Tupac Hologram to Tour with Dr. Dre: You Can See Tupac Again

by Jordan Yerman | April 17, 2012 at 07:33 am

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Tupac Hologram to Go On Tour

Dr. Dre plans to take the ghost of Tupac Shakur on tour, via the now-famous Tupac hologram. Don't tell me you didn't see this coming.

Dr. Dre approached the companies involved in the Tupac hologram over a year ago, and he, Snoop Dogg, and their production team had been working on the Coachella 2012 performance itself for months. They didn't do all that work for a one-off event.

Indeed, Tupac will be going on tour. It's only a question of venue. Again, there's no reason that Tupac can't be in several places at once: for example, Snoop Dogg could feature Tupac in Berlin, while Dre features Tupac in Tokyo. It's eerie enough to be supernatural, but it's all science.

Tupac and Pepper's Ghost

The Tupac hologram isn't a true 3D hologram, as discussed earlier. The phantom Tupac is an updated version of a Victorian-era illusion called Pepper's Ghost, but we're talking about a much more modern version.

Musion Systems (UK) provided the screen, while AV Concepts (San Diego) created the Tupac projection itself.

The Tupac Shakur hologram image was built by Digital Domain, which won Academy Awards for Track (tracking software) and Nuke (compositing software). Digital Domain also won Oscars for Best Visual Effects for its work on Titanic, What Dreams May Come, and The Strange Case of Benjamin Button.

Other celebrities resurrected via hologram: Elvis Presley in 2007 (to perform with Celine Dion!) and Frank Sinatra in 2008 (to perform with Alicia Keys). Speaking of the Chairman of the Board, the same hologram technology has been used in corporate settings to project dead CEOs. Zombie banks, indeed.

Tupac Hologram: Thug Unlife

Should the Tupac tour be called the Uncanny Valley Tour? The Thug Unlife Tour? At any rate, the Coachella stage was perfect for the Tupac hologram effect, because the audience was facing only one aspect of the stage, and were far enough away to all be seeing the same thing; Tupac's co-performers would be able to see where he was onstage, but wouldn't see him as Tupac.

Note that James, which also played at Coachella 2012, has a song called "Walking the Ghost".

One option would be a tour in stadiums, involving other hip-hop stars, including Eminem, 50 Cent and Wiz Khalifa. Alternately, they could stage a more limited tour, featuring only Dre, Snoop Dogg and the virtual Tupac, in smaller arenas.