Bill Violas Art Reflects a Very Personal Aspect Highly Informed by His View of Life Centered on

Pecker Viola
Bill Viola in 2009
Born	(1951-01-25) January 25, 1951 (age 71) Queens, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Educational activity	Syracuse University, Syracuse
Known for	Video art Electronic fine art New media art
Notable work	Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House (1982)
Website	billviola.com

Bill Viola ( VY-oh-lə, VEE-oh-lə; born 1951) is an American gimmicky video artist^[1] whose creative expression depends upon electronic, audio, and image technology in new media.^[2] His works focus on the ideas backside key homo experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness.^[3]

Early on life and education [edit]

Viola grew up in Queens, New York, and Westbury, New York. He attended P.Southward. twenty, in Flushing, where he was captain of the TV Team. On holiday in the mountains with his family unit, he nearly drowned in a lake, an experience he describes as "… the most beautiful world I've ever seen in my life" and "without fear," and "peaceful."^[4]

In 1973 Viola graduated from Syracuse University with a BFA in experimental studies.^[5] He studied in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, including the Synapse experimental program, which evolved into CitrusTV.^[6]

Career [edit]

Viola'due south first job after graduation was as a video technician at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse.^{[ citation needed ]} From 1973 to 1980, he studied and performed with composer David Tudor in the new music group "Rainforest" (afterward named "Composers Inside Electronics"^[7]). From 1974 to 1976, Viola worked every bit technical director at Art/tapes/22 [it], a pioneering video studio led past Maria Gloria Conti Bicocchi, in Florence, Italy where he encountered video artists Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, and Vito Acconci. From 1976 to 1983, he was artist-in-residence at WNET Thirteen Television Laboratory in New York. In 1976 and 1977, he travelled to the Solomon Islands, Coffee and Indonesia to record traditional performing arts.

Viola was invited to show work at La Trobe University (Melbourne, Commonwealth of australia) in 1977, by cultural arts director Kira Perov. Viola and Perov later married, beginning an of import lifelong collaboration in working and traveling together. In 1980, they lived in Nippon for a yr and a half on a Japan/U.S. cultural exchange fellowship where they studied Buddhism with Zen Master Daien Tanaka. During this time, Viola was also an creative person-in-residence at Sony Corporation's Atsugi Laboratories.^[8]

In 1983, he became an instructor in Avant-garde Video at the California Constitute of the Arts, in Valencia, California. He represented the United states of america at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 for which he produced a serial of works called Buried Secrets, including one of his best known works The Greeting, a gimmicky estimation of Pontormo'south The Visitation. In 1997, the Whitney Museum of American Art organized and toured internationally a major 25-year retrospective of Viola's work.

Viola was the 1998, Getty Scholar-in-residence at the Getty Research Constitute, Los Angeles . Later, in 2000, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2002, he completed Going Forth By 24-hour interval, a digital "fresco" cycle in High-Definition video, commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

In 2003,The Passions was exhibited in Los Angeles, London, Madrid, and Canberra. This was a major collection of Viola's emotionally charged, slow-move works inspired past traditions within Renaissance devotional painting.^[nine]

The beginning biography of Viola, entitled Viola on Vídeo, was written by Federico Utrera (Male monarch Juan Carlos Academy) and published in Spain in 2011.

Nib Viola Studios [edit]

Bill Viola Studio is run by his wife, Kira Perov, who is the executive managing director. She has worked with Viola since 1978 managing and assisting Viola with his videotapes and installations. She documents their work in progress on location. All publications from the studio are edited by Perov.^{[ citation needed ]}

Artwork [edit]

Fashion [edit]

Viola'south art deals largely with the key themes of human being consciousness and feel - nativity, death, dear, emotion, and a kind of humanist spirituality. Throughout his career he has drawn significant and inspiration from his deep interest in mystical traditions, especially Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism and Islamic Sufism, often axiomatic in the transcendental quality of some of his works.^{[ citation needed ]} As, the subject affair and style of western medieval and renaissance devotional art have informed his artful.

