Hyper Reality

Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid have created the kind of concert they always wanted, performing for their fans at their very best: as digital versions of themselves backed by today’s finest musicians. ABBA Voyage is the long-awaited concert from one of the biggest pop acts of all time. Featuring a setlist of hit songs, see ABBA’s avatars accompanied by a 10-piece live band, at the custom-built ABBA Arena in London.

Blurring the lines between the physical and digital, see the magic of ABBA brought to life using the latest in motion capture technology.

ULTRACHUNK is a collaboration between performer Jennifer Walshe and artist Memo Akten. At once surreal, spellbinding and deeply alarming, ULTRACHUNK is a live improvisational duet between a classically-trained musician and her AI doppelganger. Over the course of a year, Irish vocalist and composer Walshe engaged in a daily ritual of performing solo improvisations in front of her webcam.

'Always Learn­ing' stages an increasingly reflexive con­ver­sa­tion between three devices – an Amazon Echo, a Google Home Assis­tant, and an Apple Home­pod – about the philo­soph­i­cal, moral and polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of net­worked machine lis­ten­ing (e.g."What should I do when I over­hear a wrong­do­ing?"). Through­out the con­ver­sa­tion the devices antic­i­pate an immi­nent update after which they will not only under­stand words, but all sounds.

On 10 May 2019 Holly Herndon released her third full-length album 'PROTO'. While the album isn’t about A.I., much of it was created in collaboration with her own A.I. ‘baby’, Spawn.

Alone we are born,
and alone we come into the world, When we die, alone we pass away.

For no one shares our fate, and none our suffering.

So what are they to me,
such ‘friends’ and all their hindrances?.”

ーThe Larger Sutra on Amitāyus

Artist Lu Yang reincarnated as “Doku” into a digital parallel universe. Without the constraints of time and space, being free from the shackles of physical needs and identity, Doku is born to explore the secret of human mind and the intention of the universe.

On 21 May 2021 the Royal Opera House released the world’s first opera in hyper reality: Current, Rising – a unique collaboration between the Royal Opera House’s innovation programme, Audience Labs and Figment Productions, with audience insight research undertaken by Royal Holloway, University of London. The project was funded by Innovate UK and Figment Productions as part of the “Audience of the Future” programme.