IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING PIONEER

Brendan recently performed live on-stage and in virtual reality for The VR Awards, combining artificial intelligence with live music and improvisation.

Brendan has traveled the world presenting several virtual reality experiences, panels and workshops; taking home top awards at festivals like SXSW, a Finalist for The Producer Guild of America’s Innovation Award, and performing “the first live halftime show in the metaverse.”

Brendan has also supported over 50 live immersive prototypes and artists as a founder of The Innovation Lab at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts; The 5th Wall Forum; and OnBoardXR.

Highlights

  • Gumball Dreams

    Ferryman Collective

  • OnBoardXR

    6 Seasonal Showcases

  • Non-Player Character

    Written & Performed by Brendan Bradley

  • Welcome To Respite

    Ferryman Collective

  • The Poly's

    WebXR Awards

ON STAGE, SCREEN AND BEYOND

Brendan’s longest running production, Non-Player Character, is an original musical at the intersection of immersive theater, video games, improvisation, animated film, and live concerts. In a recent interview the XR Must, Bradley explains, “We allow a seated, traditional theatre audience to experience the virtual reality world without putting on a headset.” Select audience members join Brendan on-stage, wearing virtual reality headsets to co-create the story while seated spectators watch them puppet the characters on the big screen.

Brendan frequently stars in the biggest hits of the virtual reality festival circuit, recently taking home top awards at SXSW, Raindance, and Kaohsiung for Gumball Dreams and Welcome To Respite from Ferryman Collective. He has also traveled the world as a special presenter and panelist at AWE, SIGGRAPH, The VR Awards, Festival de Avignon, Venice Film Festival, PXR, The Poly’s, Microsoft, SIGGRAPH Asia, Open Online Theatre Festival, and more. Brendan was named one of The 100 Original Voices in XR by Avi Bar-Zeev.

FESTIVAL DARLING

BUILDING THE FUTURE STAGES

During the pandemic, Brendan began performing in web-based virtual reality to interact live with audiences all over the world in multi-user, immersive web browser experiences. Brendan even released his own VR Theater so anyone could perform from home…and ran an online community supporting over 50 world premieres to ONBOARD new artists and audiences into virtual reality without any requirement to code, download software or buy special equipment.

HIS OWN LAB AT N.Y.U.

In 2017, Brendan established The Innovation Lab at New York University’s Tisch school of the Arts. Taught by leading professionals in the field, the 4-credit course aims to introduce students to the latest forms of technology as they develop work in live performance. The course offers students opportunities to collaborate with companies and technologists who demonstrate new tools and processes exploring the intersection between performing arts and technology.

EARLY DAYS

Brendan has always been an early adopter of new storytelling technology, beginning with muti-track music recording and file sharing, then web and social media marketing and early streaming video. His first webseries, Squatters was acquired as Dailymotion’s first original comedy series and called “the best indie comedy on the web,” by Tubefilter News.

In 2017, Brendan directed the sci-fi series SONA, by building a spaceship in his apartment. When the project was invited to debut at San Diego Comic Con with Legendary Entertainment, Brendan designed an escape room in Unity3D and ran the activation on-site.

Brendan was approached to adapt Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the world of a VR video game. A Tale Told By An Idiot uses an Xbox Kinect as a DIY motion capture solution for the actors to perform in both live action and the world of the fictional game.