Lots of musicians tinker with technology, but only Icelandic singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Björk, has the creative power to turn her work into a display piece at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art next week.
The enigmatic 49 year-old will have her music and tech-inspired art within a two-story sound installation at the iconic MoMA for three months. To ‘create a biographical narrative,’ on display will be large and small replicas of Björk dressed in various costumes, sci-fi props from her seminal 1999 video “All is Full of Love,” and other visuals, according to Mashable.
At the center of the exhibition is a MoMA-specific app, which will play audio based upon where the visitor is standing. Curated by Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Lab, MoMA’s chief curator at large Klaus Biesenbach said in a statement that “the exhibition’s augmented audio guide marries scientific research with sound and music composition to create an immersive experience.”
The app uses Bluetooth transmitters, which are placed throughout the installation, to determine the visitor’s location and is based on Volkswagen’s Sound Journey app. It’s not all digital, though, as instruments — including a gameleste, pipe organ, gravity harp and Tesla coil — used on her last album, Biophilia (2011), will also songs from the album throughout the day.
The MoMA exhibit also debuts the music video for “Black Lake,” off of her ninth studio album Vulnicura. This album recently made news in the music business, as she decided to boycott it from Spotify. “It’s not about the money; it’s about respect, you know? Respect for the craft and the amount of work you put into it,” she said to Fast Company in a recent interview.
Don’t think that the MoMA exhibit is her crowing achievement, though. She has future plans to release a virtual reality version of the music video for “Stonemilker,” which will be available for Oculus Rift and will be touring this spring.
The Bjork MoMA exhibition opens on March 8 and runs until June 7.
