ABBA Voyage's own producers reject the word hologram

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A purpose-built arena for a show that denies being a hologram

ABBA Voyage opened from 27 May 2022 in a purpose-built 3,000-capacity venue at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, according to Industrial Light and Magic's own account of the production, which credits Ben Morris as VFX Supervisor overseeing the creation of digital versions of Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid performing alongside a live ten-piece band. The show's own frequently asked questions page is unusually direct about what it is not: it states plainly that the show is not a tribute act and not a hologram performance, but a one-of-a-kind concert created with ABBA. That is a producer's claim, not an independent test, but it is a notably specific one for an industry that often lets the word hologram go uncorrected.

What the credits confirm about how it is made

ILM's published credits list virtual production technology by ILM StageCraft and facial performance retargeting by Disney Research Studios, alongside dedicated motion capture and facial capture teams. StageCraft is ILM's LED-volume virtual production system, developed for film and television work, which places a large LED screen behind performers to display pre-rendered or real-time imagery. Applied to a concert, this points to the four digital performers being pre-recorded, built from motion and facial capture of the real band members, and played back on a large-format LED display rather than reflected off glass or foil, or reconstructed as a genuinely three-dimensional wavefront.

What the companies do not publish

Neither ABBA Voyage's own site nor ILM's pages disclose the screen's resolution, pixel count, physical dimensions, or viewing-angle performance for this specific installation, despite figures for the display circulating in general commentary. Where a production declines to publish its own specifications, this account does not repeat unsourced numbers as fact. The FAQ page also states that photography and recording are strictly prohibited, which means there is no independent visitor documentation to compare against the producers' description, only their own account of the discipline involved in building it.

• Is the screen behind the performers an LED wall, and if so, at what pixel pitch and viewing distance does it hold up?
• What separates a pre-rendered, capture-driven performance from a live one, for an audience member's purposes?
• If a producer explicitly denies the word hologram, why does that framing persist in general coverage?

ABBA Voyage is well documented as an achievement in capture and playback engineering, and unusually candid in disowning the word most often used to describe it. What remains undocumented, by the people who built it, is the display hardware itself.