Last month, Björk played a surprise DJ set at the Venice Biennale and announced that she’ll release a new album sometime this year. She also announced plans for Echolalia, a new immersive exhibit at Reykjavík’s National Gallery Of Iceland. It’s built around reimagined versions of “Ancestress” and “Sorrowful Soil,” two mournful songs from Björk’s 2022 album Fossora, as well as a demo version of a new song called “Nerve Bloom.”
Björk attended the Echolalia opening over the weekend, and the exhibit pairs her music with visuals from painter Natalia Kleszczewska and CGI director Natalie Liu. Björk posted a clip of “Nerve Bloom” on social media this morning, and other people made more complete recordings of the song at the exhibit. Check it out below.
Björk also put out a statement this morning, possibly in response to people who criticized the exhibit because the Björk avatars look like they’re AI-generated. Here’s what she wrote:
Avatars, animation and archetypes: Nerve Bloom (remix)
i wanted to tell you how we made the visuals for nerve-bloom
i did it with Natalia Kleszczewska and Natalie Liu .
Natalia Kleszczewska is a painter , she painted the creatures and the backgrounds .
Natalie Liu is a computer graphics director , she shaped the digital dimension of the work .
my role in it was a creative director , bringing in the singer-songwriter tradition , where emotionally precise things happen inside the structure of a song . i guided colour palettes , textures and the environments the music happens in .
to make this possible , during the process , natalia often had to paint many shapes and sizes , different textures and layers of colours .
natalie then developed the visuals, designing and overseeing CGI elements, and finding ways for the digital to sit organically alongside Natalia’s world and include my dramaturgy and creative direction.
we spent 7 months talking and working together , dedicated to relish in the craft of blending hand-made visuals with digital experimentation, 3D design and commit it to physical display technology. a lot of time was spent on researching different tools and techniques to find what worked best at each stage in the song .
like i’ve done before , i wanted to merge old things with tech , giving it soul & a meaning .
to paint a painting is an analog craft but computer programming is craftmanship too !! and both can co-exist ,
…..encouraging each other to bloom even further towards a mutual world .
there is a tradition in pop music for the musician to choose a video director .
in the art world , this is called “curation” , but where we came from , it was natural that the musician would have strong opinions on what your song needed , which mood , colours , textures & storyline . today this is called “creative director” and it is something we didn’t credit ourselves with , in the 90s but i am starting to understand this better now .
i don´t think of me as a visual artist . because my heart is music . everything i do comes from a sonic point of view .
this is something i have called “sonic symbolism” , sound made visual , a reverse synesthesia .
when you listen to a song for the first time , it is like swallowing a whale , you need to feel the whole musical sculpture in one go .
the structure of a song has always been extremely important to me :
what shape it is . this is part of the craft of being a singer-songwriter ….
……. we are tune sculptors …..
since i am talking about the visuals for nerve bloom it is impossible to not mention the avatars in my music videos . they have replaced the storyteller with an attempt to connect to the more universal element of music , through animation, avatars , puppetry both digital and analog .
for me they are marionettes in a puppet-theatre , hopefully in a similar realm as the jungian archetypes ( which we all can act out the characteristics of …)
…. i feel nerve-bloom is a natural continuation ….
an animated avatar archetype
singing you a song
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source stereogum.com ’
