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**Spooker Trouper: ABBA Voyage, Virtual Humans and the Rise of the Digital Apparition** (2023)
The ABBA Voyage concert in London, launched in 2022, features exceptionally realistic three-dimensional computer animations of ABBA members from their heyday in the 1970s. This concert signifies a leap in the use of virtual performers, creating a lifelike virtual performance in real-time and bringing into focus ethical questions about the nature of such performances.
Moreover, ABBA Voyage involves the unique temporal complexity of displaying the past versions of living individuals in real-time. This engenders debates on the association of such virtual representations with established notions of time, aging, and memory.
The authors of this article critically analyze ABBA Voyage, offering fresh insights into the concept of virtual humans. They reference Vilém Flusserâ??s idea of ‘digital apparitions’ – entities defined by external computational codes that can be owned, transferred, and integrated into an economy of immateriality.
This new understanding of codes paves the way for a reevaluation of our concepts of selfhood, our connection with physical environments, and the ethics of monetizing virtual performances. It also uncovers both risks and possibilities, such as potential abuse of power by tech and media firms, and new avenues for financial and creative enrichment.
The concept of virtual humans calls for a reassessment of fundamental ideas of selfhood, given its fluid temporality and encoded existence that challenge traditional ideas of time, existence, and the purpose of life and death.
In their examination of ABBA Voyage, the authors expound on two distinct aspects. First, they discuss the show’s virtual performers in the context of Flusserâ??s digital apparitions, implying new models of consent and ownership. Second, they explore the temporal disorientation engendered by digital apparitions bringing the past into the present, which challenges our ideas of the purpose of life.
While recognizing ABBA Voyage’s entertainment value, the authors strive to elucidate the notion of the virtual human performer and draw attention to the associated opportunities and risks. Their discussions contribute to the ongoing discourse on the intensifying trend of virtualization, as seen in the creation of virtual stars and influencers and the much-publicized idea of the metaverse, especially from Meta.
As virtualization becomes increasingly prevalent and virtual and actual humans coexist, the authors view ABBA Voyage as a harbinger of the future. They advocate for ongoing efforts to understand the implications of the virtual human and to determine how we will interact and coexist with this emergent aspect of digital culture.