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The electronic image is not fixed to any material base and, like our DNA, it has become a code that can circulate to any container that will hold it, defying death as it travels at the speed of light.

Bill Viola

I would prefer to be forgotten, then rediscovered in a different age.
BILL VIOLA

Age Different Forgotten
When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional – a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful.
BILL VIOLA

Art Hope Reflection Something Space
For the Persian poet Rumi, each human life is analogous to a bowl floating on the surface of an infinite ocean. As it moves along, it is slowly filling with the water around it. That’s a metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge.
BILL VIOLA

Floating Moving Ocean Water
Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.
BILL VIOLA

Fast Paced Soul World
When the water in the bowl finally reaches the same level as the water outside, there is no longer any need for the container, and it drops away as the inner water merges with the outside water.
BILL VIOLA

Container Outside Water Merge
You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.
BILL VIOLA

Art Experts Feelings
The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.
BILL VIOLA

Brain Earth Honestly Thinking
We call this the moment of death. That analogy returns to me over and over as a metaphor for ourselves.
BILL VIOLA

Call Death Metaphor Moment Ourselves
A lot of what making art is, is just being open, and empty. And putting yourself in the right place for things to, literally, come together.
BILL VIOLA

Art Being Just Together
I came of age at the end of the 1960s, just when video was also coming into the world. Companies such as Sony and Panasonic were starting to market it and we artists immediately knew how it could be used.
BILL VIOLA

Age Artist Coming Panasonic Video Year
My works really begin in a very simple way. Sometimes it’s an image, and sometimes it’s words I might write, like a fragment of a poem.
BILL VIOLA

Fragment might Simple Writing
Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It’s no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.
BILL VIOLA

Experiences Mystical Solitude Wisdom
I don’t believe in originality in art. I think we exist on this earth to inspire each other, through our actions, through our deeds, and through who we are. We’re always borrowing.
BILL VIOLA

Art Believe Borrowing Original Thinking
In the mid- to late ’60s to the mid-’70s, when I was a student, there was a major change in the thinking about what art can be and how art is made.
BILL VIOLA

Art Change Students Thinking
I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.
BILL VIOLA

Images Inspiration Writing
Live your Art. Don’t think about it.
BILL VIOLA

Art Live Thinking

The electronic image is not fixed to any material base and, like our DNA, it has become a code that can circulate to any container that will hold it, defying death as it travels at the speed of light.

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The electronic image is not fixed to any material base and, like our DNA, it has become a code that can circulate to any container that will hold it, defying death as it travels at the speed of light.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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