By now you’ve probably seen the video from music festival Coachella of long-deceased rapper Tupac performing “live” on stage with Snoop Dog. This was done using a modern version of the century-old visual trick called Pepper’s Ghost and was put together by integrator AV Concepts using British company Musion’s patented Eyeliner 3D Holographic Projection System. I should point out that technically, Tupac was neither a hologram, nor was he projected in 3D — if you walked around to the side of the stage, you wouldn’t see the side of his head — you wouldn’t see anything. (Alas, those cool hologram messages you saw in Star Wars do not actually exist yet.) But from the front, in person (or on video), it’s pretty convincing. Tupac’s likeness was an animation, not a previously recorded video from when he was alive, painstakingly done over a course of months by Digital Domain Productions.

None of this is really new — the same thing was done (also by AV Concepts) at the Grammy’s in 2006 for a performance from Madonna and the Gorillaz, a band composed of animated characters.

A couple years ago, at InfoComm in Orlando, I saw AV Concepts and Musion demonstrating a similar set-up, except with live musicians performing in London projected on stage with other real people right there in Orlando. From the audience, it was hard to tell who was in Florida and who was across the pond. To see a video explanation and demo of what I saw at InfoComm, click below:

AV Concepts Holographic Technology from AV Concepts on Vimeo.
Or you can watch on AV Concepts’ website: http://www.avconcepts.com/coachella-2012-3/

In case you haven’t caught it, here’s a currently-working video link to the Tupac performance at Coachella (many have been taken down due to copyright claims):

Kind of creepy, right?