The Icelandic music icon is taking her VR album on tour, starting in Sydney.
Björk has always been an early adopter when it comes to immersive technology, having released her “Stonemilker” video from last year’s album Vulnicura as a VR app along with an installation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art PS1.
Now the artist is again teleporting fans to her native Iceland with the Björk Digital exhibition, launching on Friday in Sydney, Australia, with Björk herself expected to DJ at the event. The experience is scheduled to be shown in several other cities in the coming months, including Tokyo, London, Paris and Houston.
Björk spinning at preview night.
The Björk Digital exhibition features four VR music videos, with a premiere of Björk’s fourth VR video Notget. According to a press release Notget “combines high resolution 3D scans, on-location holostudio, motion capture and videogrammetry along with real-time special audio design that envelopes and embeds the user into Björk’s performance. These digital assets are blended together to create an ever evolving and changing digital form of particles, light and sound that inhabits the space with you.”
Björk plans to release five more songs in the coming months to complete the full Vulnicura VR album. “I feel the chronological narrative of the album is ideal for the private circus virtual reality is, a theatre able to capture the emotional landscape of it,” Björk said in a statement.
San Francisco-based River Studios helped produce the Björk Digital exhibition, with the experience divided into five unique spaces for you to explore. Over 80 Gear VR headsets are available for attendees to experience the album, along with some room-scale VR on the HTC Vive. Eventually all the experiences will be available for download on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR and mobile apps for Google Cardboard.
Stonemilker is the opening track from Vulnicura that was shot in Iceland by Andrew Huang and includes an immersive string version of the track. You can watch Björk’s first 360-degree Stonemilker experience on YouTube below:
Images Courtesy: River Studios
