httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXNEOuHum14
He has a firm, Hologram USA, which he started in 2014 after purchasing the patent for the technology that created the Tupac Shakur hologram that performed at Coachella in 2012, and he is aggressively sued for patent infringement against Cirque du Soleil and Fox.
On July 25, the controversial rapper Chief Keef – who’s signed to David’s MondoTunes music-distribution service – was trying to circumvent a performance ban in his hometown of Chicago by appearing, via hologram beamed in from La, only over the Illinois state boundary in Indiana, but his grainy, zombified image vanished after a few minutes.
Blow away David’s smoke, cast aside his mirrors, and focus on the holograms: celebrities, dead or living, performing at the press of a button.
“When he came out and said, ‘What the fuck is up, Coachella?,’ he made a connection that was unbelievable. T is no other way for supporters of an artist like him to make that link.” And for the estates of dead celebrities, holograms signify a new approach to make money beyond smacking more pictures on more tchotchkes.
“You can make a tiny static hologram quite readily. To generate a large one that moves, you need color lasers that are powerful, you need 3 D modeling, and you have to have the ability to be shooting 24 to 30 photos per second of it. And what are you reflecting the images off of? It’s impractical and expensive, and we’re still a ways away from making that genuinely accessible.”
Ultimately, exactly what is a hologram good for? “Seeing a aglow Tupac,” says Steinmeyer, “Does that make the performance more vital? A good show is a show that is good. The hardware you’re using to realize it does not change that fact. If I said to most producers, ‘We’re planning to put up a Mylar screen and project an image of Michael Jackson that’s sort of lit and have an impersonator dancing offstage,’ you had just go, ‘Stop, stop, quit.’ Exactly why is that better than a film about Michael Jackson’s life?”.
I’m interested, after speaking with David, to see how folks without a deep fiscal interest as well as a blaring bullhorn are using holograms.