Biophilia app -- Soundrop.avi

What you are seeing is the Soundrop iPad app, created by Biophilia contributor Max Weisel.

On June 29, 2011 Pitchfork posted an interview they had with Bjork. Here is a piece from that interview explaining how this idea came about and how it was set to take place.

Pitchfork: I don't think anyone's done a multimedia project quite like this before-- especially with a unique app for each song-- was there a eureka moment when you knew this was the direction you wanted to take?

Björk: It was never meant to be this huge project, it just grew. On the Volta tour, I got really carried away with these two touch-screen instruments called Lemur and Reactable. Usually I can't write when I'm on tour, but just looking at these instruments for a year and half, I was like, "Wow, I'd love to write with them." But I didn't want it to be some surface-y kind of interactive thing-- I wanted it to go to the core and write a music program so that we could make songs with them.

So the engineer I work with, Damian Taylor, learned how to write these programs, and then we went to Puerto Rico for several months and basically built the instruments out of sticks and elastic and gaff tape. I basically wrote all the songs on touch screens. I wanted the music and themes of each song to correspond, so the arpeggio in the lightning song, for instance, is in the shape of lightning, and the musicology of the crystal song looks like a crystal.

At first, I thought the project was going to be a house in Iceland where each room was like a song. I was quite excited about the idea because it meant not having to tour as much. I would just be there and people would come to me. It's sort of a spoiled way of thinking, like, "I've done it the other way for so long, now it's your turn."

Then National Geographic contacted me about getting on their label, which was exciting because, at that point, I was off all of my contracts. I was sort of in the same position that Radiohead was a few years ago. So I was like, "Wow, I want to be label mates with the sharks and lemurs!" We talked about it and I was hanging out in their head offices in Washington, D.C., a lot. The contract thing didn't happen in the end, but they actually asked me to be a music explorer in residence.

But they said, "We do a lot of 3D movies-- maybe this house could become a movie." So I started talking to Michel Gondry and we started writing a script for a 3D movie. I felt a little bit out of my element because suddenly there were like four billion meetings and budgets and everything. I've never done that before in my life, and it was suffocating.

"National Geographic contacted me about getting on their label, and I was like, 'Wow, I want to be label mates with the sharks and lemurs!'"

After we wrote all the songs we started writing the script. But Michel got forced to go back to edit The Green Hornet for seven months-- it was somewhat of a Barton Fink situation. So he couldn't do our movie anymore. [Note: Gondry is still set to direct the video for "Crystalline".] But at the same time, the iPad came out. And we just got so excited about the first apps for it and thought, "This is exactly what we've been doing for two years-- maybe the natural home for this project is not a film or a house, but this."

And then my manager said, "Why don't we just talk to all your favorite app makers?" And they were all up for it. Last summer, I sent them a really long description of the project song by song. Then they all came to Iceland in October and we were all brainstorming for a few days in this favorite restaurant of mine. They would share advice-- Apple was really impressed that we got them to all work on the same project because they're competitors.

Pitchfork: Did you just pick the developers based on apps you use yourself?

B: Yeah. Soundrop by Max Weisel was the best one because it really is a musical instrument. It wasn't just superficial. Max is this 18-year-old prodigy from Arizona. It was really interesting to see these different characters in one room and, since I was off a record contract, I really had no budget. So they were like, "OK, let's do this for nothing and if there's profit we share it." We didn't even think of asking that. They just offered.

Read the full interview here: http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7996-bjork/

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Bjork App
• Bjork iPad App
• Biophilia App
• iPad Apps
• iPad App
• Soundrop iPad app
• Soundrop App
• Soundrop
• Max Weisel
• Bjork and Max Weisel

[InjectTheBjork]

Oops! You are correct. Thanks for letting me know. I'm going to change that now. :)

[Naemur]

ohh :'( i just want to have an Ipad for biophilia :'(

[acsauk]

Hmmmm this is exactly the same as one of the instruments featured in the DS game/instrument collection Electroplankton!

[Izaak247]

Omg that's so cool!!

[IIFranksII]

STUPID BIRDS ! . . .

[AstroRoboSASA]

google: otomata

nice too

[TMSreptiles]

i want this so bad. GET ME A FOOXIN IPAD NAO

[sgorley]

Bjork is a creative genius who never ceases to amaze me. Thanks for posting!

[Werona40]

fabulous!

[TheIslenska]

@Naemur Me too! *-*

[MAM29]

how lovely this is! <3