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Gigs & Festivals
Usher to livestream Apollo show, dance with fan holograms
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 1 June 2012
Thanks to a “highly interactive” partnership with American Express’ Unstaged series, Usher will livestream his previously listed one-off London date, as takes place at the Hammersmith Apollo on 11 Jun, via his VEVO channel.
The interactive bit, though, is that fans are being invited to join Usher on stage. Well, sort of. The fans won’t be on stage as he performs his new hit single ‘Scream’, but the R&B gent will instead appear flanked by dancing digital ‘avatars’ custom-designed by fans watching the concert at home.
The man responsible for all this is filmmaker Hamish Hamilton, visual director of various U2 tours and Madonna’s Super Bowl spectacular, who says this: “Literally, people will be able to create their own avatar and have it dance on the screen with Usher”.
Hamilton is confident that he and his collaborators, Montreal-based multimedia types Moment Factory, can translate the idea into a workable concept… even though they haven’t yet done so. He says: “We know that the principles work – now we have to ensure that we can create this in a way that is live and interactive. There are literally people at computer [companies] all around the world as we speak, trying to work out the way of doing it”.
I quite literally cannot wait to see this. But I suppose I’ll have to, at least until 11 Jun. In the mean time, I’m going to visit www.amexunstaged.com/usher and design myself a hologram/avatar to eclipse all the other holograms/avatars and thus ensure my hologram/avatar is chosen to dance with Usher. You should do that, too.
