Roy Orbison is all set to begin touring on October 2. Abba will be on the road next year. They are doing what Billie Holiday did last year and Tupac in 2012. We ain’t kidding you! A Native American character in Westworld has said, “You live only as long as the last person who remembers you.” And that’s where technology steps in... to bring singers back from the dead. Hologram projection has become big business, especially in the music industry.

The concept

Roy Orbison’s touring career was cut short by a heart attack in 1988, which obviously meant the world wouldn’t get to hear classics such as Pretty Woman, In Dreams or Only The Lonely live on stage... until now. Hologram technology has become so sophisticated that one could confuse the cyber version of Orbison in October with the real deal. And it won’t be a song or two but a full set.

Holograms on phones are on the way

Holographic technology is no longer restricted to Pepper’s Ghost. Some journalists have seen the Red Hydrogen One ‘holographic phone’ and they are amazed. According to CNet: “It’s part hologram and part 3D. It’s not that the image hovers over the screen, like R2-D2 projecting Princess Leia in the original Star Wars film. It’s more like there were layers of depth to the image. It’s as if the screen was a proscenium theatre and some parts of the image were up front and close and other parts of the image were farther away.”

Ahead of the phone’s October launch, popular gadget YouTuber Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) has published the first unboxing video of the Red Hydrogen One, which is also known as 'Houdini'. It seems the technology will become more popular once high-speed 5G networks kick in, allowing us to enjoy virtual reality and interactive live broadcasts on the go.

Richard Foggie, an expert at the Knowledge Transfer Network, which provides innovation networking for businesses, has told BBC: “You could use it for video, playing games or industrial applications — even hologram phone calls.”

The technology

A breakthrough moment for hologram came with Tupac Shakur’s 'performance' at Coachella in 2012 and it received a boost when a hologram of Michael Jackson 'performed' Slave To The Rhythm, a previously unreleased song, at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014.

Most of the 'live' holograms that are seen play on the optical illusion known as Pepper’s Ghost, which dates back to 1862, to a stage production of Charles Dickens’s The Haunted Man. Named after the English scientist John Henry Pepper, the trick involves reflection of a 2D image through an angled piece of translucent plastic.

The technique catered to the Victorian-era obsession with the supernatural. Joint inventor, the London-based engineer Henry Dircks, described it as: “Here, then, a means was at once at hand for producing the best possible illustrations of all descriptions of spectral phenomena.”

In the mid-90s, German inventor Uwe Maass came up with a derivation that introduced a tightly stretched translucent foil and a performer projected using high-definition video. Madonna used the technique to perform alongside animated band Gorillaz at the 2006 Grammy Awards. Two of the big companies making the technology popular are Pulse Evolution and Hologram USA.

A few critics feel turning dead singers into holograms goes against ethics because concerts are meant to be enjoyed live and these singers haven’t consented to their recreations.

2012: A life-size Tupac returned to the stage nearly 17 years after his death to rap with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre in Coachella Source: Official release from the concert

2006: Animated band Gorillaz confused the crowd at the Grammy with a “live” performance of their hit Feel Good Inc. and a duet with Madonna on her song Hung Up, thanks to Musion Eyeliner System Source: Official release from the concert

2007: Celine Dion appears on the American Idol stage with a white-suit-wearing Elvis Presley to duet on If I Can Dream Source: Official release from the concert

2014: Michael Jackson moonwalked at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards while singing Slave to the Rhythm Source: Official release from the concert