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 More Quotes by Bill Viola More Quotes From Bill Viola Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep. Bill Viola fast-paced soul world 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 space reflection art 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 keys intellectual thinking There's another world out there just beyond the world we're in. It's just on the other side of that translucent, semitransparent surface. Bill Viola another-world sides world People have experiences in art museums today that they used to have in church. Bill Viola museums people art Live your Art. Don't think about it. Bill Viola art thinking The fundamental aspect of video is not the image, even though you can stand in amazement at what can be done electronically, how images can be manipulated and the really extraordinary creative possibilities. For me the essential basis of video is the movement - something that exists at the moment and changes in the next moment. Bill Viola video essentials creative It only takes a second for an impression to become a vision. Bill Viola impression vision 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 experts feelings art 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 believe art thinking Fifty years from now I don't think optical realism is going to be an issue in visual communication any more. 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, 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 communication memories fall Art has always had as its test in the long term the ability to speak to our innermost selves. Bill Viola self long art 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 just-being together art Revolution is something that actually starts in individual hearts. Bill Viola individual revolution heart There is an invisible world out there, and we are living in it. Bill Viola invisible world 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 speed dna light 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 students art thinking I like to keep the meanings in my work flowing and open. Bill Viola I would prefer to be forgotten, then rediscovered in a different age. Bill Viola different age forgotten 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. 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. We call this the moment of death. That analogy returns to me over and over as a metaphor for ourselves. Bill Viola ocean water moving
