
The Strange Rise of Music Holograms - wallflower
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2019/10/30/dead-musicians-are-taking-stage-again-hologram-form-is-this-kind-encore-we-really-want/
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corey_moncure
Interesting that this article doesn't mention Hatsune Miku, who of course does
not exist except as a holographic virtual performer.

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dwoozle
The article is about the ethical/philosophical implications of having dead
performers holographically “brought to life,” so Hatsune Miku isn’t really
relevant to the topic.

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debt
They're technically not holograms but Pepper's ghost.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost)

Calling them a hologram is like calling a lenticular a gif.

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unicornfinder
I mean, it depends. They're not always peppers ghost. It's quite common to
just use transparent projector screens, as peppers ghost doesn't handle
viewing angles all that well.

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debt
A hologram is a light field captured onto a film.

These live displays are usually just some sort of optical illusion.

A real hologram shows you the actual light from the captured event as it’s the
entire light field from the event. So your eyes are receiving essentially
stored light.

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dTal
Right there with you friend, but unfortunately that's not how language works
and there's no hard line as to what is and isn't a "hologram". Yes, you can
coherently capture a real light wave field directly onto photo-material - you
can also generate one synthetically, quantize your light field into spatial
"hogels", eliminate an axis of parallax, constrict the FOV etc, and finally
replace your interference-based "hogels" with lenses and you have an integral
image or lenticular, which is different physics but exactly the same imaging
principles. Every one of those stages is a "hologram" to some set of people -
hardcore holographers might draw the line at analog techniques, researchers
will accept anything interference-based, and laypeople will slap the label on
just about anything that looks cool.

Believe me - this isn't a battle worth fighting. At the end of the day,
everything is an illusion. Vision is not reality.

Source: many a long year making digital holograms and trying to explain to
people what it is I do.

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grawprog
[https://outline.com/WeZ93n](https://outline.com/WeZ93n)

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obituary_latte
OT: but WP paywall is by far the most hostile of popular news org paywalls out
there IMO. Using an addon like 1blocker is thwarted by virtue of the site
redirecting to the homepage (although you can hide element screen a couple of
times and view the entire article from within there).

I wonder if this strategy was pre or post Bezos purchase. Either way, I avoid
WP at all costs. (I know clicking the ‘web’ link here can bypass - I’m just
venting and I apologize for that).

Thanks for the outline link.

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mc32
I don’t get it. I might watch something like this streamed. But live touring?

The main performer is not alive. What’s the draw? Is it like going to a wax
museum but for music?

It seems as exciting as chewing on beeswax.

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alanbernstein
The first time I heard of this (and one of the examples in the article) was
Snoop Dogg performing live at a festival, with a hologram of Tupac. Snoop was
the draw, Tupac was a surprise, and it went over very well.

Also, "live concerts" with lip-synced performances seem to be relatively
common, for whatever reasons. The audio is pre-recorded in this case, as well
as with a solo, dead "live performer". Doesn't seem like a huge difference to
me.

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mnemotronic
The Roy Holorbison backup singers sounded so bad I thought they were
intentionally trying to show what a bad idea this is.

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Wowfunhappy
I'm sorry, I don't usually do this, but this really pissed me off.

I don't use an adblocker. I am well aware that my web browsing experience
would be much more pleasant if I did, but I want to support the sites I visit.

The Washington Post won't let me read their article because it says I need to
disable my ad blocker, which I don't have. The link with instructions on how
to disable my nonexistant ad blocker includes this line:

> Firefox's native ad blocker

> Select the "i" or shields icon to the left of the URL in the URL bar. In the
> tooltip that opens, click on "Turn off Blocking for This Site" to disable
> blocking. For more information, please visit Firefox's instructions.

Of course, Firefox doesn't have a native ad blocker. What these instructions
are telling me to do is disable Firefox's "tracking protection". That's not
the same at all.

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echelon
It's about time for us to take back the web from advertising.

Back in the 90's and early 00's the web was an amazing place with high signal
and low noise. Now you have shitty articles creeping into our social feeds
that we can't even read -- they're effectively advertising on Hacker News,
Reddit, etc. at no cost and then asking us to pay. That shouldn't fly.

News websites asking for money should get _zero_ placement on social sites or
news feeds.

These websites complain that we're depriving them of money, but the fact is
they chose to build websites. They made a land grab during the
commercialization of the internet and they're dissatisfied with the results.

Meanwhile we have auto-playing video ads because Google ad reps say it drives
higher engagement, and the tech to support it is being built into Chrome
because it earns Google more money.

Ugh.

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kevin_thibedeau
Works fine if you disable all scripts. Enable washingtonpost.com to get the
first image.

