Biophilia for iPad will include around 10 separate apps, all housed within one “mother” app. Each of the smaller apps will relate to a different track from the album, allowing people to explore and interact with the song’s themes or even make a completely new version. It will also be an evolving entity that will grow as and when the album’s release schedule dictates, with new elements added. Scott Snibbe, an interactive artist who was commissioned by Björk last summer to produce the app, as well as the images for the live shows (which will combine his visuals with National Geographic imagery, mixed live from iPads on the stage), describes how Björk saw the possibilities of using apps, not as separate to the music, but as a vital component of the whole project. “Björk’s put herself way at the forefront here by saying, ‘We’ll release this album and these apps at the same time and they’re all part of the same story.’ The app is an expression of the music, the story and the idea.”

The review above is taken from an article on posterous.com. How will the music/apps look like? Here’s an example:

For one song, Virus, the app will feature a close-up study of cells being attacked by a virus to represent what Snibbe calls: “A kind of a love story between a virus and a cell. And of course the virus loves the cell so much that it destroys it.” The interactive game challenges the user to halt the attack of the virus, although the result is that the song will stop if you succeed. In order to hear the rest of the song, you have to let the virus take its course. Using some artistic license, the cells will also mouth along to the chorus. It’s this determination to fuse different elements together – be it juxtaposing a female choir from Greenland with the bleeps and glitches of electronic music pioneers Matmos during the Vespertine tour, or meshing soaring strings and jagged beats on the Homogenic album – that helps explain the power and success of Björk’s collaborations…..

Biophilia is the result of a collaboration with Scott Sona Snibble, a digital artist active in the app-world with products such as ‘OscilloScoop’:

More press coverage on Pitchfork and the Guardian.

Here’s the live-coded version:

And here’s an audio recording, for the faint-hearted:

Turborobot by magicrebirth

Sounds and video together, instead, produce a fascinating effect: they convey a sense of simplicity and primordial intensity. Through the interaction of flashing lights, disturbing sounds from the technological world, and pure sine waves at extreme high and low frequencies what emerges is a complex pattern that made me wonder about the inner and mysterious workings of our minds.

Ikeda’s piece called Formula, below, is a good example of this kind of synesthesia-inspired digital art:

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A nice article from Vivian Lee describes the approach of Ikeda in more details:

Musician and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda finds his inspiration in data, number arrangements, and the methods of math.

Ikeda’s minimalist electronic compositions blend sounds, focusing on specifics such as sine tones and frequencies at the most high and low in the range of human hearing—sound in its “raw” state. There are familiar sounds in his work, too: static from the radio, the skipping of scratched CDs, and a television that’s lost its signal.

Though Ikeda—who was born in Gifu, Japan, and currently lives and works in Paris—is a musician first, his mathematics-inspired video art is on the rise. Ikeda told the Japan Times that his inspirations come from “Most of the mathematicians in our modern history, especially Leibnitz, Cantor, Godel, Grothendieck.”

With modern mathematics in mind, Ikeda developed the idea of datamatics—a series of “experiments that explore the vast universe of data in the infinite between 0 and 1.” Datamatics first sprung up in 2006 but has been expanded into an hour-long show, weaving sound and video images. Ikeda manipulates these images in real time using custom-designed computer software as the audience looks onto the large screen projections. The data shown on screen is culled from records like NASA (including maps of solar systems) as well as from the Human Genome Project.

Along with datamatics, his ongoing dialogue with Harvard mathematician Benedict Gross—in which they explore the mathematical definitions of infinity—led to Ikeda’s data.tron series. In his “data.tron {3 SXGA + version},” pictured above, he creates an audiovisual installation—three floor-to-ceiling screens of data that physically overwhelms visitors with a staggering array of numbers.

Unlike artists who explore in one medium, Ikeda creates multimedia installations at the extremes of sound, light and mathematics. He fuses sound and image in an intensely physical experience, exploiting sound’s physical properties, exploring its relation with human perception, and revealing the aesthetic beauty of pure mathematics.

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A list of other relevant articles can be found here

Can’t say I haven’t missed the old line up, with “Jumping Jon” Egan, who used to dance around the stage in a trance-like manner while playing a variety of flutes… but still I had quite a bit of fun listening to this weird psychedelic family belting out spacey vibes. Even more cause they included several old Ozrics classics which I really enjoyed!

Here’s an excerpt I’ve taken with my phone:

Japanese Terror in Sancasan by magicrebirth