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Stage fright is not a term youd associate with Elvis Presley, but in 1968 he was all shook upwith nerves. Ahead of his make-or-break comeback special after years floundering in Hollywood, the King had cold feet. He told the specials director, Steve Binder, he was terrified, adding, “I dont know if I can do this . . . just me and a guitar in front of people?” He half-joked to his entourage about retreating to Hawaii. Apart from a few close confidants, no one has ever witnessed these intimate moments of reservation. But starting July 17 in London, guests at Elvis Evolution will see an AI-generated Elvis play out these fears, and other key moments of his life. The immersive event will be powered by various types of tech, but the creators want to ensure that none of them get in the way of the magic of being transported back in time. Layered Reality puts on experiential events comprising three layers: tech, theater, and physical elements. The tech is multifaceted, from augmented reality to 3D audio effects; the theater comprises traditional sets and live actors; the physical elements are sensory stimulants like touch and taste. Thats a really intoxicating combination, says founder and CEO Andrew McGuinness. Often they’re kept in separate worlds. We firmly believe they belong together. The company has deployed this mix of elements for Londoners three times before, including in retellings of War of the Worlds, and The Gunpowder Plot, hosted in the eerie vaults below the Tower of London. The new endeavor is far from a 17th-century plot against a kingthough, this one also has a king, or rather, the King. Elvis records the soundtrack to Love Me Tender in a Los Angeles studio in August 1956. [Photo: Courtesy of Elvis Presley Enterprises, LLC/Layered Reality] Back in time with theater and tech Guests will be escorted through a story-based experience of Presleys life, from a young boy, through the rebellious leg shakes of the 50s, through the opulent Vegas years, all on purpose-built sets at Immerse LDN, a new immersive entertainment complex on the River Thames waterfront. Groups will walk through scenes like a 50s diner and a dressing room. At times, walls and sets will move around them. Theyll take on different points of view. You are literally going to walk in his shoes at one point, says Simon Reveley, head of studios, not indicating if those shoes are blue suede. [Image: Courtesy of Layered Reality] Different scenes will employ different tech tactics. We are very deliberately technology agnostic, McGuinness says, stressing that tech is simply a tool to enhance the experience. When it’s at its best, the technology gets out of the way. In past Layered Reality shows, tech ranged from subtle to sensory: in one scene in The Gunpowder Plot, for example, guests hide in pitch dark from priest hunters, with spatial audio and LED floor lights simulating creeping footsteps; in another, a VR-enhanced boat ride layers motion effects with water sprays, cool air, and the salty scent of the seablending physical cues with digital immersion to trick the brain into believing the experience. [Image: Courtesy of Layered Reality] For Elvis, they dont want to give away too much to ruin the element of surprise. Of course, music will be central. Through it all, artificial intelligence helps to remaster sounds, and upscale fotage quality. AI Elvis But AIs starring role is in AI Elvis himself. Guests will come face to face with the recreation of Presley. Layered Reality trained the AI on hours and hours of footage, feeding an algorithm concert clips, Cine 8 films, and thousands of photos. AI Elvis has been done before in 2022, on Americas Got Talent. An actor served as Elvis deepfake double, creating movements to make it look as if Presley were performing Devil in Disguise (with a deepfake Simon Cowell). Reveley explains that with more advanced facial generative AI, you can now tune the algorithm to lean more into the original source material than the human actor. AI can pick up on minute nuances, vital for someone whose expressions, like the lip curl, were so iconic. We all know them so well, and so does the machine learning algorithm, Reveley says. Much of the purpose of AI Elvis is to unearth footage that happened but wasnt capturedlike the nerves before the 68 TV special. Ethics and delays Recreating imagined scenes raises ethical questions, of whether a person no longer living would want to share their most intimate moments with the world. But the team insists its project is different from the Simon Cowell duetor the AI Anthony Bourdain that was controversially made to narrate part of a documentarybecause they arent fabricating something that never happened. AI [is] being a digital archivist rather than an originator, McGuinness says. The Presley estate is also heavily involved, and granted the team access to all the footage. (The Presley estate did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment.) Still image from Singer Presents ELVIS, known as the Kings 1968 comeback special. [Photo: Courtesy of courtesy of Elvis Presley Enterprises, LLC/Layered Reality] To create AI Elvis, Layered Reality partnered with the Mill, a visual effects agency that won an Oscar for bringing Oliver Reed back to life in Gladiator. The Mill was a subsidiary of the postproduction giant Technicolor Group, which since 