FEATURE:
It's Not Right and It's Not Okay
IN THIS PHOTO: Whitney Houston
Time to Put Hologram Tours to Rest
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I am a big fan of Whitney Houston…
IN THIS PHOTO: A hologram Whitney Houston/PHOTO CREDIT: Danny Lawson/PA
and I have written about her before. Her death in 2012 took everyone by surprise, and her absence in the music world is still being felt. Although it is not a recent occurrence, deceased artists are being made to live on through holograms. I have discussed this before but, as Houston is the latest star to receive this rather weird treatment, I wanted to re-investigate. NME caught the experience at the Manchester Apollo on 28th February:
“Good evening everyone and welcome to Whitney Houston – very much live!” gushes the controversial Whitney Houston hologram, performing at the Manchester Apollo eight years after the global icon’s death. “There’s going to be a lot of love coming off the stage tonight! We’re going to be giving you the best we’ve got!”
As avatar Whitney launches into ‘Saving All My Love For You’, the woman next to me erupts into tears. Some fans are so taken in by the digital phantasm, they wave at ‘her’. At points, words can’t quite do justice to how unusual tonight is – the dictionary is waving a white flag.
An Evening With Whitney Houston has been endorsed by Houston’s estate, but early reviews of the first night in Sheffield were splenetic, with reports that audiences had taken to heckling, which feels like a very 2020 “Sue, you’re shouting at a hologram!” moment. But this didn’t deter the crowds from turning out in droves to Manchester; some I spoke with have come as far afield as Poland. Like many here, Oliver – celebrating his 17th birthday – was too young to see IRL-Whitney when she was in her prime. He doesn’t feel it’s macabre – or “ghost slavery” as one critic memorably dubbed it.
Because it’s obviously a pre-recorded singing voice taken from live performances, there’s no spontaneity, no interaction, no sense of drama over whether she’ll hit the high note. While Houston’s stunning, soulful vocal pyrotechnics cut through the artifice, it’s often more interesting to watch how the crowd reacts to the hologram than what’s onstage. They clap after each song (which initially feels akin to saying “Thank you” to a self-service check-out). By the time ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)’ rolls around, they’re up out of their seats and moving with abandon. Some even suspend disbelief enough to cry a euphoric, “G’wan Whitney!’.
Whitney always strove for perfection: this is the idealised Disney-version fans see in their mind’s misty eye, and some have even claimed that tonight has helped them wash away memories of her disastrous 2010 tour, where she appeared drug-ravaged and raddled. The atmosphere is that of a communal live album listening party meets mass raucous hen do. Take the moment, during ‘I Will Always Love You’, when Whitney’s vocal pauses for tension and dramatic effect: fans drunkenly finish the lyrics before she does, with multiple karaoke renditions competing with each other and sounding like a fire on Noah’s Ark”.
One can only imagine the oddness of seeing a Whitney Houston show and, instead of her on the stage interacting and belting out her classics, there is this projection that, oddly, will receive applause and adulation! Perhaps people saw this coming years ago because, as technology becomes more advanced, we are finding new waves of delivering music.
IN THIS PHOTO: Roy Orbison
Everyone from Tupac to Roy Orbison have been revived and returned to the stage as a hologram. I can understand why some would want to see a hologram version of their favourite artist. It provides a chance to see them perform again, but what is the point of watching a dead artist when they cannot connect with the audience and there is no sense of connection?! Maybe we joked about cartoons and comedies that had people projecting images of dead people through headsets and were able to communicate with them. That was okay, as it seemed so far-fetched and extreme. Now, there is this odd craving for holograms that seems to make no sense. I know people who saw Houston’s show paid so much for that experience, and one wonders what they got out of it. Surely, a Netflix show could have been made and fans could watch it for free?! That image of people all together and seeing an artist who has been dead for years….it sort of unnerves me. Sadly, as people do go and watch these shows, there will be demand; another famously departed artists will be reanimated for their fans. There were plans for Amy Winehouse to return as a hologram but, thankfully, I think that has been held back! The pleasure and magic of a gig is seeing the artist and them reacting to the fans going wild.
IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse/PHOTO CREDIT: Phil Knott
Having a hologram that is unable to respond seems very cold and robotic. It can be hard letting go of artists we all love…but is that why fans pay lots of money to see a hologram version?! I worry it is us as people not being able to detach from technology. Whilst fans cannot film holograms – their images will not show on phones -, it is people watching music rather than actually experiencing it. I would hate to see artists like Tom Petty or David Bowie come back as a hologram, and I hope their estates refuse any offer, should it come their way. I cannot see any justification for having holograms perform. It seems more expensive than seeing the live artist, and what difference is there between YouTube videos and old T.V. footage and a hologram?! It is all rather unsavoury, and I do sort of question anyone who would happily see a deceased artist back on the stage in such a ghoulish form. The revolution is here to stay, but I struggle to get my head around it all. It seems that profitability and revenue is, as always, at the heart of things – as this fascinating article explains:
“Pop-star holograms are exploding out of a chemical reaction between three elements that have been influencing human decision-making for thousands of years: supply, demand, and survival instinct. Binelli points out in the Times that, per Pollstar, “roughly half of the 20 top-grossing North American touring acts of 2019 were led by artists who were at least 60 years old,” including the top three: the Rolling Stones, Elton John, and Bob Seger. His conversation with a member of one major hologram-production company suggests this technology could transform those data points from evidence of an imminent music-industry crisis into evidence of an enduring business opportunity:
“If you’re an estate in the age of streaming and algorithms, you’re thinking: Where is our revenue coming from?” Brian Baumley, who handles publicity for Eyellusion, told me. Some of those estates, Baumley bets, will arrive at a reasonable conclusion about the dead artists whose legacies they hope to extend: “We have to put them back on the road.”
PHOTO CREDIT: @ericmuhr/Unsplash
The art industry has just as much of a stake in extending the legacies—and profit windows—of major talents approaching (or past) the ends of their productive lives. By this point in time, the interplay between aesthetic evangelism and financial opportunism has been incentivizing choices within artists’ studios and estates for over a century, with each project finding its ethical level based on weighing those two factors.
Consider that every single plaster, bronze, or marble cast by Auguste Rodin was actually fabricated by another skilled artisan using only Rodin’s small clay models. Or that the Dia Art Foundation and the artist’s estate (with funding from Gagosian) completed Walter De Maria’s installation Truck Trilogy four years after his death. Or that the estates of Roy Lichtenstein and Constantin Brancusi both produced new editions of important sculptures decades past the dates their respective creators beamed up to that big studio in the sky.
Assuming performance art’s popularity surge continues, then, why wouldn’t a major gallery and/or institution be tempted to restage, say, the centerpiece of Abramović’s “The Artist Is Present” via hologram for a paying audience? Abramović herself might—might—be appalled by the idea as she lives and breathes now, but anything can happen when opportunities present themselves to estate executors. After all, visitors to the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida can already interact with a ghost of its namesake digitally resurrected on flat screens throughout the institution”.
I shall leave things here but, whilst I can appreciate technology allows artists to live after death, it also gives record labels an excuse to milk their legacy – and artists who have died do not have a say in things. Although the hologram market is a lucrative one, our beloved and departed favourites…
PHOTO CREDIT: David Corio
ARE worth far more than that.