Over this past weekend the social networks were alive with the talk of Holograms and the name Jem was nowhere to be found. Well, at least not until the official 2015 tour featuring DJ Synergy and opening acts, The Stingers and Misfits is announced later this summer.
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Annual Festival kicked off on Friday the 13th and on Sunday night, an animated holographic version of Tupac Shakur (who has been dead since 1996) joined headliners, Dr Dre and Snoop to perform a few of his past hits. As if seeing digital Izombie Pac spit rhymes back and forth with his compadres wasn’t jaw dropping enough…He greeted the crowd with a ‘What the ‘expletive’ is up Coachella!’, a festival that hadn’t even begun at the time that he passed away.
Let me have my Bill & Ted ‘We live in the future, whoa’ moment.
While the some of the mega pop stars in Japan and groups like The Gorillaz have integrated technology like this into performances and live shows before. In my opinion, I see this moment as the kickstarter of the shape of things to come in entertainment. I’m writing this the morning after the spectacle and all over the web I’m seeing:
“Tupac Hologram Steals Show At Coachella’ , ‘The Coachella Closer To End All Coachella Closers’ , ‘Haunting Hologram Is The Talk Of Music Festival’, etc.
I’m not sure if this is a testament to what Pac accomplished in his twenty five years of life or the sad state that a beyond the grave performance upstages most current day hip hop music. He is the corpse that just keeps on giving. A commodity even beyond death. Like the Hall Of Presidents.
I’m sure Jay-Z was on the horn asking how he could add Biggie to his next Madison Square Garden show. I can think of other posthumous musicians I would rather see reincarnated into pixels. However, If they get a Gang Starr reunion on the holodeck booted up…my head would simply explode into a blinding light of rainbows and unicorns shitting pixie dust while doing acid.
Make no mistake, launching this tech at Coachella was PERFECT for that crowd. Why let all those psychedelics go to waste. Hell, some of the concertgoers might have thought that Machiavelli himself had returned from Cuba or Africa or wherever else the Enquirer thought he was.
It makes sense for the ‘Industry’ to make a move towards this. Artists and entertainers can stay young forever, keep cranking out the hits and live on as a brand. It’s a potential game changer for concerts. Once they figure out how to deal with its cost prohibitiveness, it WILL be used and often. Not only for the zombie music legends tour but for living artists too. Carpet bomb more places with holograms and increase profits.
The future of Vegas where Courtney signs off for Kurt…’Nirvana LIVE?’ At the Mandalay Bay. Queen fronted by the ghost of Freddie Mercury. The Rat Pack back in all their reanimated glory. And then when this technology is available for home use? You can finally have that dinner party with your favorite celebrity poltergeists. Karaoke/hologram bars as the next big thing…Imagine dueting with your favorite rock star, dead or alive! A living unreality where famous actors will also now never age, or die. Want Harrison Ford in a movie in twenty or thirty years, after he’s departed? No problem, just have someone else play the role and project Ford’s body, face and voice onto the shell. They’ll be selling us sneakers, soft drinks and automobiles forever.
The Grand Ol’ Party could replace the living 2D cut out of Mitt Romney with…BREAKING NEWS: Reagan hologram now front-runner for GOP nomination!
I only wish I had a hologram of me giving more of a damn.
Or an apparition of me saying: So..Artists and live interaction are not unique and important, that they can be replaced by some code?’. Maybe even, ‘Technology is awesome but you have to know when to say enough is enough.’
I’m so conflicted.
Commence Michael Jackson hologram tour in 3, 2, 1…
-Dagobot