Thank you for the music: how will live concerts evolve in the Augmented Age?
Oct 17, 2022
Nick Bolton, CEO, discusses how live concerts could evolve in the
17 October 2022 - Digital transformation is impacting almost every dimension of our world and the live music industry is no exception. The innovative adoption of motion capture technology has enabled the realisation of cutting edge, creative ideas and developments for live performances.
The live concert industry has always been quick to adopt technological change - just look at how virtual performances have evolved from the first experimentations by South Korean boy band H.O.T., to the critically acclaimed ABBA Voyage Experience. It was back in 1998 when H.O.T. became the first to experiment with holographic performances, aiming to appear in multiple locations at once on their world tour. The technology continued to develop so that 2Pac could appear posthumously with his holographic appearance at Coachella 2012, where one video of the performance amassed over 57 million views on YouTubei, his album sales increased 500% and downloads of his song 'Hail Mary' rose 1,500%ii. Not only this, but a 2015 live music video performance by Japanese pop group, Perfume at SXSW, which seamlessly combined live footage of the trio performing with motion captured 3D avatars, was described by Wired as an “ecstatic vision beamed back from a future in which the physical and digital have converged to the point of being utterly indistinguishable”iii - truly the blurring of the physical and virtual worlds.
Concerts are now being performed by avatars of the musicians, to critical acclaim. The best example of this in action is the ABBA Voyage experience.
The momentum was building for augmented projects. The announcement of Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour with a virtual reality experience in 2018, showed key moments over his 50-year career. To create a true to life performance, Elton was motion captured by Vicon customer, House of Moves, ensuring the moves of ‘digital Elton’ stayed trueiv. The Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour announcement and the ABBA Voyage Experience were both underway before 2020. However, the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic accelerated musicians’ readiness, and indeed, the readiness of fans, to embrace this technology on a wider scale, moving the industry into the next era.
As we move into the Augmented Age, where machines and humans partner to achieve what neither can do alone, concerts are now being performed by avatars of the musicians, to critical acclaim. The best example of this in action is the ABBA Voyage experience. The band members, Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Benny, and Björn, were tracked using motion capture as they performed their set to perfection over the course of five weeks. The motion measurement sensors and software captured every idiosyncrasy, every mannerism, emotion, enabling Vicon customer, Industrial Light & Magicv to merge the physical and the digital and create the band just as they performed in 1979, not as hollow images, but avatars, virtual twins of the artists, complete with the performers’ real essence and emotions.
A study conducted by Middlesex University reported that 95% of fans surveyed said that emotional engagement from the artist during live stream concerts is important to themvi. The commercial and critical success of the ABBA Voyage experience is testament to the fact that this emotional engagement has been achieved, with motion measurement technology at the very core of the operation.
We are already seeing consumers embrace this digital format in the live music industry, as the possibilities enabled by motion measurement begin to crystallise. Now, what leaps out is the potential longevity of these augmented concerts. Virtual concerts allow concertgoers to experience the greatest performances of their favourite bands and musicians, past and present. The performance possibilities are truly exciting, as we have seen with ABBA, bands like the Rolling Stones can be immortalised, even Oasis could be reunited onstage. The sense and analysis capabilities which form the backbone of these projects are there, how they will be applied to transform the future of the live concert industry will be determined by the imaginations and creative genius of the digital artists, technicians, and performers. What once seemed a possibility in the distant future is now being realised before our eyes in the Augmented Age of the present, enabled by developments in motion measurement technology.
i YouTube, Tupac Hologram Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre Perform Coachella Live 2012, 18 April 2012
ii Digital Domain, Virtual Tupac
iii Wired, Hot Damn, This Concert Is Straight Out of the Future, 23 March 2015
iv fxguide, Digital VR Elton, 28 January 2018
v YouTube, ABBA Voyage: The Journey Is About To Begin, 2021
vi King’s College London, Research finds live streamed concerts are here to stay post-pandemic, 14 May 2021
Travel Weekly has reported extensively how AI may impact travel planning and booking. On a trip to the U.K. this month, I looked at how it's affecting tourism experiences, as well.
