MSP52 [] The Singing Dead

This is a download from BFM 89.9, the Business Station. BFM 89.9, the Business Station. My name is Rich Bradbury. Sometimes it feels more like an episode of the X-Files, or one of Infowars' crazy moments when you're talking to CulturePods, Matt Armitage.

Today, I believe we're talking about technology and deceased pop stars. That's right, it's the Singing Dead. It's time to Matt's plane. Come on, Matt, hello, welcome.

Hey, Rich, are you two? Right, I can only assume we're talking about Amy Winehouse here. Yeah, I mean, in case people missed the story last week, it's the Amy Winehouse who died in 2011 will be embarking on her first world tour since her death in 2019. Now, if you think that might not work, it's not actually a bunch of fans sitting around her casket while her albums are played over the PA.

It's actually something that's maybe even more sinister in Macabre than that. So Amy will actually be on stage belting out her hits night after night. Like a hologram? Yeah, I mean, it'll be a mixture of hologram technology with cutting-edge CGI and, I'm assuming, AI as well.

So it'll give the appearance that she's there, that it's live, that it's natural, even though she isn't alive and it isn't natural. Now, this is what they did with the two pack, Coach Jeller a few years ago, right? Yeah, I mean, before I dive into the technology side, there have been quite a few attempts to bring dead artists back to the stage in this kind of virtual environment. So two pack is one back in 2012.

Pretty speeds? Pretty. I think just about still here, along with Lindsay Lohan. Frank Sinatra was brought back for a duet with Alicia Keys at the Grammys a few years ago.

Michael Jackson, of course, at an awards ceremony in 2014. There have even been rumours that Justin Timberlake might appear with prints at a future Super Bowl. And they all use the same technology. Well, you know, the music business is a really dirty business.

There have been a number of companies trying to buy any of various technologies and systems for these holograms. And they're constantly suing and countersuing each other. Some of them even sue the estates of the artists that they're trying to secure. I think a couple of times the estates haven't liked what the companies have come up with in terms of these kind of holographic images.

And they've pulled out on the grounds of maintaining the star's legacy. So it's this weird thing that the music industry has gotten into. They think it's a great idea to sue their clients and their customers. Is that one of the reasons why we're seeing relatively few of these kind of events?

Yeah, I mean, all of the nonsense over who owns which patents, who's infringing on what? It doesn't seem to be helped by various players switching companies or companies going into receivership and the people behind those companies starting up a new one with the technology of the previous company. One of the reasons that we only saw Michael Jackson's hologram appear at the Billboard Awards in 2014, and we haven't really seen anything else, is because the people in this tiny little industry kept suing each other who over who owned the actual technology that brought Michael Jackson back to the screen. And that's the reason why we haven't had so far, Joan of Arc, the comeback tour.

Because not because the technology isn't there, but because this small group of operators would rather get into litigation than actually get to work. And of course, all of this is incredibly costly, which is something we'll get to in a while. OK, let's go back to Tupac. How did it work for a technical point of view?

Well, the clever bit was actually the CGI and the animation techniques that enabled it to happen. I know that to us, it's the fact that they seem to be on stage that's the mind-blowing part. But in that case, especially with Tupac, it was actually pretty simple. It used a system that's been around since the middle of the 19th century, called Peppers Ghost.

Essentially, it's smoke and mirrors. It uses layers of glass and refraction techniques to make it appear that this other world, the figure, is actually on stage. And it was pioneered for Victorian era theatre, so that they could get what looked like ghosts and spirits on stage for plays, like a Christmas carol by Charles Sticks. Right.

Do we get sidetracked by the notion that this is supposed to be the age of technology in progress? Well, humans are always terrible at learning from, or even examining, their own history. The 19th century was a technological marvel. We moved from steam to combustion engines.

We had cars in the earliest powered aircraft were making their literally explosive debuts. Electricity was seen not just of way to light up and power the world, but also to cure everything from hysteria to boils. We had the first modern medicines, anesthesia, pasteurization, x-rays, and, of course, photography in the first film cameras. And theatre in that kind of mid-Victorian era was the music festival of its age.

So, naturally, people wanted the latest technologies and developments to use on stage. How do we get from Top Hands and Tupa? Well, these projections of film on stage with Snoop and Dr. Dre, were an extension of those 150-year-old techniques.

If you go and watch footage of that show online, you'll see that Tupa doesn't really seem to be there. He kind of floats and shimmies around, and it's only when Snoop comes out and stands next to him that you get an idea of his scale. He just looks like a video image. You don't know if it's big or small.

