Bjork Releases 360-Degree ‘Stonemilker’ Video as Virtual Reality App
Björk has invited fans to explore her oceanic “Stonemilker” video through a new virtual reality app. The piece is available to purchase via iTunes for both iPhone and iPad platforms, as either a “magic window” or by using third party virtual reality glasses.
Originally, the “Stonemilker” clip – directed by Andrew Thomas Huang – was only viewable at Bjork’s March retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It debuted three months later on YouTube, allowing users to view the Icelandic art-pop musician from multiple angles as she sings on a beach outside of Reykjavik.
“Intimacy was the goal of this project, giving Björk the open, unrestricted stage on which to perform, and giving audiences a one-on-one experience with her through [virtual reality],” Huang told Dazed of the experimental video. “The shoot was spontaneous, decided in a late-night conversation between me and Björk while we had VR gear with us in Iceland – the cyclical format of the 360-degrees was perfect for the circular fugue structure of ‘Stonemilker.'”
Björk talked about her creative process behind “Stonemilker” – the orchestral-electronic opener from her ninth studio album, Vulnicura – on a recent episode of the Song Exploder podcast, Stereogum reports.
“It’s about someone who’s trying to get emotions out of another person,” she says of the track. “The whole song is mostly about wanting clarity, wanting simplicity and talking to someone who wants things to be really complex and foggy and unclear. And you’re saying, ‘I’ve got clarity, want it or not.’ So it’s sort of celebrating simplicity and clarity.
“I was walking on a beach, walking back and forth, and the lyrics kind of came along, without me really editing them,” she says of the song’s inspiration. “The strength of this album really is just simplicity and this ‘thinking out loud’ feeling. And I shouldn’t be too clever. It would work against it. So I kind of just went with the first words that actually came.”