Seeking a little contrast, I divided time between tradition-bound enclaves and some attractions whose foundation was frontline technology.
To American eyes, the U.K. is particularly rich with tradition, and I could think of fewer places near London that revel in custom more than Cambridge and Oxford. I planned daytrips to each.
In Cambridge, I met up with John Shears. He's an authority in a certain realm of past English endeavors -- polar exploration -- but also recently employed highly advanced technology as expedition leader of the mission that found Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, in the depths of the Weddell Sea last year.
We arranged to meet at Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute, named for the Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, at precisely 10:30 a.m. The timing was not coincidental; that's when, each morning, a ship's bell is rung and the staff gathers for tea or coffee. While this custom (minus the ship's bell) was routine in American institutions in the not-too-distant past, it has been more recently cast aside in favor of a quick Starbucks run. The 10:30 gathering of colleagues at the institute seemed a curiously quaint and quintessentially British ritual.
As we wandered through the institute's multistory library containing thousands of volumes related to polar exploration, many old and rare, I didn't see a computer in sight. Was the collection digitized? I asked. It has not been.
Although the library requires permission to enter, the building also houses a small museum visited by 50,000 people annually. Even before going in, one walks past a sculpture created by Scott's widow, Kathleen, then enters beneath a bust of Shackleton into a small hall embedded with architectural details related to exploration in the arctic regions. The museum is polar-nerd heaven.
That night, back in London, my inner tech nerd -- or, I guess, just nerd -- emerged. I had bought a ticket for "ABBA Voyage," a somewhat disorienting journey into an almost purely artificial world. In a purpose-built theater, ABBA Arena, the 1970s Swedish pop group gives a 90-minute concert without any members of the group actually present.
The groups' four members come alive, seemingly human-size and in three dimensions, on densely pixilated LED screens, their movements in sync with enhanced concert footage displayed on giant screens. The entire experience is not unlike a typical arena concert. A creative 360-degree light show augments the songs. The effect is surreal, but real enough that the audience applauds and even stomps its feet for an encore, which it gets. I wasn't sure which was more mystifying, the onstage "ABBAtars" or the audience.
The next day, another friend, a professor at Oxford, walked me through Jesus College, whose centuries-old chambers seemed straight out of a "Harry Potter" book. Among the items displayed in its library is T.E. Lawrence's (Lawrence of Arabia) dissertation on Middle Eastern military architecture, complete with penciled notes in the margins. Although the tour represented submergence in another era, it was a familiar reality, requiring less cognitive adjustment than the interior of ABBA Arena.

Inside the "Beyond Reality" gallery at London's Frameless experience. Photo Credit: Arnie Weissmann
From there, back to London and "Frameless," a permanent art exhibit with no paintings or sculptures. It's a series of galleries, each featuring a different artistic genre. It's among the growing collection of attractions described as "immersive," from Las Vegas' new Sphere to the city's ever-expanding Area 15 complex.
"Frameless" is a technological and design marvel. It has four thematic galleries that together animate 42 paintings. The galleries have no wasted space, with floors, walls and sometimes ceilings becoming the canvas for moving, and occasionally interactive, imagery.
The collected art passes through you rather than the other way around. Images flow, dissolve, throb and explode. In one gallery, after a wall-size masterpiece shatters into shards on the floor, you can kick the debris, scattering flakes of colored light like autumn leaves as you move.
Princess Cruises' president, John Padgett, speaking at the Phocuswright Conference this week, said technology should be employed as a facilitator of personalized, up-to-the-moment experiences at scale. Technology is not the point, he said. Experience is.
I did unsuccessfully inquire whether "Frameless" employed AI, but the platform is beside the point: The technology behind both "ABBA Voyage" and "Frameless" can't be separated from the wow factor. The experience of cutting-edge innovation becomes part of the story that's repeated. I doubt Padgett would be upset if guests returning from a Princess cruise weave the high-tech wonders of the Ocean Medallion into their vacation tales.
Immersive experiences will not overcome interest in tradition and the past, whose remnants, still in use or dormant, often reflect earlier stages of trailblazing technology. Whether examining Shackleton's self-designed boots or seeing the clock turned back on Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frid, technology and experience have become inseparable.
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