1915 set the industry standard for color entertainment. But in February, after years of financial struggles, Technicolor went bust. (Fast Company reached out to the Mill to confirm it was also affected, but didnt hear back.) That caused delays; though Layered Reality had ownership of AI Elvis, it had work to finish. They scrambled to hire artists from The Mill on contract to complete the final phases. They pushed back the start date twice, from the original planned date of March. A post-pandemic events boom Its now on course to welcome guests, to experience what McGuinness views as part of a live entertainment revolution. It views its competitors not as other tech or AI companies, but anything else you could be doing that night, from a musical, to mini golf, to that Italian restaurant on the corner of your street [where] youll end up spending 130 pounds. Given that comparison, McGuinness thinks 75 pounds ($102) for a standard ticket is fair. Were in the memory business, [and] too much of our money is still spent on immemorable things, he says. The business banks on a rising demand for these types of events. The term experience economy has existed since 1998, when it appeared in Harvard Business Review, but COVID-19 accelerated the allure, boosting the popularity of experiences like Cosm in Los Angeles and the Sphere in Las Vegas. With that backdrop, Elvis Evolution hopes it can usher in a modern-day comeback. Of course, the 68 one turned out to be a tour de force, full of raw vocals and black leather. Nerves dissipated, and gave way to humor. “I sang to turtles and palm trees for years, Elvis told the audience about his movie career. This is a lot better, dont you think?”
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E-Commerce
When he was 38, Fast Company senior editor Jon Gluck was diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer, multiple myeloma, and given just 18 months to live. Unbelievably, he has survivedand managed to thrivefor more than 20 years. In his new book, An Exercise in Uncertainty: A Memoir of Illness and Hope, Gluck details how he has lived with chronic illness for the past two decades. Gluck joined the Most Innovative Companies podcast to discuss getting diagnosed, how working helped him cope with his illness, and the workplace accommodations that enabled him to keep going. Your book follows your journey with a rare type of blood cancer. What is the condition? I have a blood cancer alternately referred to as a bone marrow cancer called multiple myeloma. It’s an incurable cancer but one that has fortunately, in my case, been treatable. I will never not have it, but fortunately I’ve been in a position where my doctors have been able to manage and control it quite nicely. There have been times when I’ve been very sick and then I’m treated and I go into a remission and then I’m sick again and I go into a remission. That’s been the story of the last 20 years. A portion of my book proceeds are going toward multiple myeloma research. In the book, you mention that the first person you called after your initial diagnosiswhen you were given less than two years to livewas your boss. Why? I think I was trying to create a sense of normalcy for myself. I think part of it was denial. I just didn’t want to really admit that anything was so wrong that I had to do anything differently than I normally would. Part of it was just the strange sense of duty I have sometimes as an individual. I was like, well, I better report to the boss that I won’t be there today, even though I’ve just received life-changing information. Its very Boy Scout behavior. I was also avoiding calling people for whom it would be a much bigger deal. You write that you encounter three types of responses when you disclose your cancer diagnosis. Some say they know someone who died from the same condition. Others immediately try to help and find solutions. Then theres a third type who just listens to you and is empathetic. What advice do you have for people whose friends or relatives share a diagnosis with them? It’s a tricky thing. Most everybody is well intentioned, and so whatever people say or do I understand. That said, I’m going to give a never, sometimes, always answer to your three buckets. So the never is, Boy, I just knew somebody who had that and they died yesterday. I think it’s pretty unhelpful. Probably the person who just told you they’ve been diagnosed with the same disease is not the best person to talk to about that. Sometimes I think wanting to help is complicated. The criteria I’d use there after 20 years of dealing with this is . . . are you offering something that’s genuinely helpful and that the person probably hasn’t already heard? If you are, then go for it. I think there’ve been people I know who said, Listen, I happen to know my wife’s uncle is really close friends with an amazing myeloma doctor at such and such a hospital. If you ever want to reach out to them, I can put you in touch. That’s helpful. Then the always category of basic empathy or sympathy. I’ve been really struck over the years by how powerful just somebody simply saying, I’m really sorry to hear that [can be]. Honest to God, those words alone are wonderful and more powerful than you think they are. One of the first people I told in my office, a colleague I remember very vividly simply said, You poor guy. I am really sorry. That was so moving and it