When Björk Met Attenborough (2013) - full transcript

Björk.

After 20 years of making music,
selling millions of albums

and challenging every kind
of musical convention,

she is embarking on her most
ambitious project yet.

To change the way we see, hear,
think about and make music.

'This is probably, like,
very ambitious

'and sort of, in a way,
a very grand project.'

Bringing together nature,
technology and music,

she's called her album Biophilia.

# I shuffle around

# The tectonic plates... #



And she has a surprising
collaborator.

'Welcome to Biophilia. The love for
nature in all her manifestations.'

# Like a virus... #

In a very special encounter,
Björk and Sir David Attenborough

will discover what happens when
their two worlds come face to face.

A song grows
sort of a bit like a crystal.

Like, this would be
a 6/8 kind of song. -Yes.

There's a mathematical
basis, isn't there? -Yes.

And there's a mathematical
basis to crystals. -Exactly.

Björk will explore
the science of sound,

invent incredible instruments,

create new forms
of musical notation

in her quest to use nature
and technology to help us

understand musical structure
in a radical new way.



Seems to be around this...
about age that I am now

that you have
to make a spiritual statement.

With Biophilia, Björk is seeking
to discover a more natural

and intuitive way for all of us
to make music in the 21st century.

'We are on the brink of a revolution

'that will reunite humans
with nature.

'Prepare. Explore. Biophilia.'

# No-one imagines

# The light shock I need

# And I'll never know. #

'A lot of my sort of inspiration

'and how sort of music and sound
function,

'is very much built upon
when I was a kid.

'I would walk 40 minutes to school
and back, any weather,

'and my little way of dealing with
that was just to sort of sing.

'And that would be when I was walking
in nature, kind of on my own.

'So, for me, the line blurs
so easily between music and nature

'because that's almost like
the same thing for me.'

# Scrape those barnacles off me. #

Iceland, November 2010.

And early choir rehearsals
are under way

in preparation
for a three-year world tour.

For, for.
For, for.

Even Björk's all-female choir
is unconventional.

Many have trained together
since they were six years old.

They've been chosen for their
remarkable sound and precision.

The scope of Biophilia is vast,

travelling from the outer reaches
of the solar system

to the inner worlds of cells.

For me, this project
is about the sound of sound

and celebrating
how sound works, in nature.

Björk wants to redefine how we
can make music in the 21st century.

But to do that, we must first go
back to understand its origins.

She has come to
London's Natural History Museum,

where a fan has offered
to give her a guided tour.

How nice to see you.

Good to see you.

Do you like this place?

- Yes. It's very epic.
- It's a great place.

There's everything here, from microbes
to man to minerals. Everything.

It looks like a cathedral. Isn't it?

The first director was very keen
that it should be

a cathedral in praise of creation.

With 58 million animals
and nine million fossils,

it's the biggest natural history collection
in the world.

And those are birds of paradise.
Isn't that extraordinary?

That's a headdress nearly three times
the length of your body.

- You've probably done that!
- Yeah, definitely.

Björk is here because of
what we can learn

about the evolution of singing
from the animal kingdom.

By and large, the more beautiful
the bird, the simpler its music.

The simpler its call.
And there's the lyrebird.

- See the beautiful tail it's got.
- Yeah.

The lyrebird song is probably
the most complex bird song ever.

Is that the one you see on YouTube
imitating mobile phones and sirens?

That's the very one.

Because part of the way it shows
off to the female how clever he is,

how wonderful he is,

is not only by making music but by
imitating everybody else's music.

So that if you listen in the bush
in southern Australia,

you may think you're
surrounded by ten different species,

but they're all actually made
by that lyrebird singing its songs.

And the lyrebird doesn't just
mimic other birds.

Its repertoire includes
car alarms...

..and chain saws.

Not unlike Björk, it's developed
a phenomenal vocal range

which offers a clue to the
importance and purpose of singing.

Your voice is a very odd voice, Björk!
I mean really.

The fact that your larynx

can produce this extraordinary
range of sound.

It can't be just an accident.

That range of sound was at one time
or another valuable and functional.

And that you are exploiting
it in a way

which would have made sense
ancestrally.

That makes a lot of sense.

Actually, the human larynx
is capable of so much more variety

of sound than is required for language.

