Award-winning Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall has embarked on a groundbreaking project to secure her artistic legacy, creating a strikingly realistic digital avatar designed to perform long after she is gone. The move signals a bold step into the future of live entertainment and digital preservation.
Capturing the Essence of Performance
To mark the 20th anniversary of her breakthrough album, the 50-year-old musician performed its iconic opening track, 'Black Horse & The Cherry Tree', entirely through her new digital double. The avatar was meticulously crafted by technicians at Unit1 Studio, a specialist avatar concert production company. They photographed Tunstall from every conceivable angle, capturing 50 distinct facial expressions to build a realistic digital puppet.
Tunstall then donned a motion-capture suit to perform a full set. This allowed her every movement, gesture, and mannerism to be recorded and mapped precisely onto the digital model. "As a performer, wearing the suit and engaging in this tech, it’s really very similar to when you’re, for example, making a music video," Tunstall explained. "It’s really trying to capture the best essence of yourself as a performer."
The Drive for Digital Immortality
The star's motivation extends beyond mere novelty. She is driven by a quest for a kind of artistic immortality, asking what it takes to create a live performance that resonates through history. "The thing that excites me most about that technology is, what does it take to do a performance that is remembered long after you’re dead?" she pondered. "What are the ingredients of impressing an audience and the world so much with one live performance that it gets talked about for the rest of time?"
Once perfected, her avatar was synchronised with lights and music to generate an immersive concert experience. Watching her digital alter-ego perform for the first time was a revelation. "You’re always posing when you’re in a film or a video and this is not that: this is me in real time," she marvelled to the BBC, adding that the technology captured a more authentic version of her stage presence.
A New Era for Live Music
Tunstall's experiment follows the seismic impact of ABBA's 'Voyage' virtual concert residency, which launched in 2022 and has since sold over a million tickets annually. This success has inspired other projects, like Liverpool's proposed virtual Beatles experience slated for 2025.
Barney Wragg, CEO of Unit1 Studio, highlighted the technology's core appeal: preserving "this very special moment in time and this very special performance." Tunstall envisions even broader creative possibilities, suggesting "you could really make some magical experiences with people who are here and people who have passed as well."
However, both Tunstall and Wragg were keen to address ethical concerns, distinguishing this avatar technology from generative AI tools that can be misused. "This is not AI technology in isolation like some of the other things we’ve seen," Wragg stressed, noting the high fidelity and control required prevents the cheap creation of misleading or distasteful content. This project represents a controlled, artistic application of digital innovation, aiming to lock a performer's magic into a new, enduring form.
