Bjork Digital Exhibition Review

Iconic Icelandic singer Bjork has been making music for over 30 years and in that tine has collaborated with some of the world’s best filmmakers, visual artists and programmers. Bjork Digital is a celebration of her career and the exhibition covers her work right up to the present day.

Bjork Digital is designed to be an immersive experience and through the use of virtual reality (VR) technology takes you into her avant-garde world. There are more conventional screens that show her videos in regular 2D but as a pioneer of new technologies the emphasis is definitely on the new and emerging technologies.

The exhibition is guided for the first four stations and is restricted to about 25 people to ensure that everyone is comfortable in the spaces and that there are enough VR headsets available. The activities are:

Black Lake
The first room in the exhibition is a dark room which contains two widescreen TVs mounted on walls that are facing each other. The video for 'Black Lake' starts and shows two aspects of the same video, so on one screen you see Bjork singing in the Icelandic hillside and in the other you see the view she is seeing, the video constantly swaps around and so you see different aspects of the same video. The sound surrounds and envelops you, the floor vibrates with the bass and the whole effect is immersive.

Virtual Reality
The next two rooms are virtual reality experiences using the Oculus Gear VR and Bowers and Wilkins headphones. Through the use of 360 dome cameras the videos are filmed and stitched together to give you complete 360 degree freedom, this does give you a sense of presence but the downside is that you cannot move forward but only look around.   

Stonemilker
Stonemilker places you in the 360 degree landscape of Grótta beach in Iceland. Bjork sings the song and during the course of the video multiplies, at one time there are three Bjork's singing! The detail is impressive and even though the technology showcased is quite old the effect is wonderful as you feel very close to Bjork physically as she sings and sashays to her lyrics and music. This is the closest most of us will ever get to the pioneering musician.

Mouth Mantra
Mouth Mantra is a VR video again and has the same technical set-up as for Stonemilker but is a very different experience, placing you inside Bjork’s mouth. The VR video shows very white teeth, no fillings and lots of tonsil and tongue... I was fine watching this but I can imagine some people really struggling to watch this.

Notget
This VR experience was the highlight of the exhibition for me. Using a real-time graphics engine the image of a glowing orange mask with decorative lines sings, as the song progresses a body starts to emerge and starts to shoot out neon sparks. It reminded me of the patterns found in a Cave bullet hell shoot'em ups videogame mixed with the visuals of the video game Rez and the entrancing quality of a Sharon Apple concert from Macross Plus. This VR experience shows the potential this medium can have, the music dynamically changing as you moved. This experience really immersed me and I can see the possibilities of VR concerts.

These were the guided and timed part of the exhibition but the rest was available to go through at your own pace. 

The Cinema
Bjork has worked with some of the finest music video directors on the business and this room shows her back catalogue of music videos. People were sitting all over the floor and watching her videos, I entered the room just as the music videos from her last two albums came on. I sat for their duration as I have seem all the others due to the fact I have them on her 2 part DVD collection, Volumen but haven't seen any of her video since. It was wonderful to see how Bjork's music videos had changed over time and I had a chance to appreciate it with my fellow Bjork fans.

Biophilia
In one of the side rooms there were numerous tablets set up with the Biophilia suite. I've spoken about the app before but for the uninitiated Biophilia is an education app that combines music with technology, musicology is you will. The app is excellent and I have used it in class to teach music theory. The fact that it contains a voice-over by one of my favourite humans, Naturalist David Attenborough is an added bonus.

Overall the exhibition is well worth a visit. Fans of Bjork will find much to like and experience and for the uninitiated the VR experiences may convert you into this technology.

Virtual Reality is Virtually There

Few technologies lately can be said to have heralded the future of gaming and immersive entertainment as the Oculus Rift.

It may not look like much, a simple unassuming little black box but this HMD (Head Mounted Display) looks to set the world through it's use of full field 3D vision and precise head tracking through its use of  magnetometers, accelerometers, gyroscopes and external head camera. All these things combine to create a feeling of being immersed and transported into the game world, which is precisely what the Oculus Rift and its peers is all about.

I am hugely excited by any technology that engages and immerses me and having used the Oculus Rift to play intergalactic dog-fighting game Running Strike Suit Zero, several months ago at Virgin Media's Game Space in Blackall Studios, Shoreditch I can say that the device had succeeded in transporting me into that world.

Ghost in the Shell shows a dystopian future where technology has run rampant and what it means to be human is challenged. The Matrix considers the same thing as does pretty much a lot of sci-fi!

The device had the ability of fooling my brain and body into thinking I was somewhere else doing something else but it did take a few minutes to get used to it. I was lucky to try the device out but I know that for most people, Virtual Reality (VR) is still a fringe technology. For many it's the sign of a future dystopian world where people sit with the technology strapped to their faces and ignore each other, connected but not really connected. To allay such fears Google have introduced Cardboard, a do-it-yourself virtual reality kit made out of cardboard!

The Google Cardboard is a good introduction to VR, and importantly it is cheap!

For $25 you get a cardboard housing for a smartphone running Google's Android mobile OS, a lens kit, some magnets, some velcro and a rubber band and an easily programmable Near-Field Communication sticker tag for launching the companion mobile app. For people who are so inclined you can download the schematics and make your own out of an old pizza box. The result is a low key but effective introduction to VR. The cardboard app comes with 7 “experiences”;

  • Youtube lets you watch a selection of Youtube videos on a simulated theater screen.
  • Street Vue lets you wander around in a VR version of street view.
  • “Exhibit” lets you look at a few 3D recreations of objects.
  • Earth Flyover lets you zoom around a city in Google Earth. Push the “button” to start flying forward, push it again to stop.
  • Photo Sphere Viewer lets you look around in pictures you’ve taken using Android’s built-in 360º panoramic feature.
  • Windy Day is a cute, cartoony environment where you can watch animals sneak around as leaves fall.
  • Tour Guide has you explore the Palace of Versailles.

This is all very exciting and as a teacher I hope to make my own Cardboard this week, now that the reports are done and all assessments are handed in this could be something to sink my teeth into in my spare time. I'll let you know how it goes as I think this could really change the way children learn. Imagine Castlerama or Epic Citadel in immersive VR, the writing the children could produce as a result of being engaged and immersed is exciting. 

LINK- Google Cardboard