Departing Angel from Five Angels for the Millennium, Bill Viola
(still/detail), 2001 Photo: Kira Perov © Bill Viola.
Artist Bill Viola explains the uncanny origins of his major work, Five Angels for the Millennium, now at Tate Modern
A pioneer of film and video art since the early 1970s, Bill Viola employs both sound and image to profound effect. In Five Angels for the Millennium(2001), five individual video sequences (Birth Angel; Fire Angel; Ascending Angel; Creation Angel; and Departing Angel, pictured) are projected directly onto the walls of a darkened gallery.
‘Five Angels came out of