wasn’t even someone I was particularly close with. It was just somebody who knew the right thing to say. While many people, when they get a diagnosis like this, rethink their whole lives, you looked back on your life and realized you were pretty happy with your job and your situation. How has work helped you throughout your illness? I have been working this whole time. I’ve hardly missed a day of work, even when I’ve been hospitalized, [thanks to] remote work and Zoom. Sometimes people say, That’s so brave or courageous or wonderful of you to have worked the whole time. Believe me, it has nothing to do with bravery in my case, its just an incredibly great distraction. The pressure and deadlines we deal with in our business were great for me because it was like whatever the problem is here at work, it’s not as big as that [cancer] problem. People often talk about getting that kind of perspective when they’ve received a diagnosis like mine. That’s absolutely been true in my case. I really came to see that I love what I do, and so there was just pleasure and enjoyment in doing the work. When you’re sick and not feeling well all the time or getting treatment and feeling even worse, pleasure and enjoyment are in short supply. You can still get burned out though. You wrote about leaving New York magazine after a while because you needed a break. I happened to be working at a place that was extremely demanding and I had been there for more than 10 years. As my disease became more complicated and my treatment became more aggressive and the side effects therefore were more debilitating, many people said to me, Do you really want to work this hard? Stress is bad for you. I was like, well, stress is bad for you if it’s bad stress or if it’s an excessive level of stress, but as I was saying a minute ago, a certain amount of stress I found really good in the sense that it kept my mind off of my illness. But that reached a tipping point somewhere in my 10th year of working. I realized I need a job that’s not so demanding minute to minute, day to day. There are constant layoffs in the media industry, which can be stressful when your medical insurance is tied to your job. What kind of insurance battles have you had? I’ve become an unwilling example of this new category of people I call cancer zombies. And what I mean by that is people who are half sick and half well. Theres a growing number of us because of the advancements in biomedical research and the treatments for many kinds of cancers. Instead of either you’re treated and you survive and you’re good to go for the rest of your life, or you’re treated and unfortunately the treatments don’t work and you pass away, there’s this whole cohort of us who are living for really long periods of time with varying degrees of illness and debilitation. Unless you’re independently wealth, that means you need to work for a lot of years and you need insurance for a lot of years, even while you’re struggling with your illness and your treatments. I learned that the leading cause of personal bankruptcy is unexpected medical expenses. Because of all that [my wife and I] felt like we really needed a sort of belt-and-suspenders approach, and for both of us to have insurance in case either of us got laid off because we were both in the media business and layoffs had been happening for many years at an alarming rate. In terms of dealing with insurance companies, it’s maddening. The system is so broken that what it comes down to is just getting lucky. What I mean by that is getting somebody on the other end of the phone who’s a human being, not a machine, and who actually cares and wants to help solve your problem. Whether that happens or not is just a crapshoot. You just have to keep going at it. What was the pandemic like for you? It was tough. Part of both my illness and my treatment have left me quite immunocompromised. We were in the city and we had no other logical place to go. We didn’t want to move in with family and expose them to extra risk. We followed all the precautions to a T. But then oddly enough, we went back to living the way most people were living. At some point I just decided, what’s the point of staying alive if you don’t live your life? One of the interesting things that happened toward the end of the first, most serious wave of the pandemic is that I wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post. The title was something like, It’s great that everybody’s getting back to normal. Now, please keep in mind that there are some of us who are immunocompromised who still need to take these precautions. Most of the comments I got were lovely and supportive, but [it was also] met [negatively] by some people. One of the comments I think was, That’s the luck of the draw. We don’t owe you anything, stop whining. How important are accommodations, like the ability to work remotely, for you? It’s been tremendously important. One of the other things that is interesting about the pandemic is that in some ways, people sort of sympathize more with everybody who has ever been through [illness] and has to worry constantly about germs. That was normalizing in a strange way. The best part was being able to work remotely. It allowed me to keep my job without going on disability. It allowed me to keep the constant distraction of working in place so that I didn’t lose my mind. It became a lifeline. Have