Biophilia, Björk's LP from 2011, has been given a new lease of life. Earlier this week, it was announced that the album—which was released through a series of iOS applications—will be acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art, incidentally the first apps to be added to MoMA's permanent collection. Now, The Guardian reports that the apps will be added to the curriculum of northern European schools. Björk spent the spring collaborating with Scandinavian education officials to develop the Biophilia Educational Programme, an initiative funded by the Nordic Council, and it will go live after successful test runs in Paris, Oslo, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Manchester, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Biophilia remains one of Björk's most avant-garde efforts to date, and the apps were a reflection of that. Each song received its own individual app, which in turn linked back to a centralized "mother app." For example, the app for the haunting, skittering "Crystalline" allows users to restructure the song by dragging and rearranging crystals, while the Tesla coil bass of "Thunderbolt" comes with an app that plays arpeggios through interactive lighting bolts. The Biophilia Education Programme targets children ages 10 to 12, but is suitable for those as young as eight years old. In The Guardian, Björk revealed that the program has been especially successful with kids that have ADD or dyslexia. Check out a clip from the Biophilia Education Programme below.
