To promote the album, there were also provocative billboards and street art that read “GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD.” What was your thinking behind those?

I was like, “Well, we could just throw my picture up and be like, ‘buy the album,’ and no one’s gonna give a fuck—or we could treat the city like an art gallery and put up an actual piece of art that isn’t super promotional for the record but maybe it makes people think or makes people talk.” So [conceptual artist] Ryder [Ripps] put together the “GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD” thing. When I saw it, I was like, “Oh, fuck no, this is a huge mistake.” Then I was like, “Wow, this is so scary that I think we should probably put it up.” The goal was to have less advertising and more public art.

How does your new avatar War Nymph, which was recently featured on the cover of a magazine, play into the album’s concept?

War Nymph is a digital persona. It really is an alternative psyche. As a society we’re going through this weird psychological process of everybody splitting into two identities, their online identity and their real-life identity. Gaming reflects this too—the person I am in games is this other life I have that doesn’t relate to my physical life and having [felt] traumatized from how my online life was manifesting. Then I ended up getting pregnant too, so I was like, “Oh my god, help me get through the album.” So we scanned my body and made a digital self. This thing can become the id, the online psyche of Grimes.

But eventually, in theory, probably five to 10 years from now, you’ll be able to just get an app, take a picture of your face from every angle with your phone, and get a decent 3-D render of yourself. And maybe eventually there will be programs that are more accessible, where you can edit how you look, and then you can make that a playable character in a game. I feel like this Ready Player One future is where we’re headed, so why not start now?

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Grimes 🤍 小仙女 (@grimes) on Feb 20, 2020 at 2:31pm PST

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.