Brett CallwoodSince launching the Black Mirror television series in 2011, British creator Charlie Brooker has made it his business to shine a light on the more troubling aspects of technology. Technophobes shudder and technophiles snicker as Brooker takes the “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” approach to the modern fable. Everything from the overuse of cellphones to our reliance on social media has been effectively lampooned. The most recent season landed on Netflix in June — just three episodes that continue down that “be careful when plugging in” theme. But it’s the third episode that’s of most interest here.
Miley Cyrus might not be known for her biting, satirical wit, but she’s fantastic here as Ashley O, a troubled pop singer kept medicated by her unscrupulous manager/aunt. SPOILER ALERT: When Ashley O stops taking her meds and wants to write deeper, darker songs from the heart, her aunt has her deliberately induced into a coma. A hologram takes her place on stage — something management can control without question, raking in the cash and not having to rely on an unpredictable artist. At an unveiling, the fans cheer the hologram like it’s the real thing, because it looks and sounds like it is. “Photo-realistic, and fully controllable right down to instant costume changes,” Susan Pourfar, as the aunt, says.
As with everything Brooker does with Black Mirror, this “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” episode takes a “worst case scenario approach.” It’s a twisted look at what could happen rather than a statement that this shit will happen. But ignoring the coma sub-plot, what we as viewers can take from it is a healthy dose of suspicion. How should we react to a hologram on stage, taking the place of an artist living or otherwise? No matter how good the “show” is, are we comfortable getting up and cheering a projection?
(Netflix)
It’s a relevant topic because it’s happening now. Fear not, no artists are lying in a hospital bed in a deliberately induced coma while their career is kept alive. But deceased musicians are being projected onto a stage in hologram form, and it’s gathering steam as an accepted form of entertainment.
It pretty much all started when attendees at Coachella 2012 were surprised by a Tupac appearance, and more so when he started rapping with Snoop. AV Concepts was the company behind that trick and, at the time, MTV writer Gil Kaufmann told the Washington Post that, “…if Paul McCartney announced a tour with a virtual John Lennon, Beatles fans would likely see that as being in bad taste and not show up.”
Maybe Kaufmann was right, but maybe not. Because now, tours such as these are becoming commonplace. The Dio Returns tour sees a hologram of metal icon Ronnie James Dio sing with a live band largely composed of musicians that Dio actually played with. Reports have been largely positive, though naysayers maintain that it’s creepy. The company behind it is Eyellusion.
“The company was founded in 2015 and officially launched in 2016,” says CEO Jeff Pezzuti. “The idea came from me being a massive music geek for my entire life, seeing hundreds and hundreds of shows, and after the Tupac hologram in 2012, I just assumed that somebody was going to do what I was thinking about doing, and it never happened. I gave it a couple of years, and when I still didn’t see the movement that I was expecting, I decided to take the bull by the horns and make moves. We launched our first version of Ronnie James Dio in 2016. We did another version of it in 2017 and toured Europe. This was the first time with live bands, doing anything at this level. Now, with the brand new tour, it’s not only about the hologram, it’s about the overall experience.”
Pezzuti views it as the ultimate tribute to Dio, and now the company has a second show on the road offering Frank Zappa fans a chance to see their idol on stage, again or for the first time. As with Dio, Zappa’s hologram appears alongside musicians who actually performed with the man. But that raises questions too; by putting a hologram on a stage with the dead singer’s live bandmates, are the producers increasing the validity of the show as a live performance, or further pulling the wool over the audience’s eyes?
Eyellusion developer Chad Finnerty is responsible for making the Dio and Zappa holograms appear as lifelike as possible.
“Basically, the whole process is a lot of computer animation and a lot of hours,” Finnerty says. “We build a digital likeness of the person we’re trying to put on stage. Just like you’d have a sculptor working with clay, we have a digital sculptor working with Ronnie. We had to get approval from Wendy [Dio, Ronnie’s widow], style his hair digitally — many hours went into making his hair right. We had all the skin details that we had to paint in the computer using programs like Photoshop. A lot of hours went into that. Every bit of stubble on his face. There’s a lot of detail, and that’s only the beginning. Then we have to animate the whole set.”
