Scottish music star KT Tunstall, known for selling millions of records and winning major awards, is now pursuing a new kind of legacy: digital immortality. The acclaimed singer-songwriter has unveiled a startlingly lifelike avatar of herself, designed to capture the essence of her stage performances for posterity.
Capturing a Timeless Performance
To mark the 20th anniversary of her breakthrough album, Tunstall performed its iconic opening track, 'Black Horse & The Cherry Tree', using this new digital double. The project was a collaboration with Unit1 Studio, a specialist avatar concert production company. Technicians photographed the 50-year-old artist from every conceivable angle, capturing 50 distinct facial expressions to build a realistic digital puppet.
Tunstall then donned a motion-capture suit and performed a set, allowing her every movement and mannerism to be recorded and meticulously mapped 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," she explained. "It’s really trying to capture the best essence of yourself as a performer."
The Rise of the Virtual Concert
Once perfected, her avatar was synchronised with lights and music to create a fully immersive concert environment. Watching her digital alter-ego perform for the first time left Tunstall amazed. She noted a key difference from traditional filming: "You’re always posing when you’re in a film or a video and this is not that: this is me in real time."
This experiment follows the revolutionary success of ABBA's 'Voyage' virtual concert residency, which launched in 2022 and sold over a million tickets in both 2023 and 2024. That success has inspired other projects, like Liverpool's floated plans for a similar Beatles experience in 2025.
Barney Wragg, CEO of Unit1 Studio, believes the power of such technology lies in its ability to preserve "this very special moment in time and this very special performance." Tunstall sees even greater creative potential, suggesting "You could really make some magical experiences with people who are here and people who have passed as well."
Ethics and Control in the Digital Age
Both Tunstall and Wragg were quick to address potential ethical concerns, particularly in light of recent controversies involving AI chatbots being misused. They stressed that this hyper-realistic technology cannot be easily hijacked to make stars say or do things without their consent.
"This is not AI technology in isolation like some of the other things we’ve seen," Wragg clarified. "You can’t create this fidelity and this realism and this control over these characters in the way you can do a small-screen version of somebody." He emphasised that the current technology does not allow for someone to "quickly and cheaply knock something up that could be distasteful or discredit somebody."
For KT Tunstall, the driving question remains an artistic one: "What does it take to do a performance that is remembered long after you’re dead?" With her new digital avatar, she is taking a groundbreaking step toward answering it.