That, to a biologist, would mean
that there was a function

of the human voice
which preceded language.

So that it's actually singing
is more fundamental to us

than speaking.

So we're actually born
all free-jazz singers

- ..but we're just chatting away.
- Yes, yes, it is.

So how do you think music
works for us now, the modern people?

Well, one is absolutely clear,
and that is the sexuality of music.

I mean, in, as it were, classical times,

troubadours singing up to
their lady loves up on the balcony,

"come and join me"
or "let me come in".

But in our own culture now,
I mean, pop music is hugely sexual,

there can't be any doubt about that.

And that's why it is so popular
amongst people between 15 and 30.

That's the peak of sexuality

and it's the peak
of the passion about music.

But it's not just about sex.

Even our animal cousins are
expressing something less functional.

Gibbons have
one of the loveliest songs

and loveliest animal music
in the whole animal kingdom.

When a male and female get together,
a pair forms

and when that happens,
they sing together.

And the great song of the gibbons
is highly complex

and both male and female
take part in it.

And I find that very touching.

But whether it's touching or not,
it seems to me incontrovertibly beautiful.

They don't know it's beautiful,
they're just exulting.

The mystery to me is
how music has been used by humanity

to take us beyond territory,
beyond sexuality,

into something
that is transcendental.

After three months of rehearsing,

Björk's choir are getting closer
to mastering her compositions.

But this is just the beginning.

Björk still has to find a way
to turn her ambitions for harnessing

the power of the natural world
into a radical musical performance.

You know, this project's about,
like, the universe and the galaxy

and lightning and, you know,
it's like, it's so mega.

But I'm sort of, I calm myself down
and I think, OK, this is going to be

the once in a lifetime that
I'm going to even attempt to go there.

Takk.

APPLAUSE

MUSICAL NOTES PLAY

March 2011 and Björk
is in a small metal workshop

near the Thames estuary.

She's come to meet Henry Dagg,
a sound sculptor

who's created one of the world's
most unusual instruments -

the Sharpsichord.

# I feel

# You compress her

# Into a small space... #

This solar-powered instrument
is a cross between a harp

and a barrel organ.
It's taken him five years to build.

It's programmed by putting pins
into a steel cylinder.

With 11,500 holes to choose from,

it takes a day to programme
just a minute of music.

# That will make her shine

# Tell her that you love her... #

I didn't do right the phrasing.

No, I think you were a bar behind.

- Yeah, I know. I know what...
- In the B section.

I have to... I'll work it out. Yeah.

It's in the same key and it would
harmonise with that extra line

so, erm, I can run it until it ends.

MUSIC: "Sacrifice"
by Björk

# Why can't you give her room?

# Respect her spatial needs

# I feel you compress her

# Into a small space... #

WIND BLOWS

All our senses come from nature,
our reactions come from nature.

The obvious stimulus
that you can think of in nature

or the inspiration
that comes from nature,

is because you feel that
flower is beautiful,

or you feel that that bird
soaring in the sky is beautiful.

It's not nature, it's the feeling of
the composer about nature.

And if you had a composer who was
insensitive to the beauties of nature,

didn't matter how photographically

he reproduced the sounds,
it wouldn't be worth a tuppence.

WAVES CRASH

MUSIC: "Sea Interludes"
by Benjamin Britten

This music is from the
Sea Interludes by Benjamin Britten.

OBOE PLAYS AN ARPEGGIO

That seems to me clearly
to represent the rivulets,

the waves just trickling up
the shore and then trickling back.

And that, presumably,
is the mighty ocean behind.

It's not just painting a picture of nature,
it's much more important than that.

It is a human being talking to
a human being.

It is not a human being talking to
a landscape or a mountain.

It is Britten speaking to you.

MUSIC: "Crystalline"
by Björk

But Björk isn't just inspired by
how nature feels.

She's inspired by what it is,
how it's structured.

Overturning convention,

Björk wants to bring nature itself
into her compositions.

With this song, Crystalline,
Björk uses the similarities

between musical structures
and the structures of crystals

to create a song which
mirrors the form of its subject.

And what better place
to explore them

than in the Natural History Museum's
massive crystal room.

Wow, that's lush. It looks like
some sort of a forest.

