Quirky Icelandic singer Bjrk brings ‘Bjrk Digital,’ her creative virtual reality show, to LA – OCRegister

Bjrk appears as a virtual reality avatar to talk about her new VR exhibit, Bjrk Digital, and her upcoming performances in Los Angeles. At the podium is Andrew Thomas Huang, the Los Angeles filmmaker who created many of the videos featured in the show. (Photo by Jeanette Oliver)

Bjrks new video for the song Notget premiered on the opening day of Bjrk Digital, a new virtual reality exhibit in downtown Los Angeles that will run through June 4. Seen here are stills from the video directed by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. (Photo courtesy of Bjrk)

Bjrks new video for the song Notget premiered on the opening day of Bjrk Digital, a new virtual reality exhibit in downtown Los Angeles that will run through June 4. Seen here are stills from the video directed by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. (Photo courtesy of Bjrk)

Bjrks new video for the song Notget premiered on the opening day of Bjrk Digital, a new virtual reality exhibit in downtown Los Angeles that will run through June 4. Seen here are stills from the video directed by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. (Photo courtesy of Bjrk)

Bjrks new video for the song Notget premiered on the opening day of Bjrk Digital, a new virtual reality exhibit in downtown Los Angeles that will run through June 4. Seen here are stills from the video directed by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. (Photo courtesy of Bjrk)

For the opening day ofBjrk Digital, a touring exhibit by the quirky Icelandic singer-songwriter, Bjrk showed up in person. Virtually, at least, which is entirely the point of the show in downtown Los Angeles through June 4.

Much of whats on display here fromBjrk who also has a sold-out show with a 32-piece string orchestra on May 30 is built around the use of virtual reality, and so when the media assembled for a preview of Bjrk Digital filed into a dark room with a large screen it wasnt that hard to guess who the special guest was about to be.

Bjrk, in the form of a VR facsimile, beamed into the room to chat live from Manhattan about the genesis of the exhibit, which got its start, she explained, after her most recent album Vulnicura was leaked online two years ago. Instead of promoting the record in a more traditional manner, she decided to try something new, teaming up with Los Angeles filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang, to create 360-degree virtual reality videos to accompany some of the songs on the record.

You can still improvise, Bjrk said of her interest in exploring VR as an artistic medium. It does remind me of the future. Its blank and you dont know. You sort of have to dig a cave with a teaspoon and you dont know what youre going to get.

On the screen,Bjrk appeared as a red-and-purple avatar, a lavender horizontal wound on her chest Vulnicura is said to mean cure for wounds with tiny strands of lights encircling her. When she moved in Manhattan she moved on the screen.

Well come back to her conversation in a moment, but lets walk through the highlights of Bjrk Digital, which is presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, first. It opens with the Biophilia room, where iPads programmed with apps created for the 2011 album of the same name gives users a chance to interact directly with the songs, changing the imagery and the playback as you choose.

The next room features a video for the song Black Lake, with two slightly different edits screening simultaneously on either end of a large room filled with 50 speakers. It creates a cool effect as you move through the room, but the good stuff was just ahead with three rooms in a row that featured 360-degree virtual reality videos of another five numbers.

Stonemilker was shot on an Icelandic seashore and presents Bjrk singing directly to you, and occasionally twoBjrks side by side. You watch this one and the two that follow while sitting on a bar stool that allows you to turn around and while wearing a VR headset and headphones to view other parts of the setting where the video was shot.

The relative realism of Stonemilker gives way to the surrealism of Quicksand and Mouth Mantra. In the first,Bjrk seems made of light and stars, and the viewer feels to be floating inside a constellation created from the matter that flies from her mouth and eyes and skin. For Mouth Mantra the warnings of the exhibit workers if you feel disoriented inside the video, take the headset off finally make sense, as the video places viewer inside Bjrks mouth as she sings the song, the overall feeling something akin to a bad acid trip.

The final two interactive videos are the most ambitious. Family features a Bjrk similar to the avatar shed appeared at for the media a bit earlier, and the viewer here holds hand-controllers in addition to the VR goggles and headphones, with the triggers on each hand letting you create ribbons of light and bursts of color.

Notget was much the same, though without the hand-held devices, and presents the singer as per the exhibit description a digital moth giantess (who) transforms victoriously in masks, because, after all, itsBjrk were talking about here, yes?

After all that, we return to the Cinema room where a two-hour loop of music videos from throughoutBjrks career are screened on a loop, with pillows scattered on the floor so you can chill out a bit to everything from Bachelorette and All Is Full Of Love from her 1997 album Homogenic to Hidden Place from 2001s Vespertine, and on throughout her catalog.

Earlier in the same room Bjrk had talked about her upcoming shows in Los Angeles shes with the orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday, May 30, and plays the first night of the FYF Fest in Exposition Park on July 21.

I decided to put all the focus on the music for (Disney Hall),Bjrk said, describing the concert as her vocals with just the orchestra and no flashy visuals. Im kind of fond of extremes, as you probably noticed. Its going to be all for the ears.

At FYF, though, where shell perform with her recent collaborator, DJ and electronic musician Arca, the show will have all the lights and videos youd expect at a rock show, with a different set planned to emphasis the change from one setting to the next.

I really enjoy these poles, she said. To sing for two hours with just strings is double hard because I cant hide behind anything. Its more naked. With Arca, its more happy, more joyful.

Shes also got new music coming soon, too, a happier counterpart to Vulnicura, which was written in the wake her split with longtime partner Matthew Barney, and reflects that turmoil in its subject and sound.

I am right now starting to make my next project,Bjrk said. And it probably happens not on earth.

She paused to giggle and continued.

I dont want to give too much away, but yeah, probably.

Bjrk Digital

When: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. through June 4. Ticketed entry every 15 minutes, with approximately 90 minutes needed to view the exhibit.

Where: Magic Box at The Reef,1933 S. Broadway, Los Angeles

Tickets: $35

Also:Bjrk performs at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on Tuesday, May 30 as part of the L.A. Phils Reykjavik Festival, and also at the FYF Fest at Exposition Park in Los Angeles on Friday, July 21.

Information: LAphil.com/tickets/bjork-digital-overview or Bjork.com

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Quirky Icelandic singer Bjrk brings 'Bjrk Digital,' her creative virtual reality show, to LA - OCRegister