[At the end of a farewell concert tour, the band Kiss dramatically revealed that digital avatars will perform in its place for “eternity.” Here’s coverage from The Verge with excerpts from AP and Guitar.com. See the original stories for more pictures and videos, and to watch a two minute announcement video also available on YouTube. –Matthew]
Kiss debuts ‘immortal’ digital avatars and plans to go ‘fully virtual’
At its final show in Madison Square Garden, Kiss revealed ageless digital avatars that will go on to represent the band in entertainment.
By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.
December 3, 2023
Kiss has been on a really, really long tour. The biggest glam rock band of all time has been playing its End of the Road tour for the last four years, and just wrapped the final show of its final farewell tour in New York City at Madison Square Garden on Friday. Kiss has done several farewell tours, but this time might be for good.
At the end of the show, after Kiss finished playing its last song (“Rock and Roll All Nite”), they disappeared in a hail of fire and smoke. After the smoke faded away, the lights went down, and on the screen behind the stage, a camera zoomed across a spooky lake on some fantastic planet toward the silhouettes of four figures: the new digital avatars of Kiss, in what I suppose must be their final form. Then Paul Stanley shouts:
“Kiss army, your love — your power — has made us immortal. The new Kiss era starts now. Oh yeah!”
Here’s one video of it.
Another one shows a much cooler aspect of this portion of the show: translucent screens with shots of the band projected onto them, lending the show a decidedly futuristic Blade Runner feel.
The avatars “performed” a song, then the video ended and left the audience with a picture of the four avatars under the stylized KISS logo, superimposed with the phrase “A NEW ERA BEGINS.”
The “new era,” of course, is one of making money from the avatars. The company behind the show, Pophouse Entertainment, has already been doing so with young, digital versions of ABBA in its ABBA Voyage show for over a year. Kiss, a band that has doggedly merchandised its image for half a century, seems like a good fit for such a partnership.
Pophouse said in a press release today that it will put on “immersive, avatar-powered” concerts using Kiss’ Industrial Light & Magic-created avatars.
Watching big acts like Kiss use digital recreations of themselves isn’t surprising — after all, these are people who have made a great deal of money off of an image they’ve created, so why not keep that money faucet open?
Do people really want to go see a “live” show with no live performers? Yeah, I think they absolutely do. Bloomberg reported that those ABBA avatar shows have been pulling in $2 million every week. And Variety wrote last week that the Eras Tour concert video had passed $250 million in worldwide box office sales. Kiss and its avatars could do just fine — for more about the band’s future, try out this 22-minute conversation about their transition to avatars.
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[Excerpt from AP News]
Per Sundin, CEO of Pophouse Entertainment, says this new technology allows Kiss to continue their legacy for “eternity.” He says the band wasn’t on stage during virtual performance because “that’s the key thing,” of the future-seeking technology. “Kiss could have a concert in three cities in the same night across three different continents. That’s what you could do with this.”
In order to create their digital avatars, who are depicted as a kind of superhero version of the band, Kiss performed in motion capture suits.
Experimentation with this kind of technology has become increasingly common in certain sections of the music industry. In October K-pop star Mark Tuan partnered with Soul Machines to create an autonomously automated “digital twin” called “Digital Mark.” In doing so, Tuan became the first celebrity to attach their likeness to OpenAI’s GPT integration, artificial intelligence technology that allows fans to engage in one-on-one conversations with Tuan’s avatar.
Aespa, the K-pop girl group, frequently perform alongside their digital avatars — the quartet is meant to be viewed as an octet with digital twins. Another girl group, Eternity, is made up entirely of virtual characters — no humans necessary.
“What we’ve accomplished has been amazing, but it’s not enough. The band deserves to live on because the band is bigger than we are,” Kiss frontman Paul Stanley said in a roundtable interview. “It’s exciting for us to go the next step and see Kiss immortalized.”
“We can be forever young and forever iconic by taking us to places we’ve never dreamed of before,” Kiss bassist Gene Simmons added. “The technology is going to make Paul jump higher than he’s ever done before.”
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[Excerpt from Guitar.com]
Immortalising musicians has come a long way since 2014’s hologram of Michael Jackson at the Billboard Music Awards. Massively popular Battle Royale game Fortnite regularly hosts digital concert events for users, the likes of Ariana Grande, BTS and most recently Eminem donning a motion capture suit to be transformed into a digital avatar.
With KISS, the biggest difference between ABBA Voyage and their digital immortality will likely be the musicians – or lack thereof. ABBA Voyage has the virtual avatars performing with a live band every night, whereas KISS have already confirmed that the show will be fully pre-recorded, with no live music during the shows.
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