There's this video rolling around about
2pac performing a song with snoop dog live at the music festival Coachella. It's been called a Hologram, it's been called light magic, future technology, etc etc. The effect was pretty impressive, enough to make the video trend with more than 3 million views in less than 3 days. The video got the attention of many artists, many magazines (
Rolling Stone) and even tech blogs (like
Gizmodo).
Tupac's one of those artists that you only know of if you listened to rap on the 90's. Rap's not one of my favorite music genres, but putting together lyrical harmony like that is not an easy task; sure it's not poetry, but its impressive. Although I'm not a fan, the performances that happened on Coachella were pretty great; top dogs from the industry where singing their thing, people there were screaming, crazy sounds where heard; but when Tupac appeared everyone sounded a bit shocked.
I don't know if it was because they where in shock to see the holographic image, or if they were in shock to see Tupac alive (probably both), but you can hear in the video the crowd changing hype to surprise and that's what I liked about it, the reaction that an old glass and light trick left right there with new technologies. People (me included) have been waiting since we where little kids for holographic action like humans, that's the effect that Tupac's image created, although is not a hologram; it felt like a hologram and it got everyone excited. In my opinion it changed a bit the way people see live performances. We've seen holographic anime singers before, now we see a holographic "dead" rapper, and although is not the first time (Disney's been using this technique for awhile, and other artists have performed with imagery that creates this holographic idea) it came in a perfect moment. The moment they used the image (a very impressive CGI image by the way) opened the imagination to many people, I've read about people wanting to see Elvis, or Michael Jackson, they want to see Steve Jobs saying something as a hologram. The mere idea that a CGI Mirrored image worked, "Live" on stage, well enough to sing with real artists without any problems is breath taking, it actually opens the doors to so many creative ways of performing.
And I'm not saying the technique wasn't used before, it has; and it has been for a long time. It's not a hard trick (its called the
Pepper's Ghost Technique and it's been around since the 1860's), the one used before only uses a transparent glass panel that reflects the light from one side and when someone looks through the transparent panel the lighted reflected image appears to be a ghostly image. For Example on the image to the right, the red square represents where the people would be looking from, the green square is the glass panel, the little ghost reflects on the glass, and from the the viewing angle of the red square the people will see a ghostly image of the room since it's being reflected from the right (confusing? check out the link to wikipedia, you'll get a better explanation).
As to how they presented the effect on the event I can't say; but what I can say is that they freaking did a great job. A 100k CGI, and perfect placement, even the voice of Tupac talking before the singing was fantastic; they did a great job and at the same time they opened the eyes of many, many people; Technology IS advancing, little tricks like these mixed with some good tech create what happened with this video, and I'm pretty sure it'll create new ideas to more creative performers. Old tricks, with new tricks; united by great ideas and presentation... that's what happened on Coachella.
I don't know.. It gave me chills, not for the song, or for seeing an icon of Rap singing again; but for the great effect and ideas this thing brought me.
If you haven't seen the video; here's Tupac's performance.
And if you want to see the full Coachella event (a lot of artists), here's the complete concert video. Just note that
this is PG13 stuff.
There you have it, now tell me... wasn't that interesting? Have a great one readers (I'll try to be less lazy... maybe).
Hi. I’m a social researcher, developer and consultant. Bringing you news that would probably make your head hurt and some others that will make you want to hug a puppy.
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