For decades, Iceland’s finest visionary, Bjork, has charted the avant-garde of transmedia. That stunning evolution continues with her interactive virtual reality project, Family.
It may also be one of the most dazzling cli-fi experiments yet created. Jack in:
Björk has released a new 2D teaser for Family, the interactive VR film that made it’s world premiere last week and was commissioned by Phoebe Greenberg and Penny Mancuso of Montréal’s Phi Centre and Red Bull Music Academy. Working once again with filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang — who helmed Björk’s previous VR videos Black Lake and Stonemilker VR — the Icelandic artist continues to push the limits of technology and emotional vulnerability in “Family,” the centerpiece of her 2015 album Vulnicura.
“The story of the piece is about a woman who journeyed to see the Icelandic landscape to sew herself back together through, out of heartbreak, towards transcendence and empowerment,” says Huang. “All the landscapes that you see in the piece are actual landscape scans of the sets that we shot in Black Lake. They‘re meaningful scans, they‘re not just any Icelandic environments… You‘ll be traveling inside an embroidered piece designed by James Merry that‘s kind of like your magic carpet taking you through the world. We got actual motion-capture of Björk, so her presence is there in the piece.”
The full work will be on view for the first time at Montreal’s DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art within Björk Digital, an exhibition of virtual reality, digital and moving image works by the visionary artist. After exhibiting in Sydney and Tokyo, Björk Digital is now showing in London and will make its North American premiere from October 15 to November 12, 2016. Featuring an interactive collection of Biophilia apps, a cinema room screening Björk’s enviable music video oeuvre and much more, the exhibition is both a continuation of Björk’s boundless experimentation and a window into the mind of one of today’s most interesting creators, musical or otherwise.
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