video Svana Gisla
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martes, 30 de diciembre de 2025
jueves, 18 de diciembre de 2025
Svana Gisla about IA
Svana Gisla, Producer of ABBA Voyage, shared why speed and cost aren’t the goal in creative work. The real value of AI is in helping creators think bigger, not work faster, while keeping human emotion and judgement at the centre of every decision.
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year 2023
BY Spectrum News Staff New York City
Jul. 27, 2023
domingo, 14 de julio de 2024
ABBA Voyage: building a "magic ABBA space church"
ABBA Voyage: building a "magic ABBA space church"
Bea Mitchell —
Svana Gisla, a producer for ABBA Voyage, has received multiple Grammy and Emmy award nominations for her work on music documentaries and live concerts. She has produced music videos for the likes of David Bowie, Madonna, Coldplay and the Rolling Stones. She has also worked with artists such as Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen. Before ABBA Voyage, ABBA approached Gisla to create a music video with digital avatars. She was then enlisted with business partner Johan Renck to create a live experience.
Ludvig Andersson, son of ABBA’s Benny Andersson, is also a producer for ABBA Voyage.
He has extensive experience in the music, theatre and film industries. He has worked on box office hits like the 2018 film Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Originally a musician and artist, Andersson is also the founder and head of RMV, a publishing, film and record company based in Stockholm.
ABBA Voyage is a spectacular show in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park where Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid sing and dance as digital versions of themselves.
“To me, it’s simply a concert,” Gisla tells blooloop. “That was our end game. It’s the concert that ABBA wanted to put on in the 21st century. It’s ABBA’s best possible concert in the 21st century.”
ABBA’s best concert in the 21st century
“Go see it for yourself,” says Andersson. “I’m not saying that because I think it’s amazing. I say that because it’s the only way to explain it.
“The original concept came from the very simple question – if we’re going to do something with ABBA, but ABBA is not physically there, what should we do? ABBA Voyage is what came of that. Should it be done? Is it interesting? We decided it is interesting to do.”
He adds:
“I’ve spent years trying to explain to people that it’s not about trying to trick people that ABBA are really there. It has nothing to do with that. It’s about simply creating a piece of art that you simply step into. It’s an experience on an emotional level. And that was all that mattered to us, to create something that could be felt.”
“And yes, it’s just a concert. But it took a really long time to make, and a lot of love and effort went into making it. What it is and how it makes you feel is impossible to describe. You just have to go and see it. A lot of people also say they are struck by thoughts of ageing, of youth, of time passing, and even of death. Not in a negative way, but in a beautiful, uplifting way.”
“What we accidentally created is some kind of magic ABBA space church that is for everyone.”
Cutting-edge technology at ABBA Voyage
Through cutting-edge technology, incredibly immersive lighting, and ABBA’s iconic songs, the band takes to the stage in a whole new way. “Everything about this show was unusual, and therefore the creative process was unusual,” Gisla says.
“There were several different work streams. Creating ABBA digitally took a long time, with over 1,000 VFX artists. We had to build the arena, which is a whole process in itself, including finding land, planning permission and architects.”
Gisla adds:
“We were also putting on a live concert – so everything that goes into designing and procuring a live concert under the guidance of our director, Baillie Walsh. Also, setting up a company, employing people, and marketing and tickets.”
“It was an enormous beast, to be honest – with a massive orchestra to conduct. We had fantastic people in every corner and still do, and they all contributed enormously. It was a joint effort in the greatest sense of that phrase. It really was humongous, but it was a very joyful and happy process. We didn’t really have a bad day; it was just so much fun. I think remnants of that live in the show, as it was created with a lot of joy and love by many very talented people.”
ABBA Voyage uses state-of-the-art technology, which the team chose “very, very carefully”, she says. “We looked at absolutely everything and did a lot of testing until we chose all the pieces of tech. It was great to collaborate with lighting artists from all over Europe. We didn’t really leave any stones unturned in finding the best possible procurement and people”.
Holograms by Industrial Light & Magic
The band members’ digital avatars, or holograms, were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the visual effects company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas. The band performed in motion capture suits, with cameras scanning their body movements and facial expressions. The resulting digital avatars are remarkable—almost unbelievable.
