Art + Science + Human Nature = Music

Wandering YouTube to find some more music to collect so that I can listen to the videos while I work, I stumbled across something very unexpected. It was a music video by Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjӧrk (1965- ) for her song Mutual Core. Having never seen or heard of it before, I decided to check it out and shocked is hardly the best way to describe what I saw and heard.

Screen shot from 'Mutual Core' video

Though in the beginning, I thought that the video was going to be simply her standing waste deep in sand, I found myself mesmerized by how she combined the sensuality of dual natures (masculine/feminine) and the violent nature of how the earth moves in such an artistic mix of images. As the video progressed, I found myself fascinated with how the rocks that represented tectonic plates began to change and morph before my eyes so that the layers of sediments became a face of many colors. It is honestly one of those videos that you share with your friends and say “You need to take a look at this” since words themselves just don't seem to do it justice. In a way, the video and its imagery reminded me of the plethora of messages used in Madonna's 1994 video Bedtime Stories.

The song itself also took me by surprise because it was describing, for the most part, how tectonic plates moved but was also seems to translate to the hidden strength and power we hold within ourselves. Of course the lyrics themselves might mean something different to other people so this is just my interpretation of it. Looking online to see if I could find anything else about this particular song, I discovered that it was for Björk's album Biophilia (2011) in collaboration with Matthew Herbers (1972- ) and English dubstep band 16bit. I couldn't help but feel proud of myself when I read that “The song's lyrics are a metaphor for human relationships, compared to the structure of the Earth and Plate tectonics”. Of course, after listening to the song a couple more times, I could see that the song was also describing how everything is a struggle but that's just the way of things. It is interesting, however and for some reason I do find some positive message within it. Needless to say, I am certainly going to be adding this interesting mix of artistic wonder, science and deeper sense of self into my collection of music to listen to while working.