Stream of the Day
SA’s ‘Uncanny Alley’ takes Emmy
A virtual universe built by South African artist Rick Treweek has won one of television’s highest honours, writes JASON BANNIER.
A cyberpunk back alley of the internet, created in a Johannesburg flat during the COVID-19 lockdown, has earned an Emmy Award.
Uncanny Alley: A New Day won Outstanding Emerging Media Program at the 78th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday (5 September 2026). The live immersive production is a collaboration between Cape Town immersive studio Virtual Worlds Company and Los Angeles-based non-profit VR performance company Ferryman Collective. (Click here to watch the trailer,)
It is performed inside VRChat, a social virtual-reality platform where audiences enter and take part in the action. Its setting is Uncanny Alley, an original virtual universe created by South African artist and worldbuilder Rick Treweek, known in VR as MetaRick.
Treweek was at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles to receive the award on stage with the Ferryman Collective team.
“This one is for home,” said Treweek. “South Africa does not wait for perfect conditions. We build under load-shedding skies and still send a city across the ocean.”
The production won ahead of fellow nominees Blumhouse Enhanced Cinema and The World of Fallout.
In A New Day, audience members become escaped detainees fleeing Adaptive Learning Industries, a corporation preparing to erase its citizens’ memories. Two professional actors play 15 characters in real time while participants try to escape imprisonment and evade capture. They must eventually choose between abandoning Uncanny Alley and remaining to fight for it.
The actors respond to the audience members as they move through the story, so each performance develops differently.
Treweek, who lives in Kommetjie, also met fellow Deep South resident Marcus Hebbelmann at the ceremony. Hebbelmann was part of Survivor’s Emmy-nominated camera team for the third consecutive year.
“The whole event was remarkable, especially the Governors Gala afterwards,” said Treweek. “It was incredible just being in the room with so much talent and creativity.”
(Click here to watch Treweek describe Uncanny Alley: A New Day)
His mother was the first person he told, during the middle of the night in South Africa. “And then everyone in Kokstad knew,” he said, laughing.
Treweek began building Uncanny Alley in 2020 while living in a Johannesburg flat during South Africa’s strict first Covid-19 lockdown. With people unable to gather in person, he created a virtual place where they could be together: a neon-lit, cyberpunk alley populated by characters and stories.
Its first narrative experience, The Search for Gh0st, was selected for Venice VR Expanded in 2021 and received the Spirit of Raindance Award in 2022.
Treweek and Ferryman Collective began discussing a live production within the universe in 2024. Virtual Worlds Company constructed a new world for it, comprising over 30 environments and engineered to run on standalone Meta Quest headsets.
Ferryman founders Stephen Butchko and Deirdre V. Lyons wrote and directed A New Day. Technical director Christopher Lane Davis, who works under the name Screaming Color, created original visual effects and music and helped control the live production.
The work premiered in competition at Venice Immersive 2024, where it received the Fanheart3 XR Fan Experience Award. It was later presented at SXSW, Raindance Immersive, NewImages Festival, Augmented World Expo and SIGGRAPH.
Its other honours include the XR Immersive Award at the Kaohsiung Film Festival in Taiwan and Gold at the XRMust Awards.
The Emmy completed an eventful week for Treweek. Continuum ’26 opened in Saudi Arabia two nights before the awards, with his work Gh0st Out The Shell included in the exhibition. As a mentor-artist, he combined sculpture and virtual reality to examine physical and virtual identity.
“I cast Gh0st in bronze for the exhibition, so she arrived in the real world at the same time she was up for awards at the Emmys, which is quite cool,” said Treweek.
He plans to expand Uncanny Alley into toys, 360-degree dome experiences and Steam games. His immediate concern was more practical.
“I’ve got to figure out how to fly with this trophy. It’s rather heavy.”
- Visit the Uncanny Alley website here.
*Jason Bannier is a data analyst at World Wide Worx and deputy editor of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Bluesky at @jas2bann.