Gisla says: “We did two very big motion capture shoots – one in Sweden and one in London. The one in Sweden was right before the first lockdown in Covid. The second one was very complicated. We were the first film shoot in London after the lockdown in September 2020, with 50 people on set. It required a lot of planning, but we got through it, which was a miracle in itself. There was a lot of wind in our sails, and it felt like the clouds parted when we needed them to, for some miracle reason.
“Mine and Ludwig’s job, very often, was just to keep the path clean and clear for this project to be able to move forward all the time. That was tricky and often seemed quite impossible, but we did it. That’s a success in itself, regardless of the outcome, which thankfully was good.”
But back to the holograms, the ‘ABBAtars’. “I’ve never worked with ILM before because, obviously, they do huge, big, expensive movies,” she adds.
ILM: a “magical dream factory”
“I just walked into their office with a storyboard in the beginning and was welcomed by Ben Morris [creative director at ILM] and Sue Lyster [executive in charge at ILM]. They welcomed us with open arms and said, ‘We’ve been waiting for something like this; our technology is capable of this now. It’s obviously pushing every single boundary, and we’re going to have to invent some stuff, but the technology is there, and we think we can do a great job at this.’
“So then we had the resources of some of the world’s most talented visual effects artists. We ended up using three or four of their studios internationally.”
“When you’ve got that backbone and that background of over 1,000 people pouring all their accumulated knowledge and artistry into your show, that’s a great feeling. They really did deliver. It was phenomenal what they did, and the attention to detail.”
Andersson says it was “a really nice process”. He adds:
“I think when they were presented with this idea, they were keen because they realised it was something that they had never done before, and it was also something basically that no one had ever done before.”
The ABBA Voyage project, he says, “took up ten times as much processing power as all the Star Wars movies. So it was also the biggest thing that they had ever done. We were there three times a week for reviews, just hanging out with them and getting to learn about [ILM]”.
“It’s just such a magical dream factory,” says Andersson.
Building the ABBA Arena
An entire arena was purpose-built for ABBA Voyage. Designed by entertainment architect Stufish, the building is widely reported to be fully demountable. Therefore, it is relocatable when the London show ends.
ABBA Voyage used five different lighting systems to align and match physical and digital light to trick the eye. Gisla adds: “Our lighting rig in the roof had to be redesigned three times to a point where it became so big that it’s actually very difficult to move. We will move eventually, I’m sure, but it’s not a flat pack.”
Andersson says building the arena was “a byproduct of what we wanted to do”.
He explains: “We realised we needed to construct our own venue to house ABBA Voyage. We can’t fit this anywhere else; we can’t tour it around. The physical building grew from the metaphysical idea of what the show would be. We started on the stage and built outwards, and that became the arena. That sounds pretentious, but that was how it was.”
Gisla says the ABBA Voyage team “exhausted every option of touring a show” early on in the creative process:
“We only really thought about this as a tour. It became very apparent, the deeper we got into this rabbit hole, that the amount of tech and stability, and then the geometry of the space that we needed in order for this digital world to blend and merge into the physical world, or shall I say for ABBA to be real on that stage digitally, needed a lot of control in terms of geometry.
“That you can only really get if you build it yourself. That also means you can’t move it from building to building unless you build more.”
When they decided to build an arena for ABBA Voyage (and got the green light from ABBA), Gisla says: “The whole thing just took flight”. Building an arena, she adds, “didn’t seem mad at all at the time, but obviously it’s a bit bonkers if you look back”.
“An audacious decision”
“That is quite an audacious decision for a show that nobody really knows if it will work or not. It just becomes a whole different project in that one decision,” she says.
“Within a year, we were presenting drawings to planning committees. It was ambitious, but if you’ve got ABBA prepared to come back together after 40 years, you’ve got those wonderful songs to work with, and you’ve got ABBA themselves being creative right next to you, it didn’t feel too ambitious. It felt right. ABBA deserves an ABBA Arena, we thought. Not many artists can pull that off, and ABBA is definitely one of them.”
