"Crystalline", co-produced with English dubstep duo 16bit, was released as the lead single on 28 June 2011, accompanied by a music video directed by longtime collaborator Michel Gondry.

A week later, Björk wrote an article for The Times discussing the proposed sale of natural resources to ease the Icelandic financial crisis.

[6] On 30 June 2010, Björk and Dirty Projectors released a joint EP, Mount Wittenberg Orca, with proceeds going to marine protected areas.

[8] On 21 May 2010, Björk wrote an open letter to the Reykjavík Grapevine calling on the Icelandic government to "do everything in its power to revoke the contracts with Magma Energy".

[9] After the deal was approved by the Icelandic Government,[10] Björk launched a petition[7] and promoted it with a performance at the Nordic House in Reykjavík on 19 July.

[14] On 6 January 2011 she started a three-day public karaoke marathon to protest the Magma Energy deal; the accompanying petition was signed by 47,000 people.

A group of pendulums were put together, creating patterns with their moves, transmitting the movements of the Earth to the sound of a harp, making the song "Solstice".

When the first details about Biophilia emerged, the album was expected to be released around the beginning of the residency at the Manchester International Festival in June.

[41][42] The cover artwork, designed by longtime collaborators M/M Paris and shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, features Björk, wearing an Iris van Herpen haute couture brown and golden dress, taken from the designer's Synesthesia 2010 collection, along with a "harp-belt" made by Threeasfour, and a red wig, resembling a nebula, created by British hairstylist Eugene Souleiman, holding an orange crystal while being surrounded by the Biophilia constellation which appears in the app.

[43][44][45] According to Björk, she was inspired by the protagonist of British-Mexican surrealist novelist Leonora Carrington's book The Hearing Trumpet to create the persona of a "frustrated music teacher" which always has her "head in the clouds" to explain her concepts to people around her, an attitude she thought she had while explaining her idea for Biophilia to her collaborators, and that's why she decided to wear wigs throughout the whole Biophilia era and promotion.

[49] Parnell flew to Reykjavík to work on the record in Addi 800's mastering studio, where she spent different hours with Björk discussing the changes to make on the album.

[48] At the end, Parnell remastered all of Biophilia songs, while Arab added beats and sonic sculpting to "Crystalline", "Thunderbolt", "Dark Matter" and "Virus".

[66][73] The "Mutual Core" app features a video game in which the player arranges geological layers in the same way as an accordion[74] to play chords.

[76] The "Hollow" presents a video depiction of the body interior, starting from the blood tissue descending into showing the DNA and the replisome.

[66][77] The "Hollow" instrument let the user tap different enzymes depicted in the background to play time signatures and build a drum machine.

[84] The app was effectively cracked into a virus by cyber criminals from eastern Europe, that tried to spread a malware into Android devices that would download the fake application.

[87] On 17 January 2012, Björk updated on her YouTube channel a series of videos in which she and Snibbe explain the contents of the different apps and offer a tutorial on how they work.

[91] While this was early interpreted as a sign of failure of the initiative,[92] Björk later explained that the team had found a cheaper and faster way to transport the apps on Android thanks to a company named Apportable.

[98] The volume featured behind the scenes and interviews with Björk's collaborators in the project, including the choir Graduale Nobili, 16bit, Scott Snibbe and Stephen Malinowski.

[79][80] A music video for "Moon", directed by Björk alongside M/M Paris, Inez & Vinoodh and James Merry, recorded during the photo sessions for Biophilia, was released on 23 September.

[125] A music video for "Mutual Core" was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and was directed by Andrew Thomas Huang.

The third and fourth parts, containing remixes of the two tracks by British electronic musician and producer Matthew Herbert, were released on 2 August 2011.

[137] The second part, released on 30 April 2012, included remixes of "Thunderbolt" and "Sacrifice" by experimental hip hop band Death Grips.

[140] The fifth entry was released on 11 June 2012, including a King Cannibal remix of "Thunderbolt" and a remodel of "Dark Matter" produced by Alva Noto.

[161] Möhammad Choudhery of Consequence of Sound praised the "asteroid-bass volley" of "Mutual Core" and "apocalyptical breakbeat coda" of "Crystalline" and stated that "they blend archaic instrumentation with blistering electronica" and even if he labelled Biophilia as "hardly easy listening", he found that "it'll stand as one of the more rewarding albums of her storied career".

[162] Biophilia was named "CD of the week" by The Daily Telegraph, whose writer Helen Brown described the album as "wilfully weird" yet "surprisingly accessible, hypnotic and beautiful if you give it time and concentration: the audio equivalent of looking through a microscope at crystals growing".

"[151] Daniel Paton of musicOMH viewed Biophilia as a "synthesis of Björk's work thus far", yet "it sees her continue to pursue her own radical and individual path with unshakeable conviction."

[166] A more mixed review came from Pitchfork's Mark Pytlik, which felt that she "prioritized the superficial aspects of Biophilia's presentation over, well, the music", further adding that "she combats the lack of any real structure or melody by over-singing, or lapsing into one of her familiar and increasingly lazy-sounding house vocal runs."

[201] The Biophilia tour show at the Cumbre Tajín festival was nominated for the Alternative Performance award at the 2012 Lunas del Auditorio.

The multidimensional nature of her art—in which sound and music are the spine, but never the confines, for multimedia performances that also encompass graphic and digital design, art, cinema, science, illustration, philosophy, fashion, and more—is a testament to her curiosity and desire to learn and team up with diverse experts and creators.