The living dead: we can watch ‘Janis Joplin’ perform or reunite the Beatles, but who are the real winners here?

Advances in digital technology mean that avatars are ever more realistic, and zombie concerts are coming our way.

Exciting as it might be to witness the Fab Four, or Maria Calla on stage, I’d rather have flesh and blood live experiences any day.

It seems that AI’s powers – terrifyingly – know no bounds.

But can it raise the dead? Here’s what Avatar concert producer Unit1 Studio’s CEO Barney Wragg said in a recent interview.

“ We [are] talk[ing] about using AI to simulate the way that tears evaporate in your eye between blinks, or subcutaneous blood flow, so that when one of our [digital] characters laughs or opens their mouth or smiles, areas of their flesh will change colour as it would do in a real human”.

Digital avatars are already part of our entertainment landscape – from Tupac and Abba to Maria Callas – but now that an avatar’s cheeks can change colour mid-set, is it game over for humans? Wragg last week reported a massive investment in his company to make hyper-realistic avatar-entertainment.

Unit1 plans to roll out avatars of musicians living – and dead – so that the success of Abba Voyage is just the start of a slew of “hybrid” concerts.

In other words, flesh-and-blood audiences paying massive amounts of human money to witness a very expensive LED screen showing phantom musicians in the 21st century’s equivalent of the magic lantern. (The tech is a 2D illusion: you think you’re seeing Abba’s Agnetha in 3D, but you’re not; it’s all just a new-fangled but fundamentally old-fashioned trick of the light.) Continue reading...