ‘emotional intelligence’–an ability to express emotion in music as well as speech, gesture, and other modalities. (Lim, Og ata, Okuno, 2012) For instance, musical robots should imitate some natural habit of human musicians when they are playing music. â€Å"Human musicians naturally use visual cues such as eye contact and instrument movement to coordinate with fellow ensemble players, similar to conductors who use their batons to indicate beats. In fact, a study on clarinetist’s movements found that â€Å"movements related to structural characteristics of the piece (e. g. tempo)† were consistently found among player subjects. Movements included â€Å"tapping of one’s foot or the moving of the bell up and down to keep rhythm. Although we do not claim that all musicians use movements when performing, we believe that identifying common, natural gestures is a starting point to using vision as a human-robot interface. † (Lim, Mizumoto, Cahier, Otsuka, Takahashi, Komatani, Okuno, 2010). Likewise, Vocaloid characters are required to do human-like gestures when they are singing and dancing in games and perform at concerts. In this case, Japanese producers did a good job on creating dancing movements and facia l expressions for these characters by using advanced animation technology. They led the Vocaloid character (especially Hatsune Miku) to be on the stage like real idols by using the advanced 3D technology, and unfolded the vivid impressions of characters before their audiences’ eyes. â€Å"Although Hatsune Miku is a virtual singer, she has already had live concerts with human musicians in Japan, USA, and Singapore† (Goto). Although these characters have not reached the state of doing movements and expressions exactly the same as real humans, they appeal to their consumers very positively for their almost lively human-like characteristics. Moreover, the advanced animation technique in Japan definitely helps Japanese producers approach the goal, as the anime culture being one of the most popular social phenomenons in Japan’s market. Vocaloid characters are popular not only because of their unique singing style that is distinguished from humans’ voices, but also because of their anime appearance. For example, Hatsune Miku, the most representative Vocaloid character in Japan, was actually just a simple print on the Vocaloid software package at the beginning. However, such simple illustration has enough visual attractions to Japanese due to Japan’s widespread anime culture. Before games and concerts of Vocaloid characters came out, people had very few information about these characters. The only information they gained was the characters’ personalities which is portrayed in some typical published songs written by these characters’ â€Å"masters†. Therefore, amateur anime artists made videos of characters dancing and singing, and sometimes they tended to post their work on some popular website in Japan. People draw and post different illustrations of Hatsune Miku. Then people started to create videos, such as promotion videos for musicians, with such original songs and drawings. Some people even create 3D models of Hatsune Miku and create 3D animation videos. † (Hamasaki, Takeda, Nishimura, 2008). Apparently, it was not the production companies who promoted the idea of making the characters visually alive; it was the audiences who involved into animation works and advanced computer technology at first. Such phenomenon reflects that how Japanese, especially the younger generation, are highly involved in modern technology and animation as two of their social mainstreams. After such a huge impact happened to the consumers of Vocaloid characters, many more corporations and companies were involved to various productions of making animation images of Vocaloid characters. Some game companies such as PENTA and Tones Studio made Hatsune Miku a game character or made her sing one of the background songs in the games. Other CD company such as Frontier Works recorded some old songs, but some of them were sung by Hatsune Miku. Additionally, as more and more people continue using Vocaloid characters to sing their favorite or original songs, some amateur singers even sing the characters’ original songs and post them online. The website that receives most of these posts is called Nico Nico Douga, which is the most popular video sharing website in Japan. The websites’ basic service mostly resembles that of YouTube, besides most of the posts are animation work as â€Å"Douga† means animation in Japanese. What is more interesting than YouTube, is that â€Å"a user can add comments about a specific playback time at a specific position in the video which gives people a sense of sharing the viewing experience virtually. Furthermore, the creator can instantly know which specific moment or specific scene is appreciated by a viewer† (Hamasaki, Takeda, Nishimura, 2008). Videos relates to Vocaloid stuff are usually categorized as â€Å"hot topic† on this website. Such popularity on an animation website implies that Vocaloid system manifests the interaction between audiences and Japanese anime culture. Moreover, Characters like Hatsune Miku are always engaged with Japanese anime culture even they do not have any story or background. Anime fans can easily create stories, images and even personality for them according to the contexts among their well-known songs. â€Å"voice-generating software called Vocaloid, which makes anime-like songs in the voice of an imaginary character called Hatsune Miku (lit. â€Å"first sound of the future†), inspired fans to develop images, stories and videos around the synthetic voice. .