Just this week I was thinking back to an article I did an entry on back in 2004 where MIT students were trying to create a system whereby the Miami Symphony would be conducted by a hologram of a conductor standing in Germany. Unfortunately, the article I linked to back then is no longer available. But I was wondering whatever came of that effort.

Today via Artjournal.com there is an piece on Discovery News about how an actor in Orlando, FL and actors Canada both performed onstage in Illinois via the wonders of the internet. The Floridian and Canadians appeared on screens and not as holograms, but it looks like technology and practice might be moving in that direction.

This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. Back in June I did an entry about Play On Earth, an effort which had actors on three continents interacting with each other. “An object hurled in Singapore flies halfway round the world and hits a character in Newcastle,” reports a Guardian article.

Who knows, by the time the technology to create viable holograms is developed, efforts like the two mentioned here may have changed the whole dynamic of live performance — not to mention the definition of what constitutes “live.”