IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING PIONEER

Brendan Bradley is a director and pioneer in virtual reality and live digital performance. He founded The Innovation Lab at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts while his immersive and interactive works have garnered international recognition, including a Producers Guild of America (PGA) Innovation Award nomination, an Auggie Award for Best Art Film, and an EMMY nomination for his live emerging media programming. Bradley has presented and published technical papers at SIGGRAPH and the French national archive. He is cited by Kent Bye for solving the human element in virtual spaces and named by Avi Bar-Zeev as one of the "100 Original Voices of XR.”

Brendan performs live on-stage, combining artificial intelligence with live music.

During the pandemic shutdowns, Bradley expanded the boundaries of WebVR and interactive digital theater through his pioneering initiatives at The Future Stages, The 5th Wall Forum, and OnBoardXR; producing and presenting over 30 world-premiere XR live performances and offering critical monetization to hundreds of international artists.

Brendan’s Non-Player Character, is an original musical at the intersection of immersive theater, video games, improvisation, and live concerts.

Concurrently, he became a core Repertory Actor and Creative Strategy Advisor for the award-winning Ferryman Collective, starring as a live virtual reality performer in their critically acclaimed VRChat productions The Severance Theory: Welcome to Respite (2021) and Gumball Dreams (2022-23). He was promoted to permanent Company Member alongside his performance in Uncanny Alley: A New Day, helping the company secure a 2026 EMMY nomination for Outstanding Emerging Media Program.

Brendan presents live VR at SIGGRAPH Real Time Live!

As an independent creator, Bradley's original milestones include staging the "first halftime show in the metaverse" for The Poly Awards, premiering the first live hybrid virtual reality musical performed simultaneously in-world and on-stage, and pioneering the real-time integration of generative A.I. at the 2023 VR Awards, where audience mobile prompts generated the interactive stage environment around him in real time.

During the pandemic, Brendan released his own VR Theater for anyone to perform at home.

Highlights

  • Uncanny Alley

    Venice Film Festival (Premiere)

  • Non-Player Character

    Edinburgh Fringe Festival

  • Gumball Dreams

    Ferryman Collective

  • OnBoardXR

    6 Seasonal Showcases

  • Welcome To Respite

    Ferryman Collective

  • The Poly's

    WebXR Awards