Björk has always embraced the technological revolution. Her last album, Biophilia, was released as an app way before they were just part of everyday life, and let's not forget the girl on girl A.I. in All is Full of Love. Now she’s announced her next music video will be produced in virtual reality.
“It’s almost more intimate than real life. It also has this crazy panoramic quality. I think it’s really exciting," she said in an interview with Fast Company.
“It can’t just be working with the gadget for the sake of the gadget. But also it’s about budgets. You can do apps cheaply. Apps was kind of punk, actually. It was like starting a punk band again. Filming for Oculus Rift is not,” the singer went on to say.
The headset, Oculus Rift, is the brainchild of virtual reality start-up Oculus VR. After being bought by Facebook for $2 billion in March last year, it’s only a matter of time before they are able to provide the world with TRON-like, cyber-geek fantasies.
For now though we’ll just have to settle for the "Stonemilker video", taken from her latest album Vulicura. The singer’s longtime collaborator Andrew Thomas Huang, who worked on her upcoming short film Black Lake, will direct.
Björk’s not a complete techno-evangelist though; in the same interview she voiced her concerns for music streaming sites. “To work on something for two or three years and then just, "Oh, here it is for free". It’s not about the money; it’s about respect, you know? Respect for the craft and the amount of work you put into it.”
There isn’t a release date for the virtual reality video as of yet, but you might be able to get a taste for the space age at Björk’s upcoming retrospective exhibition at MOMA in New York, which opens March 8.
