Bjork

BJÖRK — POST-MEDIUM POP / THE DISTRIBUTED BODY

Björk progressively dissolves the album as a self-contained musical object, distributing it across sound, video, costume, object, digital application, musical instrument, landscape, installation and virtual reality.

MoMA's 2015 retrospective presented more than twenty years through sound, film, visuals, instruments, objects and costumes. ([The Museum of Modern Art][12])

BIOPHILIA — 2011

Biophilia operates simultaneously as album, digital application, interactive visual system and music-making environment. MoMA describes it as music album, collection of sound/video games and interactive performance. Users manipulate musical structures rather than merely listen; ten song-worlds unfold within a galaxy interface. ([The Museum of Modern Art][13])

ARTIST CREATES → AUDIENCE RECEIVES becomes RECEPTION → ACTION: the listener becomes a partial participant in musical realisation.

The project also rejects nature ↔ technology as simple opposition: digital systems model planetary movement, biological relations, cells, viruses and natural structures.

STONEMILKER — 2015

MoMA PS1 presented Stonemilker as Björk's first VR project and an investigation of VR as a performance platform beyond conventional music video. Headset users enter a panoramic Icelandic landscape and encounter a virtual Björk in a seven-minute work. ([The Museum of Modern Art][14])

The performer is recorded, virtual, spatialised and surrounding. MEDIATION DOES NOT SIMPLY REDUCE PRESENCE; IT DISTRIBUTES PRESENCE ACROSS A TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT.