Digitalisation not dematerialisation: the musical artefact in the digital age Seminar

In this paper I examine the future of the musical artefact through a case study of Björk’s 2011 album and app suite “Biophilia”—the first music album by a major pop icon to be released as a set of interactive iPad/iPhone apps, and a project I contributed to. Björk exploits audiovisual material and the high production values of material artefacts, yet she is also one of the first to adopt the new technologies ­ here the app suite as alternative to the album. Biophilia represents a good case study to examine the consequences and opportunities of digitalisation for music: the creation of new formats and their implications for modes of listening, stratification of the market for physical artefacts, the role of extramusical materials, implications for the expression of a unified artistic vision, unification of digital and material copy, and new opportunities for musical learning.