Good news, Björk fans. The Icelandic musician has collaborated
with biomedical animator Drew Berry to create a partly-scientific
representation of the haunting and rather hypnotic song Hollow,
from her recent Biophilia album, which we reviewed a month or two
back in the mag. We've embedded the new vid below if you fancy
taking a look. A word of warning though: watching this at your desk
at work may cause drowsiness. It really is very
hypnotic.
Here's what the creative forces behind the video had to say
about it.
Björk: "It's just the feeling when you start thinking about your
ancestors and DNA that the grounds open below you and you can feel
your mother and her mother, and her mother, and her mother, and her
mother 30,000 years back. So suddenly you're this kinda tunnel, or
trunk of DNA ... All these ghosts come up so it ended up begin a
Halloween song and quite gothic in a way ... It's like being part
of this everlasting necklace when you're just a bead on a chain and
you sort of want to belong and be a part of it and it's just like a
miracle."
Music director Drew Barry: "The "Hollow" music video is a
powers-of-10 exploration of the microscopic and and molecular
landscapes inside Björk's body. The animation was constructed from
molecular models of DNA and proteins derived from various forms of
scientific data such as x-ray crystallography.
My work is usually defined by goals of didactic science education
and accuracy, so this is the first time that I've strayed fully
into the world of art, with the opportunity to mess around with the
scientific data to create a whimsical and playful journey.
Inside a cell nucleus the audience encounters Björk's ancestral
spirit - her ghost in the machine - that watches over her genes as
they flow from one generation to the next. The spirit manifests as
a large molecular complex which was modeled from a
three-dimensional head scan of Björk.
The inspiration for the face came from the 'fruit face' paintings
by the 16th century italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo who took
objects such as fruits, vegetables, or books, and arranged them in
such a way that they formed a portrait."
All of which is pretty cool, we think.
