Biophilia, Björk’s most interdisciplinary project to date, has been updated for the festive season with a new standalone version of the “Solstice” app. The app allows the user to create a song and gift it to friends as a Christmas e-card and features new sound samples and visuals.

Björk’s long-time collaborator and friend, Sjón, originally composed the Christmas poem that inspired the ‘Solstice’ app at the request of an Icelandic newspaper. The poem, a celebration of light and seasons, compares the solar system with a Christmas tree: at the center of the app is a sun from which the user pulls rays of light to form a circular harp of strings plucked by orbiting planets; tilt the device and the image changes. Björk plays the ‘Solstice’ song with a specially commissioned pendulum-harp which embodies the idea of gravity that was central to the song’s creation.

The Biophilia 10-track album, is available digitally, in CD format and on vinyl. Additionally, each of the 10 songs also is available as a special feature of the Biophilia App for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Biophilia 1.4, also includes a new simple way to buy the whole app album upon launch, a special offer for the dedicated fans who bought apps before the full album was released and iOS 5.0 enhancements, and bug-fixes.

Björk has collaborated with app developers, scientists, writers, inventors, musicians, and instrument makers to create a unique multi-media exploration of the universe and its physical forces—particularly those where music, nature and technology meet. The project is inspired by and explores these relationships between musical structures and natural phenomena, from the atomic to the cosmic.

Biophilia’s songs have room to breathe, employing space and silence as much as melody and harmony. The sparse instrumentation and arrangements become gorgeously intricate meditations on which to build. Vocal melodies unfurl more like transcendent devotionals than typical verses, and become even more stirring when accompanied by a chorus of voices that could fill a cathedral.

The Wall Street Journal described one of Bjork’s recent live Biophilia performances at her sold-out residency in her hometown of Reykjavik as “a magical evening.” Residencies in the U.S. will be announced shortly.

The app is available to download through itunes now.