An ongoing theme that he constantly explores is dualism, or the idea that comprehension of a subject area is incommunicable unless its contrary is known. For example, a lot of his work has themes such as life and decease, light and dark, stressed and calm, or loud and quiet.^{[ citation needed ]}

His work can be divided into three types, conceptual, visual, and a unique combination of the 2. Co-ordinate to art critic James Gardner of the National Review, Viola'southward conceptual work is forgettable just like well-nigh video art.^{[ commendation needed ]} However, others accept different opinions. On the other mitt, Gardner feels that Viola'south visual piece of work such equally "The Veiling", and his combination of both the conceptual and visual such as "The Crossing" are impressive and memorable.^[x]

Viola's piece of work frequently exhibits a painterly quality, his apply of ultra-slow motility video encouraging the viewer to sink into the image and connect securely to the meanings contained within it. This quality makes his work perhaps unusually accessible within a contemporary fine art context. As a effect, his work oft receives mixed reviews from critics, some of whom have noted a tendency toward grandiosity and obviousness in some of his work.^{[ citation needed ]} Withal information technology is this very ambitiousness, his striving toward significant, and attempts to deal with the big themes of human being life, that also make his work then conspicuously appreciated by other critics, his audiences and collectors.^{[ citation needed ]}

His early piece of work established his fascination with issues that continue to inform his piece of work today. In detail, Viola'southward obsession with capturing the essence of emotion through recording of its farthermost display began at least as early as his 1976 work, The Space Between the Teeth, a video of himself screaming, and continues to this day with such works as the 45-second Silent Mountain (2001), which shows ii actors in states of ache.

If Viola's depictions of emotional states with no objective correlative — emotional states for which the viewer has no external object or event to understand them by—are ane characteristic of many of his works, another, which has come to the forefront, is his reference to medieval and classical depictions of emotion. Most immediately, his subdued Catherine's Room 2001, has many scene by scene parallels with Andrea di Bartolo'south 1393 St. Catherine of Siena Praying.

Viola'due south work has received disquisitional accolades. Critic Marjorie Perloff singles him out for praise. Writing at length about the necessity of poetic works responding to and taking reward of contemporary computer technologies, Perloff sees Viola as an example of how new applied science—in his case, the video photographic camera—tin create entirely new aesthetic criteria and possibilities that did non exist in previous incarnations of the genre — in this case, theater.^[eleven]

Video art projects [edit]

Bill Viola and Jamie Jewett discussing their technique

While many video artists accept been quick to prefer new technologies to their medium, Viola relies petty on digital editing. Perchance the most technically challenging part of his work, and that which has benefited near from the advances since his primeval pieces, is his utilize of extreme slow motion.^{[ citation needed ]}

Contrary Tv [edit]

Reverse Television 1983 is a xv-minute montage of people watching video cameras as though they were televisions.

The Quintet Serial [edit]

The Quintet Series 2000 is a set of four carve up videos that shows the unfolding expressions of five actors in depression motion so that details of their changing expressions tin can be detected.

Collaboration with Nine Inch Nails [edit]

In 2000, Bill Viola collaborated with the industrial stone band 9 Inch Nails and its lead singer Trent Reznor to create a video suite for the band's tour. The triptych mainly is focused on water imagery and was supposed to exist integral with the songs that were played.^[12]

An Ocean Without a Shore [edit]

In 2007, Viola was invited back to the 52nd Venice Biennale to present an installation called "Ocean without a Shore," which was seen past over lx,000 viewers throughout its duration.^{[ citation needed ]} The piece of work consists of people standing in the foreground with nothing but black behind them. Each of them seem to produce gallons of water from themselves as if they were waterfalls. The water comes gushing out of their bodies as if they are existence reborn. The piece who only seem to trickle water, while all the others produce a waterfall of water (Sal 2008). Viola says that this piece is about how the expressionless are undead; that once they become through the water they are conscious again.^{[ This quote needs a commendation ]}