So there was nothing really tangible about the image that they created. As you said, the clever bit is a CGI part. Yeah, because making him appear is simple. As I said, we've been doing that for over 100 years.

A child with some Lego in America could probably do that. No child, I know. But think about all the animation and speech synthesis that also has to be done. The projection itself didn't look real because it didn't have that solidity and depth.

But the recreation of Tupa as a human was actually pretty cool. His gestures, his movements, and especially those facial expressions. One of the reasons that humans respond very badly to androids is because they look creepy. The early CGI attempts at humans, like the movie Polar Express, for example, there's something unsettling about them.

We recognize that they look like us, but they're in human at the same time. So replicating the effect of the hundreds of muscles that create our expressions and our micro expressions on our faces is difficult, as well as all those constant shifts and alignments that our bodies make to keep us upright all the time. It's really tough. So even for the Tupa show, which is over six years ago, that was really some impressive CGI work.

I mean, the earlier on you mentioned the cost aspect. Presumably it's the CGI then that pushes these costs up. Very much so. I mean, when you look at the CGI in a movie, very often the actors will have been screen mapped in a green screen studio in 3D.

That doesn't make it simple, but they have precise measurements to base the physics on. With stars like Amy Winehouse or Tupac, obviously they weren't expecting the green reverb to, sorry, let me do that again. Go on. With stars like Amy Winehouse or Tupac, obviously they weren't expecting the green reverb to pop by the T.

And in Tupac's case, that modeling technology wouldn't have existed at the time of his death anyway. So those characters have to be recreated from photographs and video footage. So when we talk about Amy Winehouse touring live, there's all this complicated and expensive deliberation going on behind the scene. Yeah, very much so.

And it helps that the technology has moved along as well. So from what I can gather, Amy will be a projection, but not actually onto a screen. There will be a live band. There will be singers backing her up.

Plus all the usual big tour stuff like big screens and all the visuals and stuff. I'm assuming that there will be an AI component that allows her to speak on stage and appear to add Lib, so to say, you know, good evening, denver, good evening, wherever, so to give it a bit of personalization. And I'm sure it's going to look very good because the company behind it, Base Hologram, is currently putting on shows by the 60s screen of Roy Orbison and the Opera singer, Mariah Callis. So they've also used Body Doubles Shot in 3D to use as a base for these images.

So they're not basing, they're taking characteristics from video footage, but they're not repurposing images and video footage. So it's not taking a shot from a performance they've done before. It's all recreated for those shows using Body Doubles and the actual expressions of the artist. But you know, you can go and check out some of the Roy Orbison stuff online.

It's weird. It's definitely him. He appears to have form and solidity. He appears to be there in three dimensions, but it is slightly off as well.

Don't you find it a bit creepy? Yeah, very much so. You know, at the end of the Roy Orbison stuff, he kind of motions to the band and singers as if to say thank you. And that's odd because you know it's a machine.

It's not sentient. And there's also a sense of disconnection and dislocation because he's playing the guitar as well as singer, at least his hologram, is appearing to play the guitar. So with the singing, you can trick the brain because you're hearing the voice, but the guitar parts don't look natural because it's not feeding back to an actual, you know, anything that's actually being performed. So it's a bit more obvious that it's a machine or miming happening there.

OK, we're going to have to take a short break when we come back. Should we be bringing the dead back to life? You're listening to Matt Slain here on BFM, 8.9, the Business Station. Beyond frivolous mishmash.

BFM, 8.9.9. BFM, 8.9.9, other Business Station. You are listening to Matt Slain, I mean the studio with Culture Pops very on Matt Amatich. So before the break, we did something that's weird for you.

We actually talked about technology and how it works. That's how, what about why? Should we be bringing the dead on stage? Only if they're grateful.

It's really complicated, isn't it? If we go back to Amy Winehouse now, I've seen a lot of different opinions on this. A lot of people say it's more kish, it's tacky, it's CD. Then there are other people, and they're often from a younger generation who love the music and never got the chance to see the artist live and they're very in favour of this happening.

Stretching definition of life there. Well, it is a bit like reverse karaoke, isn't it? You go to karaoke and you sing, but the backing tracks are usually pre-recorded. Here it's the other way around.

Everything is live except for the star, literally. And they're vocals. I mean, I'll admit, I don't really like the idea. You might as well go and watch an old in concert performance.

Yes. But I want to go into the wider implications. Would Amy Winehouse have wanted her image to be used like this? For stars like Amy Winehouse, who died early, it's quite obvious which version of her you bring back, right?

What about Starlight Elvis, who had various stages of his career and identities, or shapeshifting artists like Michael Jackson, Prince, David Bowie? Yeah, exactly. I mean, as you said, Amy Winehouse, she died very young, I think, 28. 27.

