Sudirman and Captain Kirk – But Not as We Know Them

Another artist to be added to the increasingly long list of deceased performers to be immortalised in holographic form is the late Malaysian singer Sudirman Arshad, or Sudirman as he’s more commonly known.

Although the lawyer-turned-singer died in 1992, fans will soon be able to catch him holographically ‘live’ at A Tribute to Sudirman, a 90-minute concert that will be held at the Petronas Philharmonic Hall in Malaysia.

As Sudirman is no longer with us, the holographic projections will have been assembled from archival video footage of the performer taken when he was alive.

William Shatner, known to many HN readers as Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, may be getting on a bit (he’s 92-years-old) but he is still very much alive.

Earlier this year, Advertising Week Asia-Pacific was host to an event that was scheduled to include an interview with Mr Shatner. The idea was originally for him to be there in person and to be able to have a chat with an interviewer, but Capt. Kirk had the idea to do it via a hologram.

Powered by holographic communications platform Proto Hologram, Shatner joined the crowd live and direct in Australia from a studio in Los Angeles. The person interviewing Shatner at the Australian end of proceedings was Meta’s Catherine Bowe.

‘From a tech side of things, I wanted to know what the experience was going to be like on his end, I wanted to know what he could see,’ said Bowe. ‘He could see directly out from him, so he could see the audience in front of him – that was a really important thing for him, he really needed to have that immediate feedback – but he also needed to see me. That was something that we had to adapt at the other end, because he needed to have two screens’.