Observance [edit]

Observance 2002, is a piece of work which may be taken partly equally a response to the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks.^{[ citation needed ]}

The Tristan Projection [edit]

In 2004, Viola embarked on The Tristan Project. At the invitation of opera director Peter Sellars, he created video sequences to be shown as a backdrop to the action on stage during the performance of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. Using his extreme tedious movement, Viola's pieces used actors to portray the metaphorical story behind Wagner's story, seeing for example the starting time deed as an extended ritual of purification in which the characters disrobe and launder themselves before finally plunging headlong into water together (in Wagner's story, the two characters maintain the facade of being indifferent to each other (necessary because Isolde is betrothed to Tristan'south uncle) before, mistakenly assertive they are going to die anyway, and reveal their truthful feelings). The piece was start performed in Los Angeles at Disney Hall on 3 split evenings in 2004, one act at a time, then given complete performances at the Bastille Opera in Paris in April and in November 2005.^[thirteen] The video pieces were afterward shown in London without Wagner's music in June to September 2006, at the Haunch of Venison Gallery and St Olave's College, London. The Tristan project returned, both in music and video, to the Disney Hall in Los Angeles in April 2007, with farther performances at New York City'southward Lincoln Center in May 2007 and at the Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in September 2007.

The Dark Journey [edit]

In 2005, he began working with Tracy Fullerton and the Game Innovation Lab at USC on the fine art game, The Night Journey, a project based on the universal story of an individual's mystic journeying toward enlightenment.^[xiv] The game has presented at a number of exhibits worldwide as a work in progress.^[15] Information technology was awarded Sublime Experience at Indiecade 2008.^[16]

Bodies of Light [edit]

In Oct 2009, Viola's solo exhibition entitled "Bodies of Low-cal" appeared at the James Cohan Gallery in New York. Featured in the exhibition was Pneuma (1994), a projection of alternating images evoking the concept of fleeting memories. Also on view were several pieces from the Viola'southward ongoing "Transfiguration" series, which he evolved from his 2007 installation Bounding main Without a Shore.^[17]

Other projects [edit]

In 2004, Viola began work on a new product of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, a collaboration with director Peter Sellars, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and executive producer Kira Perov. The opera premiered at the Opéra National de Paris in 2005 and Viola's video work was subsequently shown equally Dearest/Death The Tristan Projection at the Haunch of Venison Gallery and St Olave's Schoolhouse, London, in 2006. During 2007, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Sevilla, organized an exhibition at the Palace of Charles Five in la Alhambra- Granada- in which Viola's piece of work dialogues with the Fine Arts Drove of the museum.

Awards [edit]

Bill Viola was awarded the XXIst Catalonia International Prize on May 11, 2009. The [Premi Internacional Catalunya was created by the democratic government of Catalonia, the Generalitat de Catalunya, to be awarded to those who brand notable contributions to the advancement of human, cultural, and scientific values.^[18] The award honors an individual "whose creative work has fabricated a pregnant contribution to the development of cultural, scientific or human values anywhere in the earth".

Viola'southward 3 Structures [edit]

Viola felt as if there are 3 different structures to describe patterns of data structures. There is the branching structure, matrix construction, and schizo structure.^[19]

"The most common construction is called branching. In this structure, the viewer proceeds from the top to bottom in time."^[20] The branching structure of presenting data is the typical narrative and linear structure. The viewer proceeds from a set point A to point B by taking an exact path, the same path any other reader would take. An example of this is Google because users go into this website with a certain mindset of what they want to search for, and they get a certain consequence as they branch off and end at some other website.

