Synthetic media
While we were discussing the topic of deep fake and synthetic media in class, one of thing first examples that popped into my mind was hologram performances and presentations. This technology is frequently, and most famously, used to hold live performances by artists who have passed away. The most famous example is Tupac at Coachella and Michael Jackson at the billboard music awards. Although holograms or technologies similar in that like, are not synthetic media, they are merely the medium of the media(Prince’s hologram tribute during Superbowl halftime), the whole performance enhanced by holograms is a form of synthetic media in my opinion. (There are also examples of using artificial intelligence to generate 3D holograms in real-time in 2021.)
For the Tupac performance, the animation was made by incorporating characteristics of Pac’s movements gathered from his past performances. From the video footage, it’s clear that it was a new performance: from the interaction with the crowd to his movements. It was more than animation, but was a way of creating new performances without the artist being there. (For Michael Jackson's posthumous performance, “he” performed a song that was released after his death in 2009)
The Tupac Coachella set was in 2012, and by seeing that this is not a common thing in today’s music industry, it is safe to say that most people are not ok with it. Having the late artists perform new material through new technologies (without the artist’s consent) doesn’t sit right with music lovers. Even if we removed the fact that the people who are shown via holograms are respected artists who have passed, the act of creating and showing brand new performances of a person without the person's acknowledgment is an ethical grey area. If this form of performance became widely accepted, it could change the core of live performance as well as people’s understanding of imagery of a person.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/how-the-tupac-hologram-works/2012/04/18/gIQA1ZVyQT_story.html
https://news.mit.edu/2021/3d-holograms-vr-0310