Kiss on Saturday night closed out the final performance of their “The End of the Road” farewell tour at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden.
However, as dedicated fans surely know, they were never going to call it quits. Not really.
During their encore, the band’s current lineup — founders Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, along with guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer — left the stage to reveal digital avatars of themselves. After the transformation, the virtual Kiss launched into a performance of God Gave Rock and Roll to You.
Photo: AP
The cutting-edge technology was used to tease a new chapter of the rock band. After 50 years of Kiss, the band is interested in a kind of digital immortality.
The avatars were created by George Lucas’ special-effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, in partnership with Pophouse Entertainment Group, which was cofounded by ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus. The companies recently teamed up for the “ABBA Voyage” show in London, in which fans could attend a full concert by the Swedish band — as performed by their digital avatars.
Per Sundin, CEO of Pophouse Entertainment, said this new technology allows Kiss to continue their legacy for “eternity.”
He said the band was not 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,” he said.
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.”
For those who could not make the Madison Square Garden show — stay tuned, because a Kiss avatar concert might well be on the way.
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