Quartz.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

A reflection of the shape of
the silica dioxide molecule.

All packed together.

The molecules will be,
as it were, six-sided,

so when they're packed together,
they form these six-sided shapes.

And it's amazing
how many people won't believe

that these aren't man-made.

You know, they think, how could that
actually happen in nature?

And I think that's miraculous.

For me, it's quite interesting how
the range of crystals,

how like, totally different.

They can look
really hard and merciless

but then really fragile
and pretty, you know.

But this six-sided basis,
I mean, the basis of mathematics

lies at the heart of crystals,

and mathematics lies at the heart of
many of your songs, doesn't it, really?

I mean, because it's about the spheres,
it's about the universe,

it's about the fundamental
things like mathematics.

Yeah, and kind of has
inner logic to it.

A basic structure, yeah.

Well, also of course, I mean,
beats in the bar -

I mean, you can have three beats
in the bar or two beats in the bar
or four beats in the bar,

and there's a mathematical basis,
isn't there, to bars,

and there's a mathematical
basis to crystals.

Yeah, that's why it sort of seems
a very natural fit.

Like, this would be uh...
a 6/8 kind of song.

In Crystalline, Björk has turned
the structure of crystals

into an unusual combination
of time signatures.

The verses are in 17/8,

and then in the chorus,
it sort of goes into 4/4,

and then it's like a square,
more like a square.

Absolutely. Or in this instance,
a cube. -Yeah.

CHOIR: # Crystalline
# Internal nebula

# Crystalline... #

Now, Björk's choir must learn
how to actually sing it.

# Crystalline

# I conquer claustrophobia

# Crystalline

# And demand the light

# Crystalline

# Listen how they grow

# Crystalline

# Listen how they grow

# Crystalline

# Listen how they grow

# Crystalline
# Listen how they grow... #

Biophilia's musical director
Matt Robertson guides them.

..That makes it really easy
or really complicated.

So if you're a counting-type person,
that's how to do it,

if you're a listening type person,
then you just have to listen to it.

Mathematics... I wish I was
a mathematician, which I'm not.

But you sense the beauty.

I know a mathematician would talk
about the beauty of an equation,

and you can sense that when you hear
a five-part fugue by Bach,

which also has
a mathematical beauty.

And the fact that
you look at crystals

and have called
one of your compositions Crystalline

because it is about the mathematics,
the fundamental mathematics,

which is the foundation
of so much in the natural world,

and so much which is sublime.

'Symmetry is an element
in musical structure,

'and it's an element
in visual structure.'

From the microscopic
to the galactic,

our universe
consists of remarkable patterns.

Music is also made up of patterns,

but these are usually only heard,
not seen.

Björk wants to change that.

She wants to find
ways of visualizing sound

so that we can understand
the ways in which is works.

Evan Grant works with cymatics -

the science of turning sound
into images.

What I've got here in front of me
is what's called a Chladni plate.

What it is
is a glorified speaker really.

I mean, in the same way
that your speaker can move like this

to resonate and pump sound
out to you.

This can do that, but it has a post
attached to this plate.

So I can vibrate this plate.

By covering this with sand,

I can then play a frequency
into this

and these patterns will
start to emerge.

OSCILLATING SOUND

When we visualize sound through it,

the lower frequencies
or the lower pitches

are simpler, the patterns
are less complex

and as we go up in frequency or
up in pitch, they get more complex,

more dense,
arguably more beautiful.

HIGH-PITCHED SOUND

All around us, things are vibrating
and changing and shifting,

and cymatics is like
this window into that.

It enables us to reveal these things
that we couldn't normally see.

Where do these patterns come from?

There's no trickery here,
there's no complex science here,

I'm just literally
vibrating something.

And all of a sudden
these seemingly endless,

stunning geometric patterns emerge.

One of the things I love about Björk
and her approach to music is that

she's very scientific. She takes
this very holistic approach,

she looks at everything, she digs
into the world and into existence

to try and bring real substance
and real meaning to her music.

And, so, it was
a fascinating idea for me

to try and visualize one of
her tracks using cymatics in water.

And this is what
Crystalline looks like

when we see all the components
of the song visualized.