27. OK, so she's part of that club. She is, yes. That version of her with the messy beehive hair, that, of course, is the one that you bring back.

For Prince, do you bring back the purple ring guy or the guy that appeared at the Super Bowl a few decades later? Will fans want to see Bowie's Aladdin Seine or Ziggy Stardust? You know, Bowie killed off Stardust long before he reached that purple patch in the late 70s and early 80s with hits like Fame and Ashes of Ashes and China Girl. So could a Bowie or Ziggy perform those songs?

You know, you can bring Michael Jackson back as a child star, but how would songs like Billy Jean work? You know, they have a very adult theme. How could that work sung by a child Michael? That artist will be expected to carry on working after the day.

Oh, sorry. I should rephrase that. OK, thank God. But do you think there'll be an expectation that artists will carry on working after they die?

Sorry, I've got to rephrase that. I deleted some stuff. So do you think that there will be an expectation that artists are supposed to carry on working after they die? Of course not.

Of course, because if they can, why not do it? And not just with music stars. I mean, we've already seen it in the movies. Sometimes it's done as a tribute to the star, like Carrie Fisher in Star Wars Rogue One or Paul Walker in the Fast and Furious franchise.

But we've seen stars like Audrey Hepburn and James Dean resurrected the star in commercials. So when do we get to that point where it's OK to die or be forgotten? Likely lawsuits in Europe against Google by people arguing for the right to be forgotten. Their past needs or history doesn't need to be instantly searchable or discoverable.

Well, you know, I've always been very much against that right to be forgotten. I know it causes embarrassment to some people, but information has always been out there. We don't go back through newspaper archives to amend or destroy the information that's recorded in it. We don't change birth and death records.

For good or bad, the knowledge has always been there. It's just that now it's more instantly available. And that's one of the adjustments that we're having to make as a society as a whole. But this nexus of technology and information is raising new questions that go far beyond whether you can get your mum to delete those embarrassing Instagram babysmats.

Essentially, you're saying that being legal isn't enough. We should point out that in all these cases the law has been followed, rights have been granted, no copyright has been infringed. Exactly. But the law really is only one element.

There is that wider moral and social behaviour aspect to this as well. So similar to the shows over the last few weeks, the technology is already way beyond our ability to judge whether the things are right or wrong. Because as a society, we haven't even had those conversations yet. People have the legal rights because those rights belong to an earlier age.

Back then it was about releasing a CD best of that cashed in from the death of a star. Or with someone like Elvis, it was to keep milking the music and keep the memorabilia flowing. Or the so-called new material by everyone from the Beatles, Amy Whitehouse, Michael Jackson. Yeah, I think Tupac has released more supposedly new material since he died than he managed to do while he was alive.

And there were two sides to that. We've had the controversy over whether new Michael Jackson tracks were actually sung by him or sung by a soundalike. Tupac's legacy is a mix of scraps and making the most of an incredible spree of recording that he did in the months before his death. Every scrap of feedback by Jimmy Hendrix seems to have been remixed and re-released a million times.

Prince on the other hand has a legendary archive. You could probably legitimately release original and completed work by him. Certainly for the rest of my lifetime, he was incredibly prolific. He would record and shelve entire albums on a regular basis.

So there's no one size fits all here. I found some of the posthumous releases by Amy Winehouse a little bit distasteful. But at the same time, I thought that that Beatles track Free as a Bird was actually quite a fun experiment. Indeed.

I'm glad you mentioned the Beatles. Let's go with the thought experiment then. Let's say I'm really good friends with Yoko Ono. Of course.

And she's given me the rights to John Lennon's work. I get an AI. Of course. I get an AI and I put it all in.

So now I have John Lennon's thing pretty much whatever I like. I've got another AI that analyzes his compositional style. Can I create a new John Lennon song? Well, that's really the question, isn't it?

I know that a lot of today's show is sounds a bit esoteric, so it doesn't matter to most of us. But actually it does because what if your employer laid you off and kept a virtual version of you on the payroll? You've been captured on their security cameras for years. They can build up your kind of facsimile of your personality through your writing and speech start taken from your emails and documents you've created.

Possibly they're going to have voice recordings of you as well. So in a lot of ways, we are all John Lennon. What would that work be? Well, that's for society to decide.

Look at the CGI version of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the last Terminator movie. Was that Arnie? Was it a fake or was it a composite or that recreation of the young Princess Leia in Rogue One? With actors, it kind of gets even weirder because the film company has the rights to the character that that person plays.

