How did a cartoon band become one of the most vibrant symbols of the digital age? The lecture will explore the phenomenon of Gorillaz through music, avatars, internet culture, and Damon Albarn's image behind the scenes of the project. This is a conversation about the boundary between fiction and reality, which has long become much thinner than it seems to viewers and listeners today. In the early 2000s, the internet was already changing how people listened to music, watched videos, and perceived celebrities. Against this backdrop, a band emerged that seemingly had no familiar face. Instead of musicians, there were drawn characters with their own biographies, habits, and conflicts. Instead of a standard rock legend, there was a project where sound, animation, mythology, and media play intertwined into one system. The lecture by cultural scholar and musicologist Timofey Chaplyuk will help to understand why this experiment turned out to be such a precise hit for the era. It will discuss how virtual participants became more recognizable than many real artists, why the audience believed in their characters, and how Damon Albarn managed the project while remaining both the music author and the person behind the curtain. Ideas on where to go in Yekaterinburg are gathered on our website.