Who Wants to Watch Avatars of Dead Musicians Perform?

Tanya Basu, MIT Technology Review:

Smalls—whose real name was Christopher Wallace—was in fine form on Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse platform on Friday: heaving between stanzas, pumping his fist rhythmically, and seeming very much alive. The performance can be seen here but may require logging into Facebook.

The allure of old music—and art, generally—is that it can’t be recreated if its creators aren’t around anymore. You can paint a picture that looks like a van Gogh, except it isn’t; you can create a digital avatar of the Notorious B.I.G. or John Lennon, but it’s not the person. As much as I’d love to attend a B.I.G. concert or see the Beatles play, an avatar performing playback to a recorded track isn’t the same as seeing the actual person doing their thing. I don’t get the appeal of cover bands or the tenth special remastered edition of an album that happens to be released just before Christmas. Not even the Glastonbury recordings the BBC broadcasts every year. It’s the original recording or the actual musicians on stage.

If we can digitally reproduce everything, what’s the point of venturing out of our homes to see art where it is performed? What’s the point of theatres, concerts and museums if I can just sit at home with a pair of huge goggles over my eyes? In these places—theatres, music venues, and museums—you experience art differently, unmediated. You go to a theatre because a great movie hits differently on a big screen with great sound. You go to a gig to feel artists’ emotions when they play their music on stage; you can hear the sound of their voices before a sound engineer adjusts the controller. And you visit a museum because a painting looks different standing in front of it; when you can see how the paint has been applied to the canvas.