Courtney Love plans to take legal action over the representation of her late husband in Guitar Hero 5. Love launched a Twitter tirade, insisting that she never agreed to Kurt Cobain's final appearance in the video game – let alone the functionality that lets him lip-sync to Bon Jovi. "[I] never signed off on the avatar, let alone this fucking feature!" she wrote. "There's been four breaches of a very strict contract."
And the video:
Jon Bon Jovi coming out of Cobain does indeed seem something of a travesty. I wonder how this sort of thing will play out as increasingly photorealistic celebrity avatars become available for anyone with a game console or a laptop to mess around with... The Carl Sagan remixes I posted last week come to mind, as do darker things -- porn featuring dead movie stars (or, perhaps more unsettling, live ones), machinima "remixes" of classic films with new casts, faked cell phone footage ginned-up with AR avatars and voice-matching software... Think of fake Twitter accounts claiming to belong to public figures but really originating from some lonely fan's apartment, then add a 3d visual component, realvirtual presence, credibility...
On the fakeness of celebrity Twitter accounts: I recently got a Twitter email saying Xuxa was now following me. She is my childhood idol so it made my day/week/life. I tweeted her and she tweeted me back! Although her Twitter homepage says "Verified account", I'm not sure Xuxa would say some of the things this Twitter-Xuxa tweets. And to tell you the truth, I am a bit disappointed that she, the queen of Brazil, would take time off to tweet me.
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