Futures made of virtual reality
COMMENTARY
Realness is overrated.
In fact, I'm not sure that anyone's sure what reality really is.
Having watched the mind-bending Interstellar movie over the weekend, I'm more convinced than ever that reality and fantasy are symbiotic forces, neither of which supersedes the other in any ultimate sense.
At the end of it all, thoughts and dreams and fictions will carry as much weight as physical stuff.
Did I mention I watched Interstellar over the weekend?
Anyway, all this is a roundabout way of getting to the point that I'm cool with the late US singer Selena, the Queen of Tejano music who Jennifer Lopez portrayed in the 1997 film biopic of the same name, being brought back in holographic form.
The project to resurrect a digital doppelganger for the Latina icon is being undertaken by Selena's family and a company called Acrovirt.
The Acrovirt press release claims Selena The One, as "she" is to be known, will be unlike any posthumous media entity ever created.
She will be a "walking, talking, singing and dancing digital embodiment of iconic singer Selena".
"This technology is an advanced technology that does not have the limitations of past technologies such as holograms or holographs... Selena The One will release new songs and videos, will collaborate with current hit artists, and aims to go on tour in 2018."
Such fun.
Of course, the idea of an artificial pop star is hardly revolutionary.
Ever heard of Jem And The Holograms? That was a cartoon from the EIGHTIES.
Jerrica is a normal girl who transforms herself into a holographic pink-haired pop diva/alter ego named Jem with the help of her hi-tech earrings.
There's a Jem And The Holograms movie in the works, and I predict it will be the greatest story ever told.
Back in the 90s, cyber novelist William Gibson wrote a book called Idoru about a sentient but synthetic pop star called Rei Toei who is engaged to a real-life rocker.
It's probably no accident that Gibson decided to make his Idoru Japanese; the Japanese seem to have a unique relationship with human-created beings, from robots to anime babes, and they've been deep into the whole virtual idol thing for nearly two decades.
They started off with Kyoko Date back in the 90s, and a more recent example would be Hatsune Miku, who appeared last year on The Late Show With David Letterman.
To say that Letterman was bemused would be an understatement.
If I have any issue with Selena coming back from the dead, it isn't that it's weird or crass or disrespectful to her memory.
It's that it's kind of boring.
Why would you want to bring back an old singer when you could create an entirely new one, like Hatsune?
Acrovirt can say what they like, but it's hard to imagine that Selena's undead career will be any different than what we've seen from the holographic Tupac Shakur or Michael Jackson showcased at Coachella and the Billboard Music Awards respectively.
It's just kind of a parlour trick, almost literally smoke and mirrors.
If I had all this tech and talent at my disposal, I'd wanna do my own thing.
If you're going to play God, you might as well go all the way.
Our resident Kiss 92 DJ/journo is more than cool with synthetic pop stars
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