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .postImageUrl , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:hover , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:visited , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:active { border:0!important; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:active , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Today, Telecommunications Technology Affects Lives To A Greater Degree EssayThere is even a blog that tracks the best fan-made music videos featuring this character† (Condry, 2009). Such enthusiasm among anime fans reflects the connection between Hatsune Miku and Japanese anime culture. In Japan, it is very common to consider a virtual idol like Hatsune Miku as popular even though she does not have any musical or vocal skill. Japanese audiences always have obsessions with visual attractions. Not every idol have to be good at singing or instruments, but popular idols are always good-looking, cute or sexually attractive. Hatsune Miku, with cute anime looking, is attractive to a lot of Japanese heterosexual male fans. However, as she being an anime character, she is still different from other living idols. For one thing, Hatsune Miku is never separated from the engagement with the consumers. To be more specific, living idols engage with their audiences when they perform on the stage or acting certain roles, but they separate from their public images when they come back to their private life. â€Å"stars have an existence in the world independent of their screen/ â€Å"fiction† appearances, it is possible to believe. hat as people they are more real than characters in the stories. † (Dyer, 1998) On the contrary, as a virtual character as most of anime characters are, Hatsune Miku has devoted everything to her fans. She does everything that satisfies her consumers and keeps her pure and ideal image. Such characteristic is very common in Japanese anime culture and is quite fascinating for a nime fans and especially for otaku. â€Å"Otaku, which translates to the English term nerd, was a slang term used by amateur manga artists and fans themselves in the 1980s to describe weirdos (henjin). The original meaning of otaku is your home and, by association, you, yours, and home (Kinsella, 1998). When normal anime fans like to talk to each other about their common interests, anime otaku people prefer just engaging with two dimensional or virtual anime characters. Although otaku culture is strange from an American perspective, it is still somehow considered as a symbol of contemporary Japanese society, as it reflects a popular phenomenon in Japanese younger generation. Otaku came to represent a younger generation so intensely individu-alistic they had become dysfunctional, a generation of ‘isolated people who no longer have any sense of isolation. ’ The dysfunctionality of otaku proved the unhealthy nature of individualistic lifestyles† (Kinsella, 1998). In this case, Vocaloid characters are tied to otaku culture because of their two dimensional or virtual images. â€Å"the virtual idols very clearly ties together the otaku obsession with computer technolo gy, animation technology, robotic or otherwise artificial bodies and the kind of femininity presented by the living idol† (Black, 2012). Male anime otaku are usually obsessed with bishojo(pretty girls in Japanese) in animation works like Hatsune Miku, because â€Å"the virtual idol can satisfy fan desires in the way that living idols can not† (Black, 2012) Thus, Vocaloid certainly has an attractions towards anime fans and otaku, which can be another engagement between Vocaloid and anime culture. On the other hand, for anime fans or even other audiences, the gender interpretation appears to be more ideal on virtual characters. Choo mentioned that anime girls are more ideal with big eyes and smooth skin, and sometimes they involve in sexualized images in the contexts. In addition, anime boys are more attractive for female consumers because of their slim bodies and pretty faces (Choo, 2008). Therefore, with the same gender oriented attraction, Vocaloid characters gain more attentions from their heterosexual fans, and have more advantages because of their anime imagery. In conclusion, Vocaloid is an extremely representative symbol of Japanese pop culture. Among many music forms in Japan, Vocaloid music reflects how Japanese is good at making innovations, as they blend advanced cyber technology and Japanese anime culture. However, the novelty inside this music form is explicit not only due to the genius combination, but also due to the reactions from the Japanese consumers. As we watch Hatsune Miku’s 3D image dancing on the stage with hundred thousands of living fans, we can simply realize how Japanese audiences support their technology and anime culture. Bibliography: Black, D. (2012). The Virtual Idol: Producing and Consuming Digital Femininity.Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture, 209. Choo, K. (2008). Girls Return Home: Portrayal of Femininity in Popular Japanese Girls’ Manga and Anime Texts during the 1990s in Hana yori Dango and Fruits Basket.  Women: a cultural review,  19(3), 275-296. Condry, I. (2009). Anime Creativity Characters and Premises in the Quest for Cool Japan.  Theory, Culture Society,  26(2-3), 139-163. Dyer, R., McDonald, P. (1998).  Stars. BFI Pub.. Page 8. Goto, M. Grand Challenges in Music Information Research}}.  Multimodal Music Processing},  3, 217-226. IEEE. Hamasaki, M., Takeda, H., Nishimura, T. (2008, October). Network analysis of massively collaborative creation of multimedia contents: case study of hatsune miku videos on nico nico douga. In  Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Designing interactive user experiences for TV and video  (pp. 165-168). ACM. Kenmochi, H. (2012, March). Singing synthesis as a new musical instrument. In  Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2012 IEEE International Conference on  (pp. 5385-5388). IEEE. Kenmochi, H., Ohshita, H. (2007). Vocaloid–commercial singing synthesizer based on sample concatenation.  Proc. Interspeech 2007, 4011-4010. Kinsella, S. (1998). Japanese subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the amateur manga movement.  Journal of Japanese Studies, 289-316. Lim, A., Mizumoto, T., Cahier, L. K., Otsuka, T., Takahashi, T., Komatani, K., Okuno, H. G. (2010, October). Robot musical accompaniment: integrating audio and visual cues for real-time synchronization with a human flutist. InIntelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on  (pp. 1964-1969). Lim, A., Ogata, T., Okuno, H. G. (2012). Towards expressive musical robots: a cross-modal framework for emotional gesture, voice and music.  EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing,  2012(1), 3.

What You Need to Know About Technology in Air Essay Sample

What You Need to Know About Technology in Air Essay SampleThe Internet has changed how students think about writing and learning, and it's not just in schools that technology is affecting essay writing. For any student that feels he or she needs more help with their essays, there are many resources available online that can help.The first thing to consider when trying to use an air essay sample to help improve your essay is the subject of the piece. If you're writing a school assignment that has a focus on air travel, for example, that's a very different thing than writing about a vacation that was taken using an airplane. To avoid conflating these two similar topics, try to look at the effects of technology on different subjects and write about the main concept of your essay.The next consideration to make when using the internet to help you improve your essay is what kinds of technological advances have been made in the area. Some people find that technology is changing fast enough that they need to write about a certain technology rather than an entire aspect of it. For example, if you're writing about a particular kind of laptop, you should write about it in terms of its importance to your own personal experience. You don't want to mix technology with something that has relatively little effect on your own life.There are also some pretty obvious changes that are happening in the way that writing about a certain computer or handheld device is done with an air essay sample. For example, when you use this sort of essay, you'll usually see things like the term 'graphic design' used instead of just 'design.' And you'll probably find yourself writing about new technologies that have developed in this area that you've never heard of before. So you'll want to make sure that the readers of your essay can understand what you're talking about without having to read too much to understand it.Of course, there are many things that an essay can use that you may not be awar e of or would expect that someone could already be writing about. But, because you're learning about some of these things while you're writing an essay, you might be surprised to find out that others have already found uses for these things. For example, many of us have seen things like xerography used in elementary and high school English classes but aren't really sure what it means.As long as you're able to explain exactly what it means, you can still use the air essay sample in your essay. You can even incorporate it into the title of your essay and in your bibliography if you'd like. However, you might want to discuss it a little more in your bibliography, explaining why you feel it's important and why you think it has an impact on your essay.The type of technology that you're learning about is also something that you can adapt and use in your writing. Look for a website that offers a wide range of different devices that can be used to illustrate or support a point that you're m aking in your essay. You'll also be surprised to find out how useful the internet is for some of the little things in your life that help you think about your situation. For example, your blog will probably become obsolete in a year or two unless you do something about it.There are many reasons to use an air essay sample for writing and thinking about technology in general. After all, one of the things that makes technology fascinating is the fact that it changes so quickly and, by the time you realize it, things change so drastically that you're left trying to explain them to others. Make sure that you are careful with your language and are looking at the effects of technology on everything you write about.

