2.0Pac was "completely synthetic human being", may tour
The brief appearance of (briefly?) deceased rapper 2Pac in hologram form at Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s set at this weekend’s Coachella festival has already grabbed the headlines, but this may just be the start, if sources close to the project are to be believed. Representatives of both Dre and Snoop are apparently in discussion for more dates featuring 2.0Pac with plans tentatively labelled as “likely but not guaranteed”. Digital Domain, the company that created the image, are also keen to continue the venture and chief creative executive Ed Ulbrich has stated that “Dre has a massive vision for this”.
We can’t quite get our heads round the whole thing yet but the people in charge are certainly taking it seriously. An article in the Wall Street Journal shows that the hologram is not actually a hologram – “it is a 2-D image […] The effect relies on an angled piece of glass in which a “ghostly” image is reflected” – and it gets even more bewildering when describing the four month production. Ulbrich says it is a “completely synthetic human being” and explains that “the performances of the rapper’s hits Hail Mary and 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted weren’t simply old ones captured on film and re-purposed: ‘This is not found footage. This is not archival footage. This is an illusion.”
