THIS IS WHAT THEY WOULD LOOK LIKE

Today’s dose of “kinda cool, kinda heartbreaking, kinda creepy” news comes to us courtesy of Sachs Media, where execs recently bankrolled a series of computer-generated portraits depicting what some of rock’s best-loved deceased stars would look like if they were alive today.

Sachs hired Phojoe, a company that creates artificially aged photos for missing-persons reports, to bring their technology to bear on a slew of famous faces, including Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Keith Moon and Elvis Presley — and although no one has yet written software that can truly revive the dead, the results of Phojoe’s work are still pretty compelling.

---

Titled ‘Rock & Roll Heaven,’ the image collection is currently available to view as a gallery or slideshow, with commentary from musicologists who predict what each picture’s subject would have done over the past several decades. For instance, regarding Lennon, the site muses, “Given what he had done already, it is hard to put limits on what he might have attempted, and it seems safe to assume he would have continued to surprise even his most devoted followers”; on Morrison, they imagine that “he might have abandoned music entirely, devoted himself to writing, moved to New York, Paris, Tokyo or Dakar, and by now be honored by a few cognoscenti as an experimental avant-gardist rather than revered by millions as a rock star.”

For Sachs CEO Ron Sachs, the project works as an act of tribute. “Through this series of images, we hope to honor them and evoke some of the magic they brought to millions of their fans,” he explained in a statement. “Even as we ponder what wonderful new contributions they still could have made.”

kURT COBAIN

MAMA  CASS ELIOT

JIMI HENDRIX

JANIS JOPLIN

JOHN LENNON

KEITH MOON

ELVIS PRESLEY

DENNIS WILSON