you experienced any workplace discrimination? It’s a really tricky question. I’m not the kind of person to knee-jerk see that sort of thing everywhere, but I’ve had glimpses of it. When I was getting ready to leave New York magazine and interviewing for jobs at other places, a recruiter said to me, I read the story you wrote [about your illness] in New York magazine. How are you doing? On the one hand, she seemed like an extremely nice person and I’m the kind of person who’s inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, I wondered, Is she fishing for information about my health status so she can figure out if Im a wise hire? I’ll never know. I’m not here to give people advice [about] whether or not they should share information about their illness. I will say once you do decide to, there’s no putting it back in the bottle. So just be super sure that if you want to share this information, you are potentially opening yourself up to what can be a very serious problem. [Photo: Oscar Gluck]
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E-Commerce
Although less familiar than many of its tech rivals, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is kind of a big deal. Its valuation, north of $1 trillion, ranks the chipmaker ninth globally among publicly held companies, and its strategic significance in the silicon arms race led New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to label it the most important company in the world. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) fabrication plant in Phoenix on Monday, March 3. [Photo: Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg/Getty Images] So when TSMCs massive new manufacturing plant (or fab, as those in the semiconductor business like to call it) arose recently in the desert north of Phoenix, Arizonans might have expected to see a polished logo adorning the buildings facade. Instead, many were likely flummoxed by the TSMC symbol. Was it supposed to be a crossword puzzle? A disco ball? A badminton racquet? A screen door replete with dead houseflies? [Image: TSMC] In fact, the logo, which debuted in 1988, one year after the companys founding, represents a stylized semiconductor wafer design, as a TSMC trademark application puts it. A wafer is a thin, circular slice of silicon which is cut into rectangular dies that are used to make computer chips. The flat section of the wafer, visible at the bottom of the TSMC logo, is called, well, a flat and is used for orientation in the manufacturing process. 1st column: Integrated Device Technology, 1982, Wacker MSCE, 1986. 2nd column: Integrated Device Technology, 1998, Zoran Corporation, 1983, Cirrus Logic, 1996. SemiTex, 1999. 3rd column: Silicon Valley Engineering Council, 1990, National Security Agency, 1990. [Images: courtesy of the author] The black rectangles in the logo seem to represent defective dies as they would appear on a wafer map, a diagram outlining the usable sections of the silicon disc. One might find this an odd design element to include, but it appears to have been a bit of a convention among ’80s wafer logos. San Jose semiconductor maker Integrated Device Technologys 1981 logo featured two such defective dies. When it reversed the coloring of its logo in the ’90s, did it realize the resulting implication was that an overwhelming majority of its dies were duds? TSMCÙs 1988 logo (left) and 2001 update (right) [Image: courtesy of the author] TSMC took the opposite tack, slightly revising its mark in 2001 to reduce the number of those troublesome black rectangles while improving legibility. Otherwise, though, the logo has remained unchanged and, frankly, it doesnt work well in 2025. Not only is the wafer symbolism inscrutable to the modern eye, but by todays standards, its design is overwrought, amateurish, and dated, in keeping with an overall company brand thats as dry as soda crackers. Beyond employing the most obvious graphic design solution of adopting the companys product as a logo, the firm has named itself using the largely-abandoned tactic of simple descriptiveness, which, if still in vogue, might have resulted in Apple being known as the Northern California Computer Company or Amazon going by Seattle Online Bookstore, Inc. Until recently, this may not have been seen as a problem for companies that, like TSMC, were not public-facing. There was a sense that branding elements like names and logos were shiny baubles that served only to catch the eyes of the public, and that were irrelevant within the context of B2B relationships. As economic historian Mira Wilkins put it in a 1992 paper, Most industrial organization economists consider the brand name as highly important in sales to the final consumer. They take the view, however, that profit-motivated firms are wiser than individuals, so trade marks are not needed to convey information to producers.” Such thinking is going by the wayside as modern economists let go of long-held assumptions about perfect human rationality, and it would seem time for even the stodgiest B2B companies to start caring more about their brands. TSMC, in particular, has been embroiled in geopolitical intrigue that has put it in an unprecedented spotlight. The face that it presents to the world matters more than it ever has, and its about time for TSMC to sunset its old wafer.
Category:
E-Commerce
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