Bjork’s Biophilia was never going to be just another record. Originally, the avant-garde Icelander conceived it as an art installation with each room representing a song. That morphed into the idea of a 3D IMAX ‘scientific musical’ with long time collaborator and director Michel Gondry. Then Apple unveiled the iPad and she decided it was the perfect medium for her seventh studio album.

While other artists have used apps to spruik their album, Bjork’s app is her album. You don’t just play the music, you play with the music. A mother app houses ten unique designed apps, which each contain a new song, music score and an interactive ‘game’ that lets you manipulate the track.

Exploring Biophilia’s theme of the bond between humans and other living systems, each app visualises the music as a natural phenomenon. ‘Virus’ emulates a cell under attack from a disease, while ‘Thunderbolt’ simulates lightning via a touchscreen Tesla coil that lets you create arpeggios. The apps have been drip-fed since late July with the final one coinciding with the old-fashioned album release on September 23.

Easily Bjork’s most audacious work to date, amazingly it’s just one piece of an epic multi-platform project that includes a new website, a 90-minute doco and a state-of-the-art live show which features video footage mixed live with iPads and newly-invented instruments like a Gravity Harp and Gameleste. She’ll perform six-week residencies in eight international cities over the next three years.


Bjork's Gravity Harp


The making of Bjork's Gamaleste

Scott Snibbe is Biophilia’s executive producer, but not the usual studio knob-twiddling type. The award-winning interactive artist, who’s produced music apps like Bubble Harp and OscilloScoop and worked with art galleries, the Beijing Olympics and James Cameron in the past, spent 14 months working with Bjork, Apple and various app designers (his company created the mother app and three song apps – ‘Virus’, ‘Thunderbolt’ and ‘Cosmogony’).

He talks to TheVine about working with Bjork, building the world’s first ‘app album’ and what it means for the music experience.

--

TheVine: How did you come to work with Bjork?

Scott Snibbe: Her manager Derek emailed in a very typically understated English way that began with ‘Sorry to bother you…’ He said Bjork was a fan and asked if I knew anyone who’d be interested in making apps for an album. Of course, I said yes. I’m a big fan of hers too, right back to The Sugarcubes. Then we had a lot of Skype meetings and meetings in person in Iceland, London, New York and Cupertino, California where Apple’s headquarters is.

What was she like to work with?

She’s such a wonderful person. She has such a clear vision for what she wants creatively, and such a gentle way of expressing her own ideas, or when some thing should change. I’ve really learned a lot from her. She manages to make a fantastic product and be a incredibly kind and gentle along the way.

What attracted you to the Biophilia project?

All these apps are really like works of art. I think that’s what’s a little different about them and that’s what excites me. My life is dedicated to interactivity but not to games. Games are currently the major form of interactivity out in the world. They’ve kinda ghettoised it, because not everyone is into games, or they are as a guilty pleasure. These apps use [interactivity] in a much more complicated way. There isn’t an art category in the app store, but that’s essentially what they are.

How does it change the experience of absorbing music?

One of the reviews in the app store said ‘I haven’t had this experience with music for 20 years, since before the CD came out’. Because in the old days, you’d buy an album and bring it home and put it on a record player. You’re not out walking or at work. You’d sit down, look at the cover art, read the liner notes and have this completely immersive experience.

It’s like falling in love period of a relationship. I’d argue that we’ve lost that feeling with music. We go straight to the 'having breakfast the next day, brushing teeth together' stage of the relationship.

And then you kick them out and move on to another folder of downloaded music?

Yeah, so you download a song and immediately it becomes the soundtrack to your life. You listen to it working, surfing the web, walking down the street. In the days of vinyl, you had to have this immersive experience, and that’s what the app brings back. It requires you to completely engage with it to get something out of it. I think for that reason you will have a deeper emotional experience with music, whoever’s music it is.

'Virus' is the latest song/app to be released. What can you tell us about it?

It’s as if you can touch this microscopic world. There’s a series of cells and a virus that attacks the mother cell in the centre. It’s kind of a game – you can fling the virus cells away, but if you do manage to do that, the song never progresses. So you have to lose the game to hear Bjork’s song. It’s really in line with the message of the song, which is the virus loves the cell so much, that she destroys him.

The app lets you progress through the infection of the cell in a scientifically real way, which is part of the trickery of this project - to get people interested in the nature theme. As soon as you say something’s educational, it’s often perceived as boring. So Bjork wanted to tie nature to music and technology in something that’s incredibly interesting and fun.

There’s also a second mode with 'Virus' where it’s a pure instrument, so the cells become little percussive objects that you can touch to create the Hang drum samples, which were created by [Austrian percussionist] Manu Delago for the song.

How will these apps feed into her live experience?

We had the first concert at the Manchester Festival [on July 17], which I think of as a beta release of the concert. There’s so much going on. You’ve got Bjork, you have a 24-women Icelandic choir — which is really something, they accompany her on most songs — you have a round performance space with a central stage with audience all around. Eight video screens on top, video on the floor and then five or six custom-made instruments she had made. One is called a Gravity Harp, which plays a harp component of a song called ‘Solstice’. Another is a Gamaleste. It’s a Celeste retrofitted and made with midi instruments to play Gamelan.

A lot of the imagery came from apps and she’s also using apps on stage to control some of the instruments. It’s pretty hard to believe someone did a project of this scope and it’s a little hard for the audience to understand everything that’s going on.

Looking ahead, what’s next for app albums? Is this just the tip of the iceberg?

I certainly think so. I think it’s a very natural fit because most musicians are multimedia artists. They’re interested in the performance, the outfits, the visuals...so an app is a way for a musician to control and release all that.

I also think the economics of the music industry are a big deal. Sales of recorded music have collapsed, so apps are a way of generating revenue if you have one that’s popular enough. And there’s probably a sweet spot. Biophilia is definitely a concept album kind of method - really big and expensive and time-consuming. But if you look at some of the other apps I’ve made, you can make something quite small that’s also quite popular. I think there’s way for musicians to partner with interactive artists

What does it mean for the concept of the album?

I think there’s the hope of reigniting the album as a viable format. I think people are generally buying songs. Older people still buy albums, but it could reinvigorate the idea of an album as a complete artistic unit. I think it’s disappointing to see people buy only one or two tracks, and for those artists that want to create an emotional arc through an hour of music, now there’s maybe some hope to do that.

Jason Treuen