# Listen how they grow

# I'm blinded by the lights

# Listen how they grow

# In the core of the earth

# Listen how they grow

# Crystalline
Internal nebula

# Crystalline

# Rocks growing slow mo

# Crystalline

# I conquer claustrophobia... #

Seeing as well
as hearing Crystalline

gives it an extra dimension.

And it's this extra dimension
that is driving Björk

towards her next
and most dramatic challenge -

to find a way to bring nature
onto the stage with her

for the first performance of Biophilia.

It seems to me like I'm now letting
nature be like a superhero, basically.

Showing nature off,
like it's like... wow!

June 2011.

Final rehearsals before
the world premiere of Biophilia

at the Manchester
International Festival.

Henry Dagg has brought his
two-and-a-half-tonne Sharpsichord.

It's the only one in the world.

- How are we doing on that top cornice?
- Yeah, we're OK.

And is it solar-powered?

- Not in England!
- No.

BELLS RING

It's not the only extraordinary
thing in the room.

COIL BUZZES

Björk has assembled an array
of ground-breaking ways

in which to harness the musical power
of the natural world on stage.

Nikola Tesla invented
the Tesla coil in the 19th century

to conduct pioneering experiments
into electricity.

He probably never imagined

that it would be used
as a musical instrument.

But the most unusual instrument
has been specially designed

and built just for Biophilia.

Björk wanted to find a vivid way
of using the power of gravity

within her performance.

She worked with Andy Cavatorta

from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

Early on in the process,
Björk had told me that

one of the things she wanted
to do was have this message

that nature and natural forces
are like a rock star. HE LAUGHS

So she wants to have gravity

and electricity
and different forms of energy

and all sorts of stuff,
displayed in a very, very raw way,

harnessed in very raw ways
to make music.

THEY SPEAK ICELANDIC

Björk's creativity is occasionally
ahead of what people know

how to do technically,
which is a great place to be.

I got obsessed with basslines.

And pendulum basslines, both in
classical music and folk music.

They seem to be an
international sort of thing.

And very often the mood
of the songs, they all are similar.

BASSLINE PLAYS

And they sort of do
like a dum, dum, dum...

SHE HUMS BASSLINE

This is a bassline by John Tavener
that I like a lot.

I went back home and spent,
like, a long and sleepless weekend

putting together
the very first prototype

that I think all of us
felt really clicked.

And we would make little films of
these things and send them off to Björk

and see what she thought.

And this is going to sound
really beautiful

but we're extra psyched
about how it could look.

So we're going to show you.

MUSIC PLAYS

Just by changing and playing around
with the rhythms

in which the notes happened,

you could sort of make all these
different musical feelings happen.

So that was great.
It wasn't nearly enough

to be able to play
a complex song like Solstice.

But I think it demonstrated to
all of us that there was something

really engaging about
just watching these pendulums.

As they come through
the very bottom of their swing,

there's a little plectrum
that sticks out and it plucks
an instrument on the end.

It's a big circular harp
and they have a big cylinder with
the strings coming down the outside.

And the harp can be turned
to play different notes.

HARP NOTES PLAY

This pendulum harp harnesses
gravity to play each note.

This song, Solstice,

is about the earth's rotation
about its own axis and the sun.

With this instrument, the audience
will see and hear gravity on stage.

Björk is using bespoke instruments
to alter how her music is perceived.

And finding new ways
of understanding our experience

of music is central to Biophilia.

Professor Oliver Sacks,
the legendary neurologist,

has been a key inspiration.

'He is sort of the David Attenborough
of the brain and the nervous system.'

Music has charms
which nothing else has.

It can provide forms of emotion,
forms of enjoyment,

transports states of mind,
states of body

peculiar to it.

Music pulls on so many brain functions
and unifies them.

One sees that almost every part
of the brain is involved,

and one saw that not only
the auditory areas, but motor areas,

visual areas, prefrontal areas,
cerebellum, basal ganglia.

All of these different things
were lighting up in the brain

and interacting
and playing together.

And music can do this
more than language,

more than anything else.

This effect of music
in somehow rewiring the brain

is apparent in people suffering with
various neurological conditions,

like these dementia patients
in London.

ALL: # Daisy, Daisy

# Give me your answer, do... #

For people with dementia,
you need music

which is charged
with emotion and with memory,

music which is familiar,
music which is evocative,

music which will provide
a bridge to the past.