Insider epistemology Essay Example

Insider epistemology Essay The view that you have to be one to know one, that to understand a group you must be a member of that group, is known as insider epistemology (Fay, 1996, p. 9). In my work I will try to explain and define this thesis, making it more tangible through the use of examples both of situations for with insider epistemology seems valid and of instances in which group differences have tried to be overcome. I shall then go on to present problems and questions that arise with it; amongst others whether it is at all possible to place people in categories, to what extent we are able to understand anyone but ourselves and, for that matter, whether we can even understand ourselves. Finally, I shall suggest a reconciliation of the thesis with its counterarguments by introducing a more precise definition of the phrase you have to be one to know one. In our society today we tend to take one of two approaches toward people in some way different to ourselves: we either condemn their actions as wrong and try to impose our own viewpoint on them, or we resist judgement by saying that their frame of mind is so substantially different to ours that we couldnt possibly understand and even less criticize their actions. I would like to focus on this second approach. We will write a custom essay sample on Insider epistemology specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Insider epistemology specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Insider epistemology specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Whether we are speaking about youths from troubled backgrounds with an early criminal record, or about a far-off tribe with seemingly strange customs, or about the way of life of monks in the 13th century; the belief is that unless we were there to experience what they did, or unless we belong to their group, we have no way of understanding them. In other words, to know them we must be them, the claim of insider epistemology. Insider epistemology maintains that to know other insiders one has to be an insider oneself (Fay, 1996, p. 9). It is saying that you cannot understand a Muslim unless you are a Muslim yourself, a Russian peasant unless you are a Russian peasant yourself. James I. Charlton speaks of the innate inability of able-bodied people, regardless of fancy credentials and awards, to understand the disability experience (Bridges, 2001). The reasoning is simple: how could you possibly understand a group if you have not grown up in their surroundings and with their experiences? Various literary works illustrate this: Jung Changs Wild Swans, for example, only became such a moving and inspiring account because written by a person who experienced Chinese history of the 20th century first hand. She was able to tell the story of her family in a political and historical context without having to resort to research and second hand accounts. She might have even felt quite offended had an outsider written her story claiming to know exactly how she felt and exactly what she went through; she would probably consider her experiences to be unique and not likely to be truly understood by anyone but her family and herself and perhaps not even by her family because they did not have the exact same experiences as she did. This position that each person has privileged access to his or her own mental states and processes (Fay, 1996, p. 10) is called individual methodological solipsism (Merton, 1972, p. 5) and is a more radical form of insider epistemology. It argues that only I can know my own mind, so I can never know whether experiences and sensations are the same for other people: does the colour red look the same to others (Fay, 1996, p. 10)? Does pain feel the same if experienced by another? A train of thoughts which can make us feel truly lonely indeed! Throughout time there have been a number of attempts to transgress the b oundaries separating groups from each other and go native (Smith, n. d. ). John Howard Griffin painted his face black and travelled through the south of the USA during the height of racial segregation to be able to experience the treatment of a black man (Fay, 1996, p. 13). Liza Crihfield Dalby wanted to write her PhD on the life and experiences of a Japanese geisha, and thought the only way to do this was to live as a geisha in Kyoto for a year (Dalby, 1983). It would seem that by doing this they would be able to gain an insider perspective on the culture and group they were living with? Yet herein lies the illusion: no matter how long they played their insider role, it would remain a role. Their upbringing had instilled in them a set of values and beliefs, by themselves perhaps unrecognized or unacknowledged, but nevertheless existing and fundamentally different to that of the group they were studying. Furthermore, if ever they were to find themselves in a precarious situation, they would always be able to resort back to their original identity, and not have to bare the consequences as a black man or a geisha might. They are able to wear the mask of an insider, but under the mask the outsider stays the same. This can be further illustrated: if we say that the social and cultural world shape a person or groups identity, regarding the fact that society and culture differs hugely from place to place, and insist on the fact that to understand an insider you must be an insider yourself, then we must conclude that any understanding between groups is impossible. This, in turn, would mean that social science would become radically unlike hard science (Smith, n. d. ), because no research would be possible on a neutral and objective basis. In fact, every group would have to be in charge