The holographic announcer I met is named Carla. She is a product by Tensator®, a “queue control and management solutions” brand. Installed in June of last year, an aviation trade publication reported she cost the airport only 26,000 dollars. The avatar runs 24 hours a day and is portable so she can be moved to other areas of the terminal. (...)
There’s a reason why one of the most memorable and chilling episodes of The Twilight Zone involved mannequins coming to life at night. It is the same reason why robots cause a feeling of revulsion when they appear increasingly representative in human likeness. But we don’t apply the uncanny valley hypothesis to photographic documentation of real people. Hardly anyone feels aversion to the life-size cardboard cut-outs of grinning employees that sometimes greet you in banks, pharmacies and post offices. Holographic announcers like Carla seem to fall somewhere in between. She may not reside in the uncanny valley, but for the time being, Carla’s presence among the living is definitely uncanny.
You will find similar holographic announcers or “airport virtual assistants” in Dubai, Washington Dulles, Macau, Istanbul Ataturk and Long Beach, among other locations. AirportOne™, a competitor of Tensator®, which deployed several models to airports in New York and New Jersey last summer, says its models are only prototypes. The next step will be to install more interactive virtual assistants, which might answer basic questions from travellers about things like flight times, gates or rental car locations. Their plan is to provide models with a touch-screen interface next to the avatar rather than Siri-style speech technology. Voice recognition, while available in the more expensive models (roughly 100,000 dollars) isn’t recommended for airports due to the likelihood of interference from background noise. But AirportOne™ thinks it will be possible by next year.
I spoke with Patrick Bienvenu, the Chief Operations Officer of Florida-based AirportOne™, who explained, “When you really have a message you want to get across, the avatar is a great way to get people’s attention. We’ve had a few people stop and say, ‘Oh, it’s freaky,’ but they get the message.” Bienvenu estimates that within five to ten years, people will get used to them, and by that time they will have more advanced technology and more advanced responsibilities. (...)
Musion is better known for their less practical work: reviving dead celebrity singers. Their most famous project was the digital resurrection of Tupac Shakur at last year’s Coachella Festival. The company also recreated Frank Sinatra to perform at Simon Cowell’s 50th birthday party. When the Gorillaz played the Grammys in 2006, Damon Albarn and the other musicians performed off stage, while Musion Eyeliner technology animated Jamie Hewlett’s cartoon characters. For a Burberry runway show in Shanghai, Musion mixed holograms with real models. The projections walked right through each other or froze in place before disappearing in clouds of snow and smoke.
Musion doesn’t shy away from the loaded word “resurrection” in the promotional material on its website. There it points out that “lost artists often increase in popularity after they pass so for holders of estates, the business potential is huge. However, more important is sharing amazing musicians with fans who’d expected never to see their idols again.” Immediately after the Tupac hologram, speculation began as to which performer might be resurrected next—Jim Morrison? Kurt Cobain? Jimi Hendrix? Surviving members of tlc are reportedly mulling over the possibility of a Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes hologram for a reunion tour.
by Joanne McNeil, domus | Read more:
Image: Joanne McNeil
