For those who haven’t seen this yet, this morning’s “Times” newspaper drew my attention to this. At Coachella this year, they managed to resurrect Tupac Shakur who has been dead for years via modern technology. You can view one of the performances after the jump :
This is possibly the first time this has been attempted in a full body performance. ”War of the Worlds” resurrected Richard Burton as a gigantic holographic head – but this wasn’t truly holographic as it wasn’t in 3D. However, it is extremely well done – I believe it was achieved by animating his performance (it wasn’t filmed footage of him, but a CGI created animation) – the full explanation of how it was achieved is shown here :
Truly amazing use of the technology I think you’ll agree. The next stage of development, apparently, will be “War of the Worlds : The Next Generation” which plans to have Liam Neeson appearing on stage as a fully interactive 3D Hologram, and if this is achieved it will push the boundaries even further. I have a ticket for that show so will be able to comment on that in December.
In the meantime, of course, there are plenty of ethical questions raised by what was achieved at Coachella. Could we see John Lennon perform again with The Beatles? Freddie Mercury reunite with Queen? (I am sure if there was money to be made Brian and Roger would do it). In the latter case it would certainly be preferable to Adam Lambert.
But overall, I have to admit to being slightly uncomfortable with the whole process of resurrecting the dead in this way for entertainment.
What do you think?
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