TRANSMITTING — LOS ANGELES 34.05°N / 118.24°W
EST. 2001 // EP.0247
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TRANSMITTING — LOS ANGELES 34.05°N / 118.24°W
A Los Angeles studio building hyper-realistic virtual humans, multi-modal AI avatars, cinematic stories, and XR & holographic experiences — for the world's most iconic artists, estates, and institutions.
VALIS has pioneered the creation of virtual artists since 2001 — two decades before "AI avatar" became a category. Our mission: to revolutionize entertainment and education by creating hyper-realistic, intelligent digital humans in partnership with the world's most important IP owners. To preserve legacy. To achieve a kind of immortality.
Academy Award nominated. Emmy winning. BAFTA winning. A creative futurist who has spent nearly four decades at the intersection of music, technology, and moving image — from Wired on Channel 4 and Factory Records FAC 211 in 1988, through CREATEC under Lord David Puttnam, to VALIS AI in 2026.
Current work includes confidential avatar productions with major music icons, estates, and entertainment IP holders — shown privately to qualified partners under NDA.
A 25-year body of craft across television, film, music video, and documentary — the constant beneath every era, repeatedly first to the next tool. From Wired on Channel 4 (1988) to Phoo Action (BAFTA, 2008) to Waste Land (Academy Award nominee, 2010), and now into the future of broadcast via real-time virtual-production stages (HARMAN at CES 2021).
Hyper-realistic digital doubles of the world's most iconic artists, actors, and educators. Any age. Any language. Any career era. A new form of legacy preservation — and an IP holder's dream. Two decades of frontier R&D, from the UK Government's Avatar Lab at CREATEC (1998) to the first virtual human on the cover of TIME (2020). The throughline from SWEET (2000, world's first digital fashion film with a virtual model) to MLK / TIME to VALIS AI in 2026.
The two newest stages. XR — VR, AR, interactive, and metaverse — including Sports Illustrated Swim VR (the only VR project to ship at consumer scale, with 1M+ headsets distributed) and Run The Jewels — Crown (NYT VR, captured on a bespoke 3D 360° camera built by Andrew Shulkind, now SVP at MSG Sphere Studios). Live Holographic — the world's first bi-coastal holographic duet (M.I.A. × Janelle Monáe, Audi A3, 2014) and Justin Timberlake's headset-free Holodome installation at MoPOP, shot on the 9.2K Lytro Immerge lightfield camera with ECCO VR spatial audio (2018).
Organised in nine chapters mirroring the Chronicle — 1988 through 2024, in sequence. Filter by discipline below.
Much of VALIS's current and recent work is under non-disclosure. AI Avatar productions for legacy music estates, touring artists, major entertainment IP holders, and holographic venue partners are not shown publicly.
Selected current and recent work is available privately to qualified partners — broadcasters, estate holders, artist management, venue operators, brand teams, and production partners — under NDA.
In 1981, Philip K. Dick imagined VALIS — a vast, divine intelligence transmitting knowledge into the human mind via pink laser beams, piercing a Black Iron Prison of sensory illusion to show people reality as it truly was. He was 40 years early. Today the signal he imagined is indistinguishable from the internet, from artificial intelligence, from algorithmic suggestion reaching into every brain on Earth. A holographic universe. The prison he warned about — a world of manufactured, manipulated, deepfaked reality — is no longer a metaphor.
We named the studio VALIS because the virtual humans we build sit on exactly that line. They can deceive, or they can illuminate. They can be weapons of manipulation, or instruments of craft — extending iconic artists across time, language, and space, preserving legacy, enabling new creativity, and reshaping what a "live" performance can be in an age of avatars.