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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

I like to keep the meanings in my work flowing and open.
BILL VIOLA

Flowing Keep Meaning Open
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
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
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
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
Emotions are the key to many aspects of life. They are precisely the elements that make human beings human. I think the fact that emotions have been reduced and put off to the side in intellectual work, particularly in the 20th Century, is tragic.
BILL VIOLA

Intellectual Keys Thinking
It only takes a second for an impression to become a vision.
BILL VIOLA

Impression Second Vision
There is an invisible world out there, and we are living in it.
BILL VIOLA

Invisible Living World
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
Live your Art. Don’t think about it.
BILL VIOLA

Art Live Thinking
Revolution is something that actually starts in individual hearts.
BILL VIOLA

Heart Individual Revolution
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
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
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

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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