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As always, A&D 229, 7pm...

Wednesday October 17th:
/Bill Viola/

Reflecting Pool
7:00, 1977-79, color, sound
In this piece, all movement and change in an otherwise still scene is confined to the reflections on the surface of a pool in the woods. Suspended in time, a man hovers in a frozen, midair leap over the water, as subtle techniques of still-framing and multiple keying join disparate layers of time into a single coherent image. Viola writes that "the piece concerns the emergence of the individual into the natural world -- a kind of baptism."

Sweet Light
9:08, 1977, color, sound
Using a camera moving along a predetermined path to create the effect of a simulated zoom, Sweet Light refers to the seduction of illumination, focusing on the phototropic vision of a moth. Writes Viola, "A moth emerges from a discarded letter as the spirit of a dead thought and -- after an attempted flight to freedom -- an individual appears, is inexorably drawn into the source of light, and consumed."

Ancient of Days
12:21, 1979-81, color, sound
Ancient of Days is a remarkable series of "canons and fugues for video" that comprises Viola's most sophisticated structural and metaphorical explorations of time. Mathematical notations of precise time-code editing were applied to construct illustrations of temporal symmetry, duality and transposition -- time-based equivalents of musical compositional principles such as counterpoint and serialism.

Anthem
11:30, 1983, color, sound
Anthem is a post-industrial lamentation, structured on the single piercing scream of a young girl as she stands in the vast chamber of Union Station in Los Angeles. The original scream is extended in time and shifted in frequency to produce a scale of harmonic notes that comprises the soundtrack, to which Viola juxtaposes images of materialism -- industry and the worship of the body, giant oil pumps and the beating human heart, cars streaming along a freeway and blood flowing through veins, modern surgical technology and tree branches in an ancient forest.

Chott el-Djerid
28:00, 1979, color, sound
Viola writes that "Chott el-Djerid is the name of a vast dry salt lake in the Tunisian Sahara desert where mirages are most likely to form in the midday sun. Here, the intense desert heat manipulates, bends and distorts the light rays to such an extent that you actually see things which are not there. Trees and sand dunes float off the ground, the edges of mountains and buildings ripple and vibrate, color and form blend into one shimmering dance. In this piece, the desert mirages are set against images of the bleak winter prairies of Illinois and Saskatchewan, where the opposite climatic conditions induce a similar aura of uncertainty, disorientation and unfamiliarity.”

Migration
7:00, 1976, color, sound
Migration is an analysis of an image, a metaphorical exercise in perception and representation, illusion and reality, microcosm and macrocosm, nature and consciousness. Viola writes that this work is "a slow continuous journey through changes in scale, punctuated by the sounding of a gong…. The piece evolves into an exploration of the optical properties of a drop of water, revealing in it an image of the individual and a suggestion of the transient nature of the world he possesses within."

The Passing
54:13, 1991, b&w, sound
The Passing hauntingly travels the terrains of the conscious, the subconscious, and the desert landscapes of the Southwest, melding sleep, dreams and the drama of waking life into a stunning masterpiece. Viola, placed at the center of this personal exploration of altered time and space, represents his mortality in such forms as a glistening newborn baby, his deceased mother, and the artist himself, floating, submerged under water.

[All descriptions are borrowed from Electronic Arts Intermix]

posted by ryan griffis at 10:10 AM Sunday, October 14, 2007

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