So Arnie could be the Terminator for literally hundreds of years to come. And that franchise doesn't look like it's going to stop anyone. I'll be back. Yeah.

Look at Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic of Queen Leads singer Freddie Mercury that came out last week. Now it's had great reviews for Rami Malek in the role of Mercury, but who would be the ideal person to actually play that role? Well, obviously it would be Freddie Mercury himself. And we're pretty close to having the full suite of technology that would allow a film company to do exactly that.

So it's not virtual reality so much as blurring reality. Yeah, take that game you told me about that you were playing last weekend, which was Red Redemption 2. Now I've seen the shots and that's really fantastic and very realistic. Scary so in places, yeah.

Yeah, I mean let me rephrase it. Yeah, I mean what got you most about the realism inside the game? There was a portion where as part of the progression you have to kill a wild animal and you're supposed to do it cleanly, hit it with one shot and it should die. You know, in most video games you hit anywhere other thing dies.

So I shot this goat with an arrow and it missed completely where it's supposed to hit. So this thing screamed like a dying goat whilst waddling off dying and bleeding out before it died an eventual death. It was just that the death was prolonged and very realistic. Scary.

Yeah, and that is quite horrific. Yes. But now you insert say John Lennon or John Wayne into that game. The character in it, as you just said, they're already almost alive or in the case of the goat nearly dead.

Yeah, yeah. But now you've brought John Lennon and John Wayne back to life in a way that you can interact with befriend or shoot with an arrow. Or shoot with an arrow. Other instances where we can use this kind of tech and it's very clear cut.

Well, obviously holograms have been put forward as a new way to archive memories. So as 3D images rather than 2D film and photo and there's no real image with that. It's also been mooted as another way for artists who aren't dead to appear. So the Foki Park and Fyst used a kind of projection to appear in three cities at once a few years ago.

The Rapid Chief Keef was supposed to undertake a holographic tour this year because legal restrictions prevent him from traveling to a lot of foreign countries. But those dates were supposed to start in late August. But I can't actually find any reports that they actually have gone ahead. So it could become an alternative form of performing of artists who are very much alike.

Sure, there was a piece published this week about pop star burnout. So Ariana Grande, who's UK concert was targeted by a suicide bomber in 2017, has spoken out about the pressure she now feels to record and tour and to appear. So for stars who for whatever reason want to just hunker down, a live hologram would enable them to perform for crowds across the world but still stay close to home where they have that support system of friends, family and maybe even medical professionals where they need them. I'm assuming this kind of tech has uses beyond the music industry.

Oh, absolutely. It's even been mooted as an alternative way for people to present lectures or speak publicly. Of course, the tech would have to get a lot cheaper and easier before we can do that on a wide scale. But it will because that's what technology does.

I understand that people are even exploring whether it would be legal for a US president to use holograms for public appearances. Copies of any politician would be awful enough. But gosh, imagine a multi-Trump appearing in every US city every night while he stays at home and scuffs down Big Max in front of Fox News 24-7. That is pretty much the future dystopia for you right there.

We can always end the show there. But those chakra scenarios are part. Do you think we need to think about this more deeply? Or is it just a fun night out for people who miss their favorite style?

It's tricky. I mean, as I've already said, I find it in Port-Ace to bring anyone else around the world. I'm sure her dad disagrees and he's the one who has the rights to her estate. It's easy to say that it's for commercial gain.

But I don't think we should automatically jump to that conclusion. He may genuinely be trying to share his daughter's work with the world in a new way. That said, I think we have to be aware of how we normalise this kind of technology. As I mentioned earlier, you have to look at the convergence.

How all of this technology is actually coming together. A system that would allow machines not just to impersonate you, but to physically become a version of you. Yeah. I mean, that's why we need all these debates about what a person actually is, what a personality is.

It may be in the future that society decides that no one is allowed to be resurrected like Roy Orbison has been after they die. It's like that Black Mirror episode where the holograms are a snapshot of the person. They're not an entire person, but they still feel pain and suffer for that duration. So we're at the point where we have to stop looking at this stuff as being science fiction.

When we think about traditional science fiction, we think Star Trek or E&M Banks or Asimov, and we think hundreds or thousands of years in the future. Stuff like Black Mirror isn't hundreds of years in the future. It's pretty much the day after tomorrow. And you can't plan a century ahead, but you can plan for tomorrow.

And you can certainly start thinking about the day after tomorrow. Once again, Matt ends the show with an apocalyptic B-movie. You can follow him on Instagram, at CulturePop and at Matt's Blaine. Head over to www.culturepop.com for more transcripts of these shows.

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