Features
Teresa Teng Lives On
Twenty years after her untimely death at the age of 42, Teresa Teng remains the most iconic pop singer throughout Asia, and not just in Chinese-speaking countries, but also in Japan and Southeast Asia.
Photo: Digital Domain
Holographic image of Teresa Teng
On May 10, Digital Domain Holdings, a virtual reality technology and content provider based in Los Angeles and Vancouver, presented a concert in Taipei featuring a virtual performance by the late Taiwanese diva.
About 7,000 fans attended the two-hour show at the Taipei Arena, where a computer generated, life-sized image of Teng, wearing her famous form-fitting Chinese dresses, sang all her hits. The title of the concert was “If a Wish Could Be Made: Teresa Teng 20th Anniversary Memorial Concert in 3D.”It featured guest appearances by Fei Yuqing, who performed a number of duets with Teng’s image. Other guests includes Teresa Chen, Wang Xin and Tong Yao, three female singers from mainland China.
“The Virtual Human process involves a combination of the groundbreaking work of our visual effects artists and our exclusive Academy Award-winning MOVA technology,” a Digital Domain representative said. “Our … artists worked for months to recreate the facial features, hair, eyes, expressions, body movement and personality of Miss Teng. We have artists with decades of visual effects experience who used their skills to shape, model, animate and eventually render photo-real images that resemble Miss Teng.”
DDHL uses its own patented 360-degree camera technology, which allows a full 360-degree environment to be shot from multiple angles. Viewers sitting anywhere in a particular venue will eventually be able to watch a concert through special 360-degreee devices. This isn’t the first public appearance by Teresa Teng in a virtual situation. In 2013, she “appeared” alongside superstar Jay Chou at several of his concerts in Taiwan.
DDHL has signed a 10-year agreement with TNT Productions, which administers Teresa Teng’s legacy, to create virtual images of the singer for concerts, movies and other media. Teng’s brother, Frank Teng, who is chairman of the Teresa Teng Foundation, lauded the company’s work as a “wonderful tribute to Teresa, introducing her music to a whole new generation while providing many great memories for her long-time fans.”