Coachella fans may have been a little surprised on Sunday night to see a rapper who appeared to be resurrected. A hologram of Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996, appeared onstage during the final performance next to musicians Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre.
Turns out a San Diego company created the holographic projection of the legendary hip hop star. AV Concepts, located in Allied Gardens, posted on their website that the project took “months of design.”
A 30-by-13-foot screen that projected 54,000 lumens dropped onto the stage in between songs, according to the AV Concepts website. The high-resolution of the three screens of 1920 x 1080 images made the hologram appear lifelike.
The audience went quiet when the image appeared on stage, according to San Diego resident Taylor Baresic, who attended the three-day music festival.
“I thought that he was alive… it looked like a real person,” she said. “Everyone thought this was the real live Tupac.”
While the performance generated a lot of buzz, it also created some controversy. For years rumors circulated that Tupac did not die after being fatally shot in Las Vegas 15 years ago, and many people believed he was hiding.
“I thought that this was his comeback…but at the end the image burst into little particles,” Baresic said.
The company has another performance to deliver this weekend, as Coachella has devoted two weekends to the three-day festival. There is no word if they will use a different image or performance.
“It was really the best part of Coachella,” said Baresic. “I feel bad for people going next weekend because the surprise is ruined for them.”
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