I WANNA DESTROY

I Wanna Destroy is a multimedia collaboration between EMA and virtual reality designer Zach Krausnick. Combining elements of installation, live concert and 3D VR technology, the result is a combination of technological micro-narrative and human durational performance. 

IWD was performed twice in 2015 at PS1 MoMA in NYC and at Compliance Division in Portland, OR.

I Wanna Destroy is tied together by setting up parallel worlds. “Outside” the majority of the audience members experience a brand new song cycle by EMA, playing on a stage set up to look like a shabby apartment. 

One at a time participants don the mask and enter virtual reality to find another layer of the outside narrative. “Inside” the 3D environment is rendered to match the stage set up. There is even an avatar of Anderson on the couch that tracks her motions.  

The participant's visual experience in VR is projected back out into the venue, becoming part of the show.

The theme of multiple perceptions of reality is mirrored in the narrative, as Anderson 
reads greeting cards from far-away relatives who seem convinced of her success and 
glamour, even as she sits alone amidst trash and debris and doesn't have the heart to 
tell them otherwise.

With both Anderson and Krausnick improvising with their respective tools, this piece 
might be first in which a virtual reality creator and a musician actually “play” together 
onstage. However, even as the piece breaks new ground technologically, transcendence 
comes through the pre-internet aesthetic of paper greeting cards, and the universal 
themes of family, guilt, illusion and isolation. 

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