Pulse Evolution calls its 2014 Michael Jackson show an experience

What you see

During the May 2014 Billboard Music Awards broadcast, the arena audience and television viewers saw a moving, dancing figure resembling Michael Jackson perform a medley on stage before a live band. Pulse Evolution Corporation's own company timeline lists the project as 'Virtual Michael Jackson,' describing it as 'a world premiere experience featuring the late King of Pop at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards,' with visual effects credited to Pulse Evolution itself. No headset was required; the figure was visible to everyone in the arena and to the broadcast audience simultaneously.

How it works

Pulse Evolution's timeline places the project directly after the company's 2012 Coachella Tupac work, crediting the same leadership and describing a company that specializes in, in its own words, 'character creation and human animation.' The company's own press page lists a Billboard Magazine feature titled 'Tupac, MJ: A History of the Musical Hologram' and a Forbes piece on 'How Virtual Michael Jackson Came to Be,' showing outlets grouped the two projects together. Pulse Evolution's materials describe the content as computer animation built from reference footage, displayed to the arena rather than via any physical projected foil the company itself names.

Viewing conditions and limits

The performance was a single broadcast television event rather than a touring show, viewed by the Billboard Music Awards' arena audience and the much larger television audience at the same time. Pulse Evolution's own materials do not specify screen technology, projection angle or brightness for this particular show, so those production details remain unconfirmed by the company's own public pages. What its timeline does confirm is the month, the award show, and the company's authorship of the visual effects.

What it is not

Despite widespread press use of the word 'hologram,' Pulse Evolution's own timeline avoids that term for this entry, calling it a 'world premiere experience' instead, consistent with the company's pattern of describing its work as computer animation and visual effects rather than as an optical hologram. This is not a free-space or interference-recorded image: it is a produced piece of digital content, built by an animation studio and displayed to an arena and television audience on-screen or via a large-format projection setup, the specific optics of which the company's own page does not itemize. The 'musical hologram' framing used in the trade press the company's own press page cites is journalistic shorthand rather than the company's technical description.

• Ask whether coverage describing a 'hologram' names the actual display technology or is repeating another outlet's word choice.
• Ask whether the digital performer was shown on a physical screen, a projected foil, or another technique, since the producing company itself often does not specify.
• Ask what reference footage and how much archival material a digital-recreation project used, since that shapes how much of the result is animation versus captured likeness.

Pulse Evolution's own record of this project, filed alongside its Tupac work on the same company timeline, is a useful reminder that the studios building these shows do not always use the word 'hologram' themselves, even when press coverage settles on it.