Björk's Biophilia – Affordances of the Biophilia app: Exploring Music and Education through Technology and Transmedia Storytelling

Sammanfattning: The Biophilia app-album and Educational Project designed by Björk are a fascinating foray into combining science and music education within avantgarde art, media and technology. Her project is unique and remains the only one of its kind. This paper will explore the multiple affordances available in her (educational) app, how transmedia storytelling was used, and what the application of McLuhan's Laws of Media and Norman's Affordances help reveal about apps as mediums. As we move deeper and deeper into mediated lives, finding positive ways of combining both old and new technologies becomes ever more important, as does our awareness about their effects. McLuhan stated, "Every medium exaggerates some function" (2010, p. 309) and it seems that apps actually lead towards more fragmented experiences, rather than deeper more attentive ones. Transmedia storytelling has appeared as a way to generate more engaging, longer-term experiences, in our current world of short-play snippets. Thus, Biophilia allows us insight into exploring what types of experiences and affordances may be more successful and how we might harness these towards better artistic and educational outcomes through a clearer understanding of how to influence quality engagement from the users.