of its own social research, be its own social scientist (Fay, 1996, p. 12). Still, if we are not able understand another group, we would consequently also not be able to understand the research done by an insider social scientist of the other group. Each group would be its own isolated unit and incapable of sharing any knowledge. However, there are problems to be found in using the word group. By picturing a group as a homogenous set of individuals, we are categorizing its members as all being equal and being members of only that group. We are forgetting that categories as broad as women, South American, adopted children, etc. are no indication of individual identity and experiences. Indeed, by placing all adopted children in the same group, we are neglecting the fact that adoption can be a completely different experience for one child compared to another. The differences between members of one group may actually outweigh their similarities (Bridges, 2001, p. 3; Fay, 1996, p. 53) and insiders of groups may insist on a distinction being made between each other, therefore Argentineans might find it offensive to be put in the same category as Bolivians or vice versa. But if we carry these divisions within categories further, then we must distinguish between Argentineans from Buenos Aires and those from Patagonia, in Buenos Aires between the poor and the wealthy, within the poor between the homeless and people living in small shacks, within the homeless between men and women, within men between old and young, and so on until there is no more than one person left for each category which takes us back to the theory of solipsism, that only I can know myself, and therefore to the impossibility of mutual understanding. In social research difficulties may arise as many of the political and ethical dilemmas ( ) stem from the researchers simultaneous occupation of a status as insider and outsider in relation to those they are researching (Charles, 1997, p. 394), since boundaries between groups are never clear-cut. But this evokes the idea that ultimately, if I am the only person left in my category and nobody from outside my category can truly understand me, I must know my own self best, and this idea we must question. For many instances come to mind where we dont really understand ourselves. When writing an exam, for example, we are not conscious of all the thought processes going on within our head and we would have a hard time explaining how we wrote it. Fay writes that the mind does not have an unmediated knowledge of itself (1996, p. 19), meaning that we cannot necessarily interpret the experiences and feelings we have. Similarly I have no detailed recollection of the day my dog was put to sleep, it went by in a blur. Not only did I not have full knowledge of myself on that day but with time it has changed further: my personal account of that day would probably be very inaccurate because tinted by my emotions and patchy with suppressed memories (Bridges, 2001, p. 2). Furthermore, it is well known that a stressed person is the last to realize or acknowledge it, what is needed is precisely a person on the outside a doctor, a parent, a wife to diagnose the symptoms and look at our taken-for-granted experience through ( ) the eye of a stranger (Bridges, 2001, p. ), so from an outsider perspective. Our insider perspective does not necessarily work to our advantage because, as Fay puts it, knowledge of what we are experiencing always involves an interpretation of these experiences (1996, p. 19). Likewise, being a member of a group does not always give us the best knowledge of it. For example, a sports player is not automatically the best sports commentator (Fay, 1996, p. 20), and being a native speake r of a language often means that you have more difficulties explaining grammar rules than a non-native speaker. Merton is his studies found that the judgements of insiders are best trusted when they assess groups other than their own (1972, p. 18). Distance can create better knowledge because it gives a wider view of things: Fay gives the example of Hitlers biographers who were able to understand him not in the sense of being sympathetic toward him but of giving an accurate account of his character and motivations precisely because their distance enabled them to make a connection between internal emotions and external situations (Fay, 1996, p. 24). But how can we reconcile this argument with the one made earlier that Jung Chang was only able to write such an extraordinary account because she was an insider? Maybe the answer lies in that knowledge does not rely solely on whether one is a member of a certain group or not. Knowing something implies that we understand its meaning and have made sense of it, not that we have an empathetic understanding of it. Fay compares making sense of something with trying to decipher a difficult poem rather than trying to achieve some sort of inner mental union with its author (1996, p. 25). Sensitivity and criticality are the relevant criteria to understanding rather than being an insider or outsider to a group whether we are speaking about women, Muslims or Russian peasants. An insider may however be more aware of the issues at hand; he may not have the automatic ability to truly understand but his status might facilitate it. If we really had to be one to know one, most of our world today would become pointless: media, research, welfare, etc. Why be informed about the war in Iraq if we can neither understand the Iraqis nor the soldiers nor the politicians? Why make any judgement, any protest? Because our insider status as human beings gives us the sensitivity to reject violence and suffering, even if we are outsiders on all other factors.