The 2d structure is the Matrix structure. This structure describes media when it follows nonlinear progression through information. The viewer could enter at any point, move in any management, at any speed, pop in and out at whatever place.^[xx] Similar the branching structure, this besides has its fix perimeters. Still, the verbal path that is followed is up to the user. The user has the choice of participating in decision-making that affect the viewing experience of the media. An case of this is Public Secrets, a website that reveals secrets of the justice and the incarceration system within the United states for women. There is a set boundary of what users can and tin can't practise while presenting them with different themes and subjects users are able to view. Different users volition detect themselves taking different paths, using flash cues to guide themselves through the website. This vast pick of paths presents many users with a unique viewing experience (in relation to that of the previous persons). Every bit well, they take the selection to read the excerpts from these women or hear information technology out loud. This connects to Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths"^[21] where the participant has a variety of choices on how they see a story unfold before them. Each time, they tin create a different path.

The last structure is called the schizo, or the spaghetti model. This form of data construction pertains to pure or mostly randomness. "Everything is irrelevant and significant at the same time. Viewers may become lost in this construction and never find their way out."^[20]

Awards [edit]

1984 Polaroid Video Art Honor for outstanding achievement, Us
1987 Maya Deren Award, American Film Constitute, USA
1989 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Honour, USA
1993 Skowhegan Medal (Video Installation), Us
1993 Medienkunstpreis, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, and Siemens Kulturprogramm, Frg
2003 Cultural Leadership Honour, American Federal of Arts, Us
2006 NORD/LB Art Prize, Bremen, Deutschland
2009 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, MIT, Cambridge, MA^[22] He was awarded $75,000 and was able to go to MIT and help enhance the creative groups there.
2009 Catalonia International Prize, Barcelona, Spain^[3]
2010 Honorary doctorate from the University of Liège,^[23] Belgium
2011 Praemium Imperiale, Japan

References [edit]

^ [1] Viola, Bill bio at the Getty Archive
^ Ross, David A. Forrard. "A Feeling For the Things Themselves". Pecker Viola Paris, Flammarion with Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
^ ^a ^b "Biography". www.billviola.com.
^ Bill Viola: The Eye of the Heart. Dir. Marker Kidal. DVD. Pic for the Humanities & Sciences, 2005.
^ Arya, Rina (2003). "Viola, Pecker [ William ]". Grove Art Online. doi:x.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T096533.
^ "Bill Viola | Biography | The Cohen Family Collection". jmcohen.com . Retrieved 2021-04-07 .
^ "cie home". composers-inside-electronics.net.
^ [2] Viola, Beak at MoMA
^ "Bill Viola: The Passions (Getty Exhibitions)". www.getty.edu . Retrieved 2017-01-thirty .
^ James Gardner: Is it art?^{[ permanent expressionless link ]}, The National Review, May fourth, 1998^{[ dead link ]}
^ Marjorie Perloff: The Morphology of the Baggy: Bill Viola's Videoscapes, Poesy on & Off the Page: Essays for Emergent Occasions, by Northwestern University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8101-1561-1
^ Alan Rifkin: Bill Viola, Los Angeles Times, Jan 28th, 2007
^ Adrian Searle: Beak Viola: Haunch of Venison/St Olave's College, London, The Guardian, June 29th 2006
^ "Welcome". The Night Journey.
^ "Welcome". The Night Journey.
^ "Scan by Events :: Past Selections :: IndieCade - International Festival of Independent Games". www.indiecade.com. Archived from the original on 2012-06-19. Retrieved 2015-01-25 .
^ Baker, Tamzin. "Bill Viola." Modernistic Painters, November 2009.
^ "22nd Premi Internacional Catalunya 2010" Archived May 17, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah & Montfort, Nick (2003). The New Media Reader. The MIT Press.
^ ^a ^b ^c Viola, Nib. "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space". The New Media Reader. The MIT Printing.
^ New Media Reader: Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths"
^ "Video creative person Bill Viola to receive McDermott award".
^ "Archived re-create". Archived from the original on 2011-10-02. Retrieved 2011-09-29 . {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived re-create as title (link)

External links [edit]

Cameras are Keepers of the Souls. An interview with Nib Viola Video by Louisiana Channel

goodmanpreen2002.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Viola

Bill Violas Art Reflects a Very Personal Aspect Highly Informed by His View of Life Centered on

Early on life and education [edit]