Given that we live in an era when Japanese pop groups build synthetic singers using preexisting members’ facial features, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. At the Coachella Music Festival last night, Tupac Shakur — who has been dead for almost 15 years — was resurrected by means of an unnervingly realistic hologram. The rapper performed “2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted” and “Hail Mary” alongside not-deceased stage mates Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.
https://gizmodo.com/japanese-pop-group-builds-a-new-computerized-idol-out-o-5814250
To make matters all the weirder, the digital Tupac greeted concertgoers at a festival that didn’t even exist when he died. I can see this kicking off some newfangled touring trends as our century progresses. Why see the wheezing cybernetic body of Keith Richards play an arena when you can watch digital facsimiles of all of the Rolling Stones circa Beggars Banquet? And Ticketmaster will still be charging a king’s ransom in quatloos* for that stupid service charge.
*Similarly, I posit that starships someday will be equipped with helpful, medically trained holomatter constructs of 2pac, not unlike the Doctor from Voyager.
[Via Super Punch]