At such times, you see people
suddenly recovering memories

and identities
which seemed unavailable to them.

And they will be not only released
in the playing of the piece,

but this sort of release may go on
for half an hour or an hour afterwards.

# Oh, I love you, I really do... #
Here we go!

# I love you

# It's a sin to tell a lie. #

Music can affect one at a level
far deeper than speech and language.

It's often said that music tries to
express what language can't.

If you ask what it's expressing,
it's expressing itself.

Tonight is the first ever
performance of Biophilia,

the culmination
of three years of development.

2,000 people are about to hear
a very familiar voice.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
'Welcome to Biophilia,

'the love for nature
in all her manifestations,

'from the tiniest organism
to the greatest red giant

'floating in the farthest realm
of the universe.

'Just as we use music
to express parts of us

'that would otherwise be hidden,

'so, too, can we use technology
to make visible

'much of nature's invisible world.

'In Biophilia, you will experience
how the three come together -

'nature, music, technology.'

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I think music,
for a lot of people...

well, everyone, probably,

is such a beautiful catalyst
between reality

and the outer world
and the inner world,

where you can actually make some
sort of a sense of it all.

And, yeah, it's pretty abstract
where you can actually...

There's room in music
for everything,

for all these little bits that you
cannot fit into your everyday life.

# Stirring at water's edge

# Cold froth

# On my twig

# May I or should I

# Or have I too often?

# Craving miracles

# May I... #

In Thunderbolt,

Björk has found a way of harnessing
the natural power of lightning.

The electrical crackle
of the Tesla coil

provides the bassline
for the song.

# My romantic gene is dominant

# And it hungers for union... #

The performance brings nature,
music and technology together.

Björk wants to develop a new kind
of music-making which is intuitive

and accessible for everyone,

and this is the ultimate aim
of the Biophilia project.

# May I or should I

# Or have I too often now

# Craved miracles?

# May I, should I

# Or have I too often now

# Craved miracles? #

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING CRASHES

Björk's Biophilia project is
driven by her desire to change

the way we understand music.

A desire that goes back to
her childhood

and her classical musical education.

Like when I was in music school
when I was a kid

there were a lot of things
that rubbed me the wrong way.

It was hard for me
to connect with being in Iceland

and we were basically getting
curriculums from Europe based

on 17th-century German classical music,
as much as I adore that,

but at that time I wanted to... you know,
to connect more with Iceland.

You know, and also just,
how it had become really academic

and was removed from the physical.

This academic approach to music
education can act as a barrier

to people actually making music.

With the music we have now,
there's something intimidating.

You look at this,
at this page, what is that?

Much more complicated than
a page of print.

And you look at all these black
and white things.

This is very intimidating.

And if there was some way of drawing
anyone interacting with music

or creating their own music,
I think that would be extraordinary.

And this is the challenge
that Björk accepted.

To find a way of using technology
to make playing music more intuitive.

Her collaborator in this phase
is music engineer Damian Taylor.

Early experiments went back
to basics.

Instead of a keyboard,
he tried using a ball

and even a cardboard box.

The first physical control that
we used in the context of the project

was this, which is
a $9 video game controller.

It's definitely very interesting,
I think, to be able to give people

something that generates music
that's not tied in with,

in a way, the baggage of all
the instruments we've had around

for hundreds of years
or their evolution.

Björk's solution to the
challenge ultimately

lay in the 21st-century revolution,
which came with touch screens.

One of the exciting things
about touch screens -

you could have the same
kind of relationship, spontaneous

and instant,
as you would, say, to a tambourine.

From this came the idea
to create something

which might go beyond a traditional
album with numbered tracks.

A new kind of simpler musical
notation was designed

and each song would be
an interactive app

that would reveal
a different musical principle.

To create these apps, Björk is
working with some of the best

computer programming minds
in the world.

Like pioneering interactive
artist Scott Snibbe.

What Björk wanted us to do was take
music from where it is now as,

you know, mostly just as something
in your ears while you're walking,

and turn it in to something full
sensory again.

One of the most fascinating
things about having

a touch screen for an electronic
musician is that now you can

connect with more irregular rhythms
but it's still natural.

So we made an app called Moon,
where you can just,

with the stroke of a finger,
change the length of a sequence.

