Nature and technology have always overlapped in your work.
For me, nature and technology stand for hope, and for a movement onwards to the future. I’ve always been like that. I think it has to do with being brought up in Iceland. Even though it’s a capital in Europe, right now I’m outside my house, and I am literally walking on the beach. It’s a lot of space! I remember the first time when I was really into technology was going to the dentist. I was in this hippie school where everything was very wooden and real. Then it was a dentist’s office, and I was like, “Wow. This is the future!” He put all these things in my mouth, and I was like, “Okay, the future is here, this is where shit happens.”
I think it’s also some sort of instinct, just knowing that if there is to be hope, we have to unite technology and nature. You have to make them coexist, and they have to be able to work together. I mean, it has to happen, if we’re going to survive. Maybe I’m being a bit limited, but the older I get, I realize better and better how I’m formed by my origins and where I’m from. But somehow it’s easier for me to imagine that happening in a natural situation—like me talking on a phone on the beach to you now from a capital in Europe. You have technology, or GarageBand in your iPhone and record a tune on top of a mountain.
This has always been the ideal hopeful marriage for me. I’ve more or less always been into this—every album, I was like, okay, now I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. Then it always goes back to the same thing. Ever since I was a teenager in punk bands, and whatever, it’s been pretty persistent.
People think I’m really, really good with technology. Actually, it’s the other way around. I’m really rubbish.
When we were doing the tour of the album Volta, we had touchscreens. This was before iPads. Whenever there’s new technology, one of my favorite things—a sort of murder mystery thing—is to figure out, “Oh, what’s this for?” A lot of things are rubbish, but there’s always one thing where it’s like, “Oh, technology finally caught up with us, and now it can map out this very natural function in me.” It makes life easier. People think I’m really, really good with technology. Actually, it’s the other way around. I’m really rubbish. When an iPad comes along, it makes technology usable for me.
When I did Biophilia, I was so excited about finally mapping out how I feel about education and how I feel about musicology, because when I was a kid in music school, it was almost offensive, how I was forced to study music, or resonance, or timbre, or scales—everything from a normal book, and sit and read something for hours. If it’s being seen and heard, it was something that needed to be felt and become visceral and physical. For me to do Biophilia, I rented this house on the beach, and we were there programming all the basic things in musicology, like rhythm and chords and melody and so on.
It was very obvious somehow that the touchscreen was basically a 3D book. You can see that now. How it’s mostly used, it’s great for schools, and especially things like physics or math or music, or things that have to be 3D. It’s the same thing. It makes sense for me to go back to this, because it’s sort of like first you discover the tool, then it’s like meeting a new friend, and then you can try and figure where the magic happens, where the most potential is to grow. It’s that heat point, and that feeling of entering the unknown, that really excites me.
How did you get interested in virtual reality?
I’ve got a close collaboration with Andrew Huang, who I’ve done several videos with now. My interest in virtual reality came from that. When I was commissioned by MoMA to do the “Black Lake” video, we were going to do it in 360. Trying to squeeze into MoMA was a very exciting project for me. I think the shape of that song is influenced a bit by the fact that I was going to have it presented in a room, and I was thinking that people would walk in and out all day. It was this song that could loop forever.
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