Björk“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
In black, Sir Isaac Newton is addressing the scientific community on the physical laws of motion; but in white, he addresses the human community on the physical laws of emotion.
Of course, there is no such thing as yet. But if, for a moment, we are to believe in a similar set of inherited rules related to our positive and negative emotional responses – from attraction to disgust; awe to indifference; peacefulness to fear-driven restlessness – we may very well accept them as real.
They are the same actions and reactions with which we understand and feel connected to the world around us, the opposites through which we experience Biophilia.
Nick Fenton’s and Patrick Strickland’s Biophilia Live (2014) concert film needs no script, no plot and no actors to captivate its audience.
Set in London’s Alexandra Palace on September 3, 2013, the film features the Icelandic musician Björk performing all the songs from Biophilia ( 2011) with her band, unique custom-built instruments, and an award-winning 24-piece female choir.
As a multi-media project, Biophilia undoubtedly benefited from the visual-enhanced cinematic treatment and the album’s development and adaptation as a software application.
Technology, strictly speaking, is the result of the evolution of human intelligence. In the production of Biophilia, however, advanced technology is the departure point used to create and mimic the sounds or effects of the most primordial of natural phenomena.
Thus, for example, Tesla coils become the fore-runners of celestial electric discharges in Thunderbolt, while Gravity Pendulum Harps are, well, strings plucked according to the gravitational and swinging motion of the pendulum.
The sounds may be unorthodox and occasionally somewhat eerie, but they are impeccably sensitive and precise – an ode, quite literally, to technology and cosmology.
Set in London’s Alexandra Palace, the film needs no script, no plot, no actors to captivate its audience
There is little doubt that Björk’s project is as much a musical undertaking as it is a scientific and educational initiative, particularly befitting of the app-saturated visual reality of the 21st century.
The unprecedented development of the Biophilia album as an interactive downloadable Apple and Android application truly paves the way for a new dimension of creative and dynamic learning.
Experimentation of sound often comes prior to recording of music, yet the Biophilia application encourages the exact opposite. The completed track is allowed to be transformed, mutated into another according to the will of the user. One may, literally, play god with the elements and create a practically infinite, unique cosmology of sound and harmony at the touch of a finger.
The Biophilia project is that which it claims to be – an innate love for life and life-related processes. Experiencing the music itself is enough to take anyone on a journey through birth, growth, adaptation, maturation, death and rebirth, at which point the journey repeats itself.
Be it visible or not, this is, essentially, the universal pattern – the physical law that sustains life. Love, happiness, peace – they are mirrored in nature. And, unless nature ceases to exist, they too will continue along their cyclic paths, with us endlessly chasing after them.
Biophilia Live Concert, directed by Nick Fenton and Peter Strickland, shows at St James Cavalier on October 31 at 8.30pm and on November 16 at 6.30pm.
www.sjcav.org