I did consider mentioning Gorillaz, but they are voiced by actual people, whereas Miku is software synthesis. The suggestion was that "the cause of a person singing is their mental states", but there is no person singing here and therefore no mental states in the singer - it's just Vocaloid.

Meanwhile, "To what extent can a piece of art be a thing that is of interest in itself, divorced from its creator, context, or any representation of anything in particular?" is absolutely a valid area for people to explore and one that artists are exploring all the time. There is now one more tool to play with in the toolbox.

I heard the exact same objections to the modtracker scene three decades ago - "it's just computer generated slop, I'm not interested unless it's a real person performing on real instruments". I maintain that not only was it a perfectly valid mode of expression then, but tools like Ableton grew in part from those experiences and are an integral part of much - most? - music now.