First a tour, then a film, and now a book. Björk announced Tuesday that she would release Cornucopia: The Book, which documents the five-year tour with images by photographer Santiago Felipe, next month.
“Before this tour, I spent a decade working with 360-degree sound and visual software in virtual reality and animation, creating Biophilia, the first app album, and later Vulnicura as a VR album,” she wrote in an Instagram statement. “I was deeply inspired by the idea of a fully immersive experience, spending a spring in an Icelandic lighthouse, spreading Utopia into fully surround speakers. My intention was to bring what we had created for 21st-century VR into a 19th-century theatre — taking it from the headset to the stage.
“This vision was realized with 27 moving curtains that captured projections on different textures and LED screens, creating a digitally animated show: a modern lanterna magica for live music,” she continued. “I also wanted to feature bespoke instruments: a magnetic harp, an aluphone, a circular flute, and a reverb chamber, specially built with an audio architect to enhance the most intimate version of a performance — in a personal chapel. Throughout this tale, there is a subplot woven in: a second story of an avatar — a modern marionette who alchemically mutates, from puppet to puppet, from the injury of a heart wound to a fully healed state.”
The softcover book, designed by M/M Paris, features 313 color images contained within 480 pages. It’s about one-and-a-half inches thick. The book officially comes out Nov. 15 and is available for preorder.
Last month, Björk debuted a clip from her upcoming Cornucopia concert film at Climate Week. The film will present the artist’s performance in Lisbon last year. More details are forthcoming.
Rolling Stone reviewed Cornucopia at a New York City date in 2019. Regarding the way the show incorporated an environmental message from then-16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the magazine wrote, “It was a poignant passing of the torch from artist to activist, and it put the datastorm complexity of what came earlier into stark, simple, fittingly scary perspective.”
