E-Z Kryptobuild is a multimedia project. It’s predominantly video, but it’s also sculptural and environmental. The sculptures are these coins, which, if you follow the narrative, are basically the investment tool. The company’s proposition is that it’s an amazing design sweepstake that will get you to utopia, and that they’ve teamed up with the world’s leading architects to design these incredible architectural utopias. Some of them are in the sea — floating islands, like seasteads —, others are in the desert. A celebrity architect ostensibly designed each one, so the narrative goes, and if you buy a coin, your investment capital gets put into E-Z Kryptobuild’s blockchain network. That’s not true. The entire thing is basically a Ponzi scheme for libertarians.

AW: First, the Japanese producer sent me the headset. I was so excited about the possibilities, I was sure that this technology would change cinema. But once I started working with it, I thought, “Okay, this is not going to change cinema, this is something else.” It’s moving image, but it belongs to a different category that is more like theatre. I think in the future it’s going to be more relevant than cinema, though, in terms of how it can be applied to our daily life. The day there’s no more cinema, life will continue, whereas once VR has developed to a certain point, there’ll be chaos if suddenly there is no more VR.

It’s an opening, but it also severs the link: there’s no more cinema. Cinema has its own world. When you make cinema, it’s really dictatorial. You force the audience where to look, you place a frame for people to look through. Although people think VR is immersive, cinema can possess you more, it makes you become. VR gives back this freedom to look. So, what’s left for the director? My work in Japan is wireless—you can walk wherever you want, and you see the other audience members as dots of light. Your perspective is not led by anyone. It’s all about what is happening in which part of the space. The director becomes more like a set designer, and you can visit the set.