Let Them Rest Please: The rise of Hologram Concerts
ABBA a popular pop group from the 70s is getting ready to go on tour, 51 years younger.
September 27, 2021
Technology is rapidly evolving. In 2004 people researchers thought that “achieving human level speech recognition was an elusive goal”. We did it in 7 years. As technology evolves, the ethics of certain inventions alway come into question.
Last week ABBA announced that they would be holding a hologram tour in 2022 that would project the bands younger selves. With this announcement social media was quick to comment, bringing up the rise of holo-concerts, the ethics, and is this our new future.
This isn’t the first time concern over hologram concerts have been the center of discussion. Early this year the Whittney Houston estate received an onslaught of criticism for bringing An Evening with Whitney hologram concert to Las Vegas. The question is: ‘is it morally correct to project late celebrities to make money?’, and ‘at what point do we say no when it comes to technological breakthroughs?’.
Lili Kyle, a freshman at Oakdale and an Amy Winehouse fan, mentioned the controversy that arose after a similar tour was announced for Winehouse: “It was a mess.”
Both students expressed their disappointment with the upcoming trend: “I don’t feel as though it will be the same as a normal concert and would not want to pay the same price to watch a hologram perform,” Kyle voiced. She believes it will be harder for fans to connect to the artist if the artist isn’t a human.
On the other hand, families of deceased artists also struggle to decide when they’re ready to release their loved ones’ work. This is made harder when fans are constantly fighting with estates as to when an artist should release posthumous work.
“There is definitely a disconnect between artists and their fans., Brown exclaimed, “We saw it with the Whitney concert where people felt her family was doing too much with her image, but on the other end we saw it with Aaliyah where her estate didn’t release anything for almost 20 years. At the end of the day the estates need to keep their late loved ones in mind.”
Fans can only do so much to support their favorite artist, but it is up to fans and estate heads to honor artists and preserve their legacy.
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