Gisla has previously attributed the show’s success to ABBA’s involvement. “It starts right there. It starts not just with their music but with them as people. They’re very creative, they’re generous, they’re brilliant, obviously. They had involvement in every step of the process.”
ABBA’s involvement
“It trickles down from there quite easily. Their presence was in every one of those work streams. They were involved in absolutely all of them to some considerable detail, and that was fantastic.”
Andersson adds: “I think that’s definitely part of why people like coming. They feel that ABBA Voyage is not made by some corporation to make money. It’s actually made by ABBA, and it’s what ABBA wants to do now, today. It’s what ABBA wants you to see and feel.
“I think you feel that as an audience member, you feel that you’re not being lied to. There’s truth in it because the centre of the experience is the name on the building.”
“It was never a commercial venture. It was always a creative venture,” she says. “There’s not a single piece of costume that ABBA didn’t approve. Baillie sent them all of his lighting ideas for approval.
“It’s got their spirit, their sensibilities, and them ingrained into it. I think when you visit, you feel it. They chose to be on that stage, and more than that, they put themselves there and put the work in to be there. There is nothing cynical about it. It’s very genuinely theirs.”
Where to next for ABBA Voyage?
ABBA Voyage welcomed more than one million visitors in its first year of opening. It also added £322.6 million to the London economy during that time. London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said the show is “a powerful example of how culture has a positive impact on our city”.
As for where to go next, Gisla has already said the team is looking at venues in North America, Australia, and Asia. “We’re talking to quite a lot of potential partners in exactly those locations. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re looking at many different options,” she tells us.
“I’m hoping that in a few months, we’ll be in a position to pinpoint those locations. We would love to open more arenas. There’s a lot of appetite for the show coming from lots of different places. It would be a real thrill to be able to open another one.”

Image credit: Johan Persson
“In Australia, specifically, there’s a lot of love for ABBA, and vice versa. We would love to take it there, and the same for North America. We are looking at Vegas, New York, and all the obvious places. Maybe even another one in Europe one day. We’re as ambitious about this as we’ve been about everything else.”
Andersson agrees: “We’re working really hard to make that happen. It’s not so easy because of the time, effort and costs involved. But it was always part of what we wanted to do. In a year or two or so.”
Digital versions of Kiss
Kiss has now sold its music catalogue and face paint designs to Pophouse Entertainment Group, one of the founding investors of ABBA Voyage. Using cutting-edge technology, Pophouse will create digital versions of Kiss, a Pophouse statement said. “They have their own company; I don’t know anyone involved in that. It’s very much a separate endeavour – there are multiple different companies out there going into this space,” Gisla says.
“To be honest, doing a virtual concert isn’t the idea; it’s how you do it. The technology is not enough in itself. So much more goes into it than just turning some lights on. Good luck to anyone who wants to do this – I know how hard this is, how long it takes, and how many problems you face. They will have exactly the same problem.”
Andersson adds: “I wish them all the best. I don’t know what they will do, but I would not do the same thing. I would try to do something different. If I were Kiss, not that it’s up to Kiss anymore, I would say let’s start with ‘What do we want to do, and what do we want that to be?’ I would assume they are doing something new and super cool.
“We were lucky. It’s also about luck. Just because we thought this was cool, that didn’t necessarily mean that other people were going to like our show. It turns out they did, which is still incredible every day. People show up to see this thing, and that’s amazing. We’re so incredibly lucky with that, but it’s always a gamble and a risk.”
ABBA Voyage “belongs to the audience”
He adds:
“There were so many of us involved in this, and anyone could at any moment have segued and said, ‘No, this is insane, we can’t do this, it’s not going to work’. But no one did. Everyone kept at it. It was a beautiful time for everyone involved, and now it’s out there, and it belongs to the audience. It’s such a privilege to have been involved in something like that.”
https://blooloop.com/technology/in-depth/abba-voyage/
jueves, 27 de julio de 2023
On Stage talk with the producers of ABBA Voyage
“On Stage” host Frank DiLella explored the concert experience “ABBA Voyage”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z6MjTFL-1s
miércoles, 7 de junio de 2023
viernes, 27 de enero de 2023
jueves, 29 de diciembre de 2022
ABBA’s successful avatar show in London offers a glimpse at a daring new direction for live music
ABBA's successful avatar show in London offers a glimpse at a daring new direction for live music
Jenni Reid
ABBA’s successful avatar show in London offers a glimpse at a daring new direction for live music
ABBA Voyage, which sees digital avatars of the four-piece Swedish band ‘perform’ a 90-minute concert created from motion capture, has proven a hit with critics and fans since launching in May.