You can change the kind of phase
of a pearl to change a note

and you change the phase of the moon
to change how many notes
play back at once.

And then you can choose
whether to accompany it to Björk's song

or to just play it solo
as your own instrument.

Björk is creating apps
that use our intuitive

understanding of the natural world
to help explain musical principles.

# The tectonic plates... #

Mutual Core is about chords.

I don't know if you noticed but
when you play around on the piano,

you can put, like, two or
three fingers and make a chord.

And I thought the best way
to sort of show the tension that

can either arise or be relieved,
it would be best shown in strata.

Maybe this is just me
coming from Iceland,

thinking this is something
that everybody understands

because it's in their everyday life.

But you have different layers
of different types of rocks

and then just a little pressure
away or together

is going to change the tension.

And this is sort of, for me,
is really similar how I experience
the difference of chords.

I was mapping out how I can explain
in the most simple way to

a kid about arpeggios.

The most famous example
in pop music

is probably I Feel Love
by Donna Summer.

When you get the

# Dugga dugga dugga dugga
dugga dugga dugga dug

# Dugga dugga dugga dugga
dugga dugga dugga dugga. #

And that's basically a chord,
if you play like a chord,

but it's called broken chords,

so you don't hear all the notes
at the same time.

You would hear them first
the first one, then the second one,

then the third one and again
and again and again.

And the lightning would be a really
good way to teach about arpeggios.

Thunderbolt is an app that's
actually more like an instrument.

When you tap,
you create these electrical sparks.

When you draw, you create these,
like, lightning drawings

that have
beautiful lightning samples too.

When you put down two fingers
and they're close together,

it plays one
note over and over again.

And then when you stretch
your fingers apart

it plays two, three, four, five.

And when you raise your fingers
you go faster, you increase the tempo.

And when you lower your fingers
you go slower.

By changing the visual representation,
you actually change

the way people think about music
and the kind of music they create.

Now Björk has found the technology
to realise her ambition,

she has to find out
if people will engage with it.

She starts by rolling out
a programme of music workshops

for children
around the world.

Here in Buenos Aires,

a class learn about arpeggios
by playing the Tesla coil.

I always thought I would run
a music school when I would grow up.

You know, and then, just all these
other things kind of happened.

And so, for me, this project is
sort of my music school.

Her apps are now a standard part
of the music curriculum in Iceland.

If one is actively
involved in music,

then you do begin to get all
sorts of changes in the brain,

which are also useful for purposes
outside music.

And this at any age.

Ideally it should be in childhood,
but it can happen later.

And if you have massive involvement
in playing music,

then many different parts of the brain
become enlarged.

Björk's radical Biophilia project
was four years in the making.

A year after premiering
in Manchester,

Björk's tour
reaches the ancient city of Fes.

# Heaven

# Heaven's bodies

# Whirl around me

# Make me wonder... #

Music unites one
to other people.

You sing together,
you dance together,

you drum together...

..at a pre-verbal level,
at a very elemental level.

'It is an essential part
of what makes us human.

'And it has something very profound,

'it produces a very profound
reaction in us all.'

It is one of the strands which
enable you to build relationships

and to actually
to live with yourself too.

# Heaven

# Heaven's bodies

# Whirl around me

# Make me wonder

# And they say back then... #

Music, like all art,
has this deathless quality

and can remove one

from what otherwise is
the sphere of thinking biologically.

I do very much now. In my 80th year,
I'm falling apart.

This is failing, that's failing,

but the music is as good
as it ever was.

In fact possibly better.

# ..We know

# Heaven

# Heaven's bodies

# Whirl around me

# Make me wonder... #

Music, to be most rewarding,
actually does require work,

does require concentration,
does require thought,

which is why your music is
so challenging, because...

Well, because it does require thought.
And it's...

So much of what you do
is completely new,

hasn't been done by people before.

And that's what's
challenging about it,

so if you're very tired,

I don't suggest that I put on... If I'm very
tired I don't put on your music.

I put on your music when I want to
really think about something.

Well thank you, that's, uh...
I'll take that as a compliment.

It's meant as.

THEY LAUGH

# Heaven

# Heaven's bodies

# Whirl around me

# And dance eternal. #

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