Inside Anyma’s Multisensory Sphere Residency: How Matteo Milleri Became the Las Vegas Venue’s First Electronic Headliner

variety.com:

Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer It’s a week before Matteo Milleri is set to debut the first night of his Anyma residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere, and he’s standing in his minimalist Los Angeles home, VR set strapped to his head.

He’s scrolling through the test visuals that his creative team beams to the device for review — around 20 tests per day that he parses over for about four or five hours — that will soon show on the domed venue’s 16K resolution wraparound screens. “We’re just missing the final piece,” says the Italian-American electronic musician, cueing up the bespoke visuals that FKA Twigs and Ellie Goulding filmed for the eight shows.

The technical part, which includes robotic arms playing cellos and a quantum computer replica, is pretty much done; Milleri is more concerned with whether the narrative holds. “The final piece is called Human Now, and basically Eva” — the robot he created as an NFT in 2021 with visual co-creative director Alessio De Vecchi and 3D artist Filip Hodas, a centerpiece of Anyma performances — “is going to turn human to close the circle, and she’s going to be helped by a quantum being.

But will it work? The piece is going to work, but will the transformation work? Is she human?” Milleri’s attention to detail has been a crucial linchpin of his Anyma project, an immersive fantasia that blurs the line between concert, concept and cinema.