Is It Live or Is It Tupac? And What IS “Live,” Anyway?
The highlight of this past weekend’s Coachella Festival was the unexpected appearance of Tupac during Snoop Dogg’s set. Yes, he’s still dead, but his resurrection via hologram was pretty cool, hinting towards what we might expect when we reach The Singularity in about 20 years. Me, I can’t wait to be part cyborg.
There’s an article in the Globe and Mail today that made me pause over my coffee. It has to do with the concept of live performances. What is “live,” anyway?
Then I read that Tupac’s appearance was so hot that the creators of the hologram are actually contemplating taking this whole thing on tour. The more I thought about it, the more existential it all became.
My brain started to hurt.
The lines between in-person, real-time performing and pre-recorded material has blurred so much that the meaning of the word “live” in a performance context has really begun to change into…something unexpected. From the Globe:
Georgia Institute of Technology professor Philip Auslander first floated the idea that live and mediated performances weren’t really all that different in his 1999 book, Liveness.
As the performance scholar pointed out, the very idea of “live performance” came about only when recording technologies created Coachella-style confusion by making the two indistinguishable.
The Oxford English Dictionary’s first example of the word “live” being used in relation to performance came only in 1934, when it had become impossible for a radio listener to tell if a broadcast was live or recorded.
Flash-forward four score years, and it’s pretty easy to distinguish the recorded Tupac hologram and the actual body of Snoop Dogg, right?
Not so fast.
Would be great to have holograms for live events broadcasted somewhere else. Le'me explain.
For instance, a live performance in O2 arena broadcasted LIVE as an hologram to a venue in TO.
This would be interesting for sports too: The final NHL broadcasted to any hockey rink that pays for the broadcasted live event. Like current NFL live games are showed in cinemas.
The way Snoop Dogg used it is cool but not really interesting music wise, my 2 cents.
I like it — it's just another way to experience music. I don't think it can ever replace a true, live event, but it could be cool to relive some music experiences from the past. Imagine seeing the 1960's-era Beatles play "live" again at an arena, or relive a U2 concert from the Joshua Tree era, etc. There are loads of possibilities here, and once the technology gets a bit better…
There's an article in the Globe and Mail today that made me pause over my coffee.