Let the dead live on as avatars

ZDF Nano reports on the opportunities and challenges that could arise from combining new technologies with our culture of remembrance.

Letting the dead live on as avatars is currently still an experiment.
In the future, however, technology could change the way we look at the past.

In potsdam-babelsberg, visual effects professionals scan holocaust witness in 3d in germany’s first volumetric video studio with world-leading resolution.

Creating people in three dimensions in motion often requires a team of many people to paint and simulate the movements, bodies, clothing and hair of the people.

That all falls away completely. In the Volucap Studio you can go in and shoot like a normal camera. Everything that is recorded there, we have in motion completely photorealistic available. 32 cameras capture every detail of the person and a computer calculates a three-dimensional hologram. That is the absolute novelty of this technology and enables us for the first time to capture important stories in three dimensions for future generations.

The image is more alive, it is more real in three dimensions. It is important to me that it is preserved for future generations and if that is the form that the technology offers then that is very okay for me.

Eva Umlauf in volucap studioEva Umlauf, Eva Umlauf

In the past, many of the things that are normal today were still scary. The younger generation uses technology very differently than the older generation. I think it will be a good way for many people to feel a connection with people who have passed away.

Jan-Philipp-SteinJan-Philipp Stein, University of Würzburg