Pezzuti stresses that the company’s intentions are good, and his points aren’t without validity. There are, he says, plenty of young Dio fans who never had the opportunity to see the great man perform. And sadly, they never will, but this show is the closest possible thing. And is it really much different to a Dio tribute band with a singer who dresses like the man? Nobody thinks they’re actually seeing the real Dio, so isn’t this just a great tribute?
“I love to get people’s impressions of what they think they’re gonna see and what they see,” Pezzuti says. “It’s always the same thing — a lot of kids who never got a chance to see Ronnie but heard about him through their parents. Or the other direction — they saw Ronnie in the ‘80s but hadn’t seen him since. People who want to go back in time as well. You have all these stories, and at the end we’ve had many standing ovations. I hate the idea that it’s just the hologram; what makes us special is the show creation. It’s how it flows. The set list, the live vocals, the visuals, Ronnie, all those elements come into play and most that have seen the show understand that and are super stoked about seeing it. We as a company have spent a lot of time and money to create this.”
(Copyright ©2018 Base Holograms, LLC)
Eyellusion isn’t the only company doing this. The Hologram USA theater in Hollywood hosts regular shows that include the likes of Billie Holiday. BASE Hologram, meanwhile, is responsible for hologram tours featuring Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and opera singer Maria Callas.
“BASE Hologram was officially launched in April of last year, following a two year research and development period of the business plan,” says CEO Brian Becker. “Our company has been involved in many forms and fashions of producing and presenting live entertainment around the world for 30 years, in terms of various careers, whether it was SFX Entertainment or Clear Channel, or any other stuff that we’ve done. So we’ve always been excited when there are new opportunities to create something exciting — a new art form if you will, and one that has certain appeal to consumers and also can become a good, robust business opportunity. After two years of research, we decided that this was an area that had great opportunity and could deliver really spectacular shows and educational opportunities.”
We put it to Becker that hologram technology has the potential to alter the description of what live entertainment means, and he correctly points out that technology has always changed entertainment, often (if not always) for the better.
“The idea that technology is going to change live entertainment for the negative is not something that I think will prove valid,” Becker says. “I think now that you have streaming, and the artists and record companies have found a way to make streaming work, and now you have more artists releasing music on that platform — these are all changes that are going on, and they’re all positive changes. All this does is offer a new art form. Most of the criticism is often from people who have not yet experienced a show. We’re spending 2[million] to 3 million dollars on a production, like any major concert tour or theatrical tour that would go around. There are constantly movies, TV, theater where people are dressing like, simulating, walking like, singing like, people that are no longer with us and I think you have to understand that the holographic image is part of a bigger production. It’s certainly spectacular and distinctive, and we spend a tremendous amount of effort to make it look like the actual artist. But it’s just a different way of doing the same thing. It offers something unique and exciting.”
(Photo by Tabatha Fireman/Getty Images for BASE Holograms)
Eyellusion agrees, with Pezzuti stressing that “raising the dead” was never in their mindset.
“The creepy factor I think is just people thinking about somebody coming back who has deceased,” agrees Finnerty. “That’s gonna happen in film, in television — whenever that’s done, there are always going to be people who are naysayers on that. What we’re going for is a tribute to that great artist. Giving new generations the opportunity to experience that. It comes from love.”
Wendy Dio admits that, when Pezzuti initially approached her with the idea for the Ronnie hologram, she was apprehensive. Who wouldn’t be? A businessman from the tech space was talking about putting her deceased husband back on stage — that meeting must have been odd. But, she says, after listening to him and realizing that she was being offered some control over the show, she was in.
“Technology has come so far in the past two years, and I’m very happy with this one,” Wendy Dio says. “It’s a hologram of Ronnie, his live tracks isolated and taken from different shows, and then it’s on stage with Ronnie’s Dio band that played with him for the last 17 years. It’s really a celebration of Ronnie’s life, keeping his music alive, and we’re really happy with this one. Obviously some people are very negative about it, but it’s the way of the future. I think that, if you want to say you don’t like it, that’s fine but don’t criticize something you haven’t seen. The fans are loving it.”
