Biophilia, a album and project by Bjork is the first album to be released as a suite of iPad and iPhone apps, and is intended to be experiential educational project that uses sound, texts and visuals that focus on natural science topics including plate tectonics, genetics and human biorhythms.
The project took over 3 years to develop, and Bjork, her record company, Apple, and National Geographic contributed to making an album that is the first album releases that worked with Apple to produce a series of iPad apps as an album.. Some key collabators to the project were made by David Attenborough, who does narration on the project and Dr Nicola Dibben, a senior lecturer in music at Sheffield University, who wrote the essays that accompany every song. Also part of the team was a mathematician, British scientist and film-maker, and a robotics company’s director of engineering.
I downloaded the app, which currently has 9 song/apps that are available for purchase. The application opens with an interactive view of star constellations, with bright stars labeled with names like sacrifice, thunderbolt, and virus. A voiceover begins that talks about where me nature, and that much of it is hidden, we can not see or touch it , such as sound which is usually hidden. The idea behind Biophilia is that nature, music, and technology come together- and you can listen, interact, and create.
I paid to download the song/application Virus, which said it was about the biological virus and the host. In the song notes, the piece talked about how Bjork was fighting a “candida issue” in her throat, and was learning to live with and get rid of a fungus in her. The piece is about fungus inside of us, and living to live with it.
When I played the piece, the piece had images of cells that I could interact with while I could hear the song, and lips appeared inside of the cells. I read that I am supposed to try to stop the attack of the virus (which were green.) The directions did not tell me what to do – so I did what my four year old nephew would do – I just tried to touch and click everything. I don’t think I was successful – since the piece is supposed to stop if I was successful, and it never stopped. I kept swiping my ipad and watched as more green virus organisms surrounded the large cell, then green strings came in to surround the nucleus, and the song progressed into different keys. Eventually the big cell disappeared – and the virus remained.
After the song ended – I was left with a cell/virus synthesizer of sort – where I could click and get different sounds which included bells, synthesizers, zylophones, etc.
Overall I was disappointed with the application. The interface was unclear, and I did not feel that I got a meaningful experience with the music or ideas through the piece I downloaded. The graphics and text of the main interface seem like something I would have seen 10 years ago, and I would have liked the option to read some direction or F.A.Qs about the piece.
At 1.99 a song – I’m not going to by the other 8. Interactive mediums are always a challenge – but my experience with Biophilia did not seem like anything new except it was made by Bjork and her collaborators.
Image Source:
Creative Applications – Bjork Biophilia