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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

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

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

Art Live Thinking
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
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
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
It only takes a second for an impression to become a vision.
BILL VIOLA

Impression Second Vision
Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.
BILL VIOLA

Fast Paced Soul World
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
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
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
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
Everything we could call the contextualizing information. Representing that information is going to be the main issue in the years ahead – how the world meets the mind, not the eye.
BILL VIOLA

Everything Issue Man Mind Walk
Revolution is something that actually starts in individual hearts.
BILL VIOLA

Heart Individual Revolution
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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