Let’s face it, she would know. Wendy Dio also swears that her husband would have been into the idea, as he was fascinated by holograms when he was alive.
“If anyone saw Ronnie’s Sacred Heart show in ‘86, you can see that we tried to make a hologram then when Ronnie came out with his head in a crystal ball,” she says. “Ronnie was always intrigued with holograms so I know he’d give his blessing. We’d go to Disneyland and he’d look at the holograms that Walt Disney had made and go, ‘We’ve gotta do this.’ It’s the way of technology. A lot of the bands, the innovators, are passing away. This is their legacy.”
The way of the future. The inevitable path that the technology is leading us down. That’s the opinion of the people who are involved in putting these shows together. And at the end of the day, the ticket-buying public will decide if this is something that they want to see, and continue seeing. Ultimately, would you rather see a hologram of a deceased favorite artist, or a new and living artist? Where do you want your money to go? And if these shows really are just a tribute to a great musician, is there any harm in that? Maybe not, but there is cause for concern. When we mention the Black Mirror episode to Eyellusion, they laugh at the storyline before Finnerty surprises us by mentioning that some living artists are considering the model.
“That’s a fact,” adds Pezzuti. “We have multiple artists who want to do something along that approach — not being induced into a coma but the hologram. If they’ve been touring for 30,35 years, it’s exhausting. Sleep on the bus all day, get to the gig, wait around, do the gig, wait for the crew to finish loading everything out, get to the next gig — it becomes monotonous. Do that for 30 to 35 years, throw in airports and hotels, it can exhaust you mentally and physically. So yeah, I can see why bands would want that approach for the future. I think a lot of them are waiting on the sidelines because they want to make sure the fans accept it. If you’re trying to change an industry that’s been stuck in the mud for quite a while, also trying to change the live music space, I can honestly say it’s one of if not the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Everyone waits and waits, and once the dominoes start to fall, everyone jumps in. We’re building for that.”
Hold the hell on — this changes things slightly. Because what they’re suggesting here is that, rather than just a tribute to a dead musician, the hologram can be used as a replacement for a living musician to effectively give them a rest. Or, arguably more bizarrely, to keep them out of countries they don’t feel safe in.
“It’s the only approach for legacy music, but also for artists to tour countries they don’t want to go to,” Pezzuti says. “A lot of artists feel uncomfortable in South America, Russia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Dubai — there are fans all over the world, but depending on who the artist is, sometimes they would love to do the show there but they don’t feel safe. There are different ways to look at it.”
It’s doubtful that Pezzuti said anything there that will calm the fears of those with deep concerns about hologram technology and where it could lead. A tribute to a musician we can no longer see — that’s one thing. A direct alternative to touring — that changes the game completely and it’s deeply problematic. At what point does the concept of actually seeing the living, breathing artist on stage become as archaic as vinyl records?
Of course, we’re some way off that. The technology isn’t cheap, and your average dive bar won’t be hosting hologram nights of unsigned punk bands. But consider this. When people stopped paying for recorded music and the model changed so that musicians made the bulk of their income from touring, people behind the scenes were immediately brainstorming ways to make as much money from said touring as possible.
If hologram technology allows a musician to “perform” in multiple cities and counties on the same night, how long before the financial benefits are exploited to the full? We’re already seeing living musicians such as Mariah Carey and Psy in hologram form at Hologram USA.
“I have heard from different managers they wish they only had a hologram to manage,” Pezzuti says. “A lot easier, when it comes to catering and the nonsense they have to deal with.”
Dio Returns takes place at 7 p.m. on Friday, June 28 at The Wiltern. Roy Orbison & Buddy Holly: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Dream Tour hits numerous California cities in September. Go to royandbuddy.com for more info. See what’s going on at Hologram USA here. Black Mirror is streaming now on Netflix.
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.