London is getting a holographic, AI Elvis
Elvis Presley will be resurrected through the power of artificial intelligence in the new U.K. show Elvis Evolution
Aux News Elvis
Lots of big stars have played Elvis in recent years: first Oscar nominee Austin Butler, then Internet heartthrob Jacob Elordi, and now the name on everyone’s lips, artificial intelligence. Yes, be you living or dead, nothing can stop someone from exhuming the corpse of your past self and puppeteering it for the entertainment of the masses. Welcome to the future, and thank you very much.
AI Elvis is coming to London in a new stage show called Elvis Evolution from the U.K. company Layered Reality, which creates “immersive experiences” like The War Of The Worlds and The Gunpowder Plot. Elvis Evolution promises a biographical and musical experience of the superstar, described on the Layered Reality website thusly:
“The show peaks with a concert experience that will recreate the seismic impact of seeing Elvis live for a whole new generation of fans, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. A life sized digital Elvis will share his most iconic songs and moves for the very first time on a UK stage. All thanks to Layered Reality’s unique blend of technology, augmented reality, theatre, projection and multi-sensory effects. Elvis fans can look forward to a memory-making experience like no other. Through AI and groundbreaking tech you’ll be able to witness iconic Elvis performances as if you were really there, and celebrate defining moments in Elvis Presley’s extraordinary life and career.”
The holographic concert performance “in AI” (in the words of Layered Reality CEO Andrew McGuinness) of course has the stamp of approval from Elvis Presley Enterprises, which says the upcoming show “will be the experience of the century for Elvis Presley fans.”
Now, artificial intelligence has become a 21st-century boogeyman, and for good reason: the technology has troubling implications for art, creativity, and the value of human work. But not every use of “artificial intelligence” is necessarily sinister. Peter Jackson used AI not to recreate the voice of John Lennon, but to isolate and enhance his vocals for the final Beatles song “Now And Then.” It’s unclear exactly how AI factors into Elvis Evolution, but it could be a similar case.
Even then, holographic performances of long-dead artists who have no say in how their image is used are controversial in themselves. One of the most famous cases was a hologram of Prince at the Super Bowl, despite the fact that he was on record in his lifetime as finding the concept “the most demonic thing imaginable.” Since then, holograms have resurrected artists like Tupac and Whitney Houston, to mixed reception. On the other hand, some living artists have embraced the possibilities of a digital avatar taking on performance duties for them: ABBA has a popular holographic show called ABBA Voyage, and KISS recently retired from touring and passed the baton to their own digital avatars. Frontman Gene Simmons said the tech is an opportunity to keep the band “forever young and forever iconic.” We can’t know if Elvis would have felt the same, but U.K. audiences can judge the relative tastefulness of Elvis Evolution when tickets go on sale later this year.
24 Comments
I am just old enough to remember when Elvis died and how shook up my Dad was. I was hoping that all his fans would have died off by now and Elvis would be just history.
Was your dad all shook up?
yes 😂 partly because he was at that time, the same age as Elvis when he died
He was caught in a trap.
Gear geek here: what is that guitar he’s holding?
http://www.scottymoore.net/ep65EBS1250.html
Looks like a double-neck Gibson Custom EDS-1275 SG. (The top’s a 12-string.) I don’t know how to do links correctly, but there’s one listed on Sweetwater.
The EDS-1275 is the one that Jimmy Page made famous and is probably the most famous Gibson double neck configuration, but Elvis’ was an EDS-1250 with a 6-string bass on top instead of the 12-string.http://www.scottymoore.net/ep65EBS1250.html
I’m zooming in on it, but it doesn’t look like the top neck is a 12 string.
It’s not, because it’s a, no shit, 6-string bass, with a standard guitar on the bottom: EBSF-1250.Gibson Customs got weird.
must be short scale
Yeah, it was an EB-6 bass neck (or baritone guitar, depending on how you feel about these things) with a 30.5″ scale.Or it was cold. You can see the cloverleaf bass tuners in the full shot:
they can’t have made many of those. That’s got to be valuable even if the King didn’t hold it one time.
The four-string 1250s go for $60K AUD:Six-stringer? Who knows. A six-stringer Elvis held…God knows.
The Brits care that much about Elvis to make the show profitable there instead of Memphis, Dallas, or some other southern American city? Huh.
For one thing, the British Elvis market probably isn’t oversaturated. So fresher ground?
I remain mind-boggled that this style-biting, 14yo-dating hick’s legacy hasn’t been blown up by now. I guess people only care about pedophilia if you’re not successful at stealing your entire steeze from Black artists.
Elvis can be a hologram, but those fried peanut butter banana sandwiches will need to be real!
Frontman Gene Simmons said the tech is an opportunity to keep the band “forever young and forever iconic.” We can’t know if Elvis would have felt the same…I think it would be pretty easy to guess that Elvis would have likely approved.If the tech was good enough, he might have even wanted a hologram of his mother to keep at the house, sort of like they have done in some of the Superman shows.
Of course the british would be into this. They are uncultured swine.
Note that nowhere on Layered Reality’s site do they claim that this is a hologram because they, unlike this article, know that their projections are not holograms.
The show “of course has the stamp of approval from Elvis Presley Enterprises, which says ‘You can dump the money just over there with that pile.’”