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I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

Bill Viola

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

Age Different Forgotten
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
Revolution is something that actually starts in individual hearts.
BILL VIOLA

Heart Individual Revolution
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
Experience is so much richer than light falling on your retina. You embody a microcosm of reality when you walk down the street – your memories, your varying degrees of awareness of what’s going on around you.
BILL VIOLA

Embody Everything Experience Memories Microsm Retina
There is an invisible world out there, and we are living in it.
BILL VIOLA

Invisible Living World
Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.
BILL VIOLA

Fast Paced Soul World
Human beings have always been creative. The guys who were making the pyramids, and archaeological research has showed us this, had little figurines made by the workers, to express their devotion to their god.
BILL VIOLA

Creative Devotion Express Guy Pyramids
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

Death DNA Light Material Speed
Live your Art. Don’t think about it.
BILL VIOLA

Art Live Thinking
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
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
Vision connects you. But it also separates you. In my work, and my life, I feel a desire to merge. Not in terms of losing my own identity… but theres a feeling that life is interconnected, that theres life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us.
BILL VIOLA

Feelings Identity Interconnected Rocks Tree
I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.
BILL VIOLA

Images Inspiration Writing
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.

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I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

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