Its producers want to take the show around the world and believe it will be replicated in big venues in places like Las Vegas, something industry professionals told CNBC they agreed with.
Questions remain over whether its success could be recreated with another band, and the ethical implications of using it for performances with deceased artists.
LONDON — Before the launch of “ABBA Voyage,” the London concert performed by 3D digital avatars of the iconic Swedish band, member Björn Ulvaeus said they hoped audiences would “feel that they’ve gone through something that they’ve never seen before.”
Following its May 27 debut, much of the reaction from domestic and international critics, fans and industry professionals has been rapturous.
“Other than the team involved, no one really knew how they would integrate an avatar-based performance,” Sarah Cox, director of live event technical consultancy Neutral Human, told CNBC. “That blew me away as someone working on real-time graphics. My jaw hit the floor. You look around and people are really buying into the idea that ABBA are there.”
Demand has been strong — the show’s run has been extended to November 2023 and could well go beyond that.
And the team has confirmed it aims to take the show around the world.
“Our ambition is to do another ABBA Voyage, let’s say in North America, Australasia, we could do another one in Europe. We can duplicate the arena and the show,” producer Svana Gisla told a U.K. government committee session in November.
It also expects other shows to begin following the same model.
“The tech itself isn’t new but the way in which we’ve used it and scale and barriers we’ve broken down are new. I’m sure others will follow and are planning to follow,” Gisla said.
That could “absolutely” be the case somewhere like Las Vegas, where some shows run round the clock with rotating crews, she added.
“We have live musicians, so we keep our band and do seven shows over five days a week. But you could roll round the clock. Vegas will quickly adopt this style of entertainment and do Elvis or the Beatles.”
Money, money, money
Voyage’s venue, dubbed the ABBA Arena, was built specifically for the show on a site in Stratford in east London, with its 3,000 capacity comprising a standing pit, tiered seats along three sides with no restricted view, and higher-priced private “dance booths,″ as well as space for the extensive kit positioned in the roof and what creators White Void say is the largest permanent kinetic lighting installation in the world.
It was also designed for flexibility. It was constructed on a one meter raised platform without breaking ground, and could be disassembled and reconstructed elsewhere — or stay in place and host another show in future.
But emulating Voyage’s model — which sees digital replicas of the four band members perform classic hits and newer numbers for 90 minutes, while also interacting with each other and speaking to the audience between songs — will be no easy task.
The show was in the works for five years and had a £141 million ($174.9 million) budget funded by global investors. It needs to get around 3 million people through its doors to break even, according to Gisla, and the average ticket price is £75.
After choosing their set list and making other creative decisions, the ABBA members did five weeks of performance in motion capture suits. Hundreds of visual effects artists then worked on the show for two years, led by the London branch of Industrial Light & Magic, a visual effects company founded by George Lucas.
A decade ago, a Coachella performance featuring an apparent hologram of Tupac Shakur impressed audiences and hinted at alternative reality’s potential in live shows, with the artist’s likeness digitally recreated without using archive footage.
While not meeting the technical definition of a hologram, which uses laser beams to construct an object with depth, the visual effects team projected a 2D image onto an angled piece of glass, which was itself projected onto a Mylar screen, creating a 3D effect. Shakur then “performed” two songs with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, 16 years after his death.
The Voyage team is tight-lipped about exactly how their show works, but previously confirmed it is not a laser-based hologram either. It involves 65-million pixel screens which give the impression of the band performing life-size on stage in 3D in real time, with traditional-style concert screens showing close-ups and different views on either side.
Its servers are being pushed to the “absolute extreme” to render the images without lag, Gisla said, such that they are shaking through some transitions. She also acknowledged that the 10-meter high side screens are “very unforgiving” on detail and there are improvements that could be made.
But, she added, with real-time render speeds becoming quicker, “Benny and Bjorn could be sitting in a chair at home connected to their avatar, updating them to talk about last night’s football result to the audience. That will come.”
Next steps
Consultant Sarah Cox said the kind of processing and motion capture technology used by Voyage is still prohibitively expensive for most productions, but believes it is a “brand-new format that will be replicated time and time again,” particularly somewhere like Las Vegas.
“An immersive venue could host multiple shows. And then the cost comes down, because you have the technology stack, the venue, and all the money goes into creating the avatar and virtual experience and tweaking the programing.”
Many will remain skeptical of digital avatar-based gigs, particularly if they are wary of the general trend toward metaverse-based virtual experiences.
Bjorn Ulvaeus himself previously told CNBC he has concerns about the misuse of the technology to create nefarious “deep fakes” which will be “indistinguishable from the real thing going forward.”
There is also the question of finding suitable artists for shows. ABBA is a rare proposition as a band with a large catalogue of hits, a multi-generational worldwide fanbase, and a full set of members who are on-board with the show — but who have not toured together for 40 years.
“Posthumously you can put artists back on stage, ethically you may or may not have a view on that,” said Gisla. “Having ABBA partake in this is I can say this is an ABBA concert. ABBA made the decisions, chose what to wear, chose their set list, ABBA made this show.”
For an artist like Elvis with an extensive visual and audio archive you could create an accurate replica, but without the input that makes this show feel so tangible, she said.
For Cox, live shows that provide a “shared experience” like ABBA Voyage hold a greater appeal than headset-based virtual experiences, though there will certainly be more of those available in future.
And both AR and VR are spreading in the worlds of gaming, events, sports, theater and beyond.
Digital avatar experiments have included musician Travis Scott premiering a song within the wildly popular game Fortnite in 2020, with his avatar looming over players who were still moving around within the world of the game. It got a reported 45.8 million viewers across five shows. Lil Nas X performed the same year in the game Roblox.
A 15 year-old plays Fortnite and Travis Scott Present: Astronomical on April 23, 2020, in Los Angeles, United States.
Frazer Harrison | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Jo Twist, chief executive of trade body UK Interactive Entertainment, said she was noticing growing opportunities in the intersections between games, music and entertainment experiences.
“While these kind of experiences have mostly been the preserve of the biggest artists so far, we believe that growth in both the number of people who play, and online game worlds that enable user generated content, could open games up to all kinds of performers, allowing them to successfully tap into its enormous player base to raise their profile.” she said.
Giulia De Paoli, founder and general manager of show design and AR studio Ombra, has worked on projects bringing “extended reality” — spanning AR and VR — to live sports.
“AR has permitted us to create a full show for broadcast events that would be impossible with traditional projection and LED setups, like creating huge 10-meter flying numbers and flames around the arena,” she said.
“We see this developing into a full experience for people to watch live and, as the word says, augmenting the reality around us, gamifying, interacting and seeing impossible things happen.”
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photo 25 may 2022
miércoles, 7 de diciembre de 2022
ABBA chose to have Voyage show in London to stick by the UK in wake of Brexit
Article about when Svana Gisla was at Parliament.
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ABBA chose to have Voyage show in London to stick by the UK in wake of Brexit
Tom Bryant
ABBA chose to have Voyage show in London to stick by the UK in the wake of Brexit
ABBA based their ground-breaking show Voyage in London despite other companies pulling out of the UK amid uncertainty after Brexit, according to the stage show's producer Svana Gisla
ABBA reunite for the first time in years on red carpet ABBA reunite for the first time in years on red carpet
18:54, 7 Dec 2022
ABBA located their ground-breaking show in London because they wanted to stick by the UK in the wake of Brexit.
The band - Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Björn Ulvaeus - made an "emotional choice more than a commercial choice" to stage ABBA Voyage in London, according to show producer Svana Gisla.
She reveals: "There were a lot of companies leaving, there was a lot of uncertainty about the UK at the time and it was ABBA themselves that decided, 'No, we want to come in. They might be leaving, but we want to come in', because ABBA has been incredibly much-loved in the UK."
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She said that the band had enjoyed "great successes" in the UK and loved the country equally just as much back.
"They have all lived in London for a period of their lives, they love London very much and it very quickly just became the only option," she said.
Gisla also said it was their "ambition" to eventually take the show - which features "ABBA-tars" of the band’s younger selves using motion-capture technology - around the world.
She said: "Our ambition is very much to do another ABBA Voyage, let’s say in North America, or Australasia or we could do another one in Europe. We can now duplicate the arena and the show, but it is a heavy commercial venture at the moment."
Vegas would be an "obvious place" for the show, and also potentially Germany which is a "very big market for ABBA", she said.
The east London show, in a specially-built ABBA Arena, has earned rave reviews with tickets on sale for all of next year, up to the end of November.
Gisla made the comments as part of her evidence to a DCMS select committee in Parliament.
martes, 22 de noviembre de 2022
Inquiry: Connected tech: smart or sinister?
At the Commons Culture Committee hearing testimony from Svana Gisla
Committee members saw the show last night.
Watch on Parliament TV: Connected tech: smart or sinister?
Inquiry: Connected tech: smart or sinister?
DCMS Committee
This penultimate session of the Connected Technology inquiry may examine concerns about the progress of Meta’s (formerly Facebook) “Metaverse” amid poor earnings reports. The Committee may also consider the future of the creative sphere and creative ownership as AI generated art and music become more common.
Witness(es): Svana Gisla, Producer, ABBA Voyage
IMPACT INTERNATIONAL UK / EURO: ABBA VOYAGE
IMPACT INTERNATIONAL UK / EURO: ABBA VOYAGE
Posted by Gideon Gottfried | Nov 22, 2022 | Awards
ABBA VOYAGE
LUDVIG ANDERSSON, PRODUCER
SVANA GISLA, PRODUCER
“Jaw-dropping,” (The Guardian), “Out of this world” (The Times), “Epic” (NME), “Needs to be seen to be believed” (BBC). That’s a selection of English press reviews of ABBA Voyage, the groundbreaking hologram show taking place inside a purpose-built, 3,000-capacity venue in London.
The Evening Standard went as far as calling it “the future of live music” and even legendary UK agent John Giddings, who swears the live experience with real people on stage isn’t replaceable, was impressed. “I thought it was a real bloke on stage at one point, until I realized how young he looked,” Giddings said.
The team around producers Ludvig Andersson, Svana Gisla and director Baillie Walsh used cutting-edge technology to display photorealistic avatars of ABBA of yesteryear on stage, backed by a live band for a live audience. The producers emphasize it’s not about the tech. “It’s all about music and emotion and love and soul. It’s about the experience, not the vehicle to deliver that experience. This show was never about technology, even though we’re using it to an extent that no one ever has before. But the truth is, the better we use that technology, the less that technology matters,” Andersson said.
“No one’s gonna stand there for an hour and a half and say, ‘Oh, my God, these avatars are amazing,’ right?. What they want is a great show. It’s irrelevant whether they’re avatars or humans, we must facilitate the same thing, which is a very emotional show that people are going to dance, sing and cry to.
“They’re going to forget about the avatars. When I watch ‘Star Wars,’ or any film that’s got a lot of post-production, I’m not interested in the post-production, I’m interested in the story and the characters.”
Andersson said, “This is what ABBA wants to do, they are completely involved in the production. This is ABBA’s concert in 2022. This is ABBA now. It’s not a time capsule, it’s not a karaoke show. This is what happens when you ask ABBA what they want to do. They said, ‘We want to do this, we want to do the most unheard-of, most enormous production in the history of music performance.’”
jueves, 17 de noviembre de 2022
The Innovation Award at the Artist & Manager Awards 2022
Svana Gisla, Ludvig Andersson and Baillie Walsh received the Innovation Award at the AM_Awards
photo: Svana Gisla
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published Nov 19th, 2022 Svana Gisla
published Nov 18th, 2022 - ABBA Voyage
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ABBA in Stockholm
todo sobre ABBA Voyage - all about ABBA Voyage click on the image
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