Swedish music band ABBA, proven right here as wax figures, have offered over 400 million data worldwide.
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Pop legends ABBA are taking a giant punt on their newest immersive challenge, founding member Bjorn Ulvaeus has instructed CNBC.
The much-anticipated immersive efficiency known as ABBA Voyage is billed as “a live performance 40 years within the making,” and options digital avatars of the Swedish supergroup accompanied by a 10-piece dwell band.
Speaking in late April forward of its long-awaited world premiere in London, U.Okay., this week, Ulvaeus instructed CNBC it was “a hell of a dangerous challenge in so some ways.”
“The threat is, in fact, that folks will not discover it to be the expertise that I believe and hope will probably be. That is the primary factor. If folks would go from the live performance considering, yeah, effectively, that wasn’t dangerous however … We need them to really feel, you recognize, emotional and to really feel that they’ve gone by way of one thing that they’ve by no means seen earlier than.”
Last album
The pop icon additionally confirmed to CNBC that the much-loved band’s 2021 chart-topping “Voyage” album – their first in 40 years — shall be their final.
ABBA — Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad — launched onto the world stage after successful the Eurovision Song Contest with “Waterloo” in 1974.
The band has gone on to promote over 400 million data worldwide, and as soon as reportedly got here solely second to Volvo as certainly one of Sweden’s greatest exports.
It’s been 40 years because the band final carried out collectively and Ulvaeus stated he was “nervous and thrilled.”
He stated he expects this week’s opening of the ABBA Voyage digital live performance to be “so extremely particular” and beat every other second in his skilled life up to now.
In the most recent episode of “The CNBC Conversation,” Ulvaeus says the thought first happened 5 years in the past — to create digital “ABBA-tar” copies of the band from their 1979 prime, in a cutting-edge expertise live performance.
He stated trials had been achieved earlier than with Michael Jackson and Elvis, however the workforce behind the expertise have been eager to make use of it with residing figures.
“It’s higher to do it with somebody who remains to be alive as a result of your skull, though the remainder of your physique falls aside … the measurements within the skull are the identical, so it is simpler to recreate a youthful copy of your self should you’re nonetheless alive,” Ulvaeus stated.
To create the human-like avatars, the 4 members of the band, who at the moment are of their seventies, wearing movement seize fits and carried out the entire songs on stage in a specifically constructed studio in Stockholm, Sweden.
“They would costume us in form of tight costumes, black with dots on them and there have been dots on our faces, and we’d have helmets. And then we might go on that stage and we’d carry out a music nearly as if we had carried out it on ‘Top of the Pops,’ the previous British [TV] program,” he stated.
“It was bizarre at first. I imply, I used to be wanting round and there is Agnetha doing her stuff, and Benny, identical to the previous days. But ultimately, it was enjoyable.”
Deep fakes
Ulvaeus stated the band have been main the way in which with the expertise behind ABBA Voyage.
“We are pioneers on this area, to make avatars, to construct digital copies which can be as human beings — to the pores, by way of the hairs within the nostril, by way of every thing [it] will make you’re feeling after some time that it is a human being, this isn’t digital, it is a video of a human being, and it is nice enjoyable to be the pioneer and to do it on this context,” he stated.
But the celebrated star stated he does fear about how the expertise may very well be misused by these desirous to create “deep faux.”
“I noticed that it may very well be misused, and will probably be misused. Not our avatars, however different avatars shall be used as autos saying issues that the unique folks do not imply, faux, I imply, deep faux. Deep faux goes to be indistinguishable from the actual factor going ahead and that is one thing we actually need to be careful for,” he stated.
“But anyone was going to do it anyway, so I believed perhaps to do it in a optimistic means as pioneers could be good to point out how it may be used.”
A purpose-built “ABBA Arena” which might maintain a 3,000-strong viewers has been created within the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London.
The ABBA Voyage live performance performances open to the general public on May 27 and Ulvaeus instructed CNBC they will count on successful parade with just a few not so well-known songs, and a few from their newest album.