Biophilia Live brings to a close an intense few years of activity from one of the most inventive artists working in the world of music. Björk’s Biophilia project has looked to engage with ideas surrounding nature—from climate change to the wonders of biodiversity—and the educational potential of touchscreen technology. It has simultaneously manifested itself in the form of an album, an app, an educational programme, and a beguiling live experience: today’s excerpt from Peter Strickland and Nick Fenton’s documentary captures the magic of the latter with the Icelandic singer's performance of "Moon," at London's Alexandra Palace.

Björk enlisted a globe-spanning web of project programmers, instrument builders, choir, tour crew, teachers, clothes designers, photographers, musicians and scientists—from Inez and Vinoodh to biologist Adam Rutherford—for the project, which was first launched in 2011. “Iceland sits on the border of the Eurasian plate and the North American plate,” says Rutherford, science advisor for Biophilia Live at the behest of the Wellcome Trust, who part-funded the film. “There’s a mile-wide chasm in the middle of it, where Europe and America are slowly moving apart at a rate of a few millimetres a year. That’s why you have volcanic activity, such as in 2010, when Eyjafjallajökull went off, causing us all to abandon holiday plans. This 'living rock' just runs through Icelandic culture like a geological seam and you can hear that in Bjork’s music. I don’t think there is anyone from Iceland who is not profoundly influenced by the terrain that they live on, the biology that they live on.”

Next for Björk is her mid-career retrospective exhibition at MoMA, New York, in March 2015. Before that, we take a last look at her groundbreaking project.

Biophilia in numbers (and words):

Number of live shows:
70.

Designers of Björk’s costumes:
Iris Van Herpen, Michael van der Ham, Three Asfour, KTZ, Jeremy Scott, Daisy Balloon, Maiko Takeda (Headpiece), Zara Gorman (Headpiece).

Cities that have hosted the Biophilia Educational Program:
Full Biophilia education workshops with local schoolkids have been held in Paris, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Reykjavik and New York. The Biophilia program has been used on the school curriculum for the past year in Reykjavik. It was recently awarded a Scandinavian education fund, where it will be written up into a proper curriculum for teaching musicology and science, using the apps, and trialed in schools across Scandinavia.

Name of choir:
Langholtskirkja Choir School. Run out of a church in Reykjavik, the singers have been making music together since they were children.

Origin of the term 'Biophilia':
Biologist E. O. Wilson coined the term “biophilia” in his 1984 book of the same name, describing it as the “urge to affiliate with other forms of life.”

Biophilia Live premieres at London Film Festival on October 9. The film is a Gloria Production in association with One Little Indian & The Wellcome Trust. Produced by Jacqui Edenbrow

Biophilia is out now on One Little Indian.