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September 25, 2005
The artist, Bill Viola
Bill Viola has been one of my favorite artists since I was an undergrad at the Art Institute of Chicago. Studying interior architecture, I was very impressed by his usage of space for his video installations. I actually saw his exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the year 2000 and ended up breaking one of his pieces. It was a piece with a bronze tap in a room and a video projection on the wall. As you turn the tap, you hear the water dripping with surround sound in the space that you are in. There was a video piece running with the sound. I had turned the tap too far right and after I had used it, it was no longer in sync with the sound.
It’s always very interesting to read what artists have to say about their pieces and the whole process. Bill viola suggests that his medium, in this case, video, is only a tool in his process of investigation. I agree with him. Whatever the medium you may use, it is only a tool that helps you bring what you are trying to express in your art. The medium may be very low-tech, but if it works for the piece, the artist should stick with it and make the best out of it. This is especially true nowadays, with this new genre of art called “new media.”
He also states that he works with the “raw material”, (the sensory data, neural processing, memory, imagination etc) and that he aims at trying to “put it all back together” in his video installation. I personally do not know whether this is completely doable. Our individual bodies and minds react is such different ways that it is almost impossible to get the same reactions of the same place from different people.
I agree with his idea behind the “working” of an artist. He states, “It is the time of an unfinished thought, the time the painter must go through, the time behind the façade of all great discoveries.”
Posted by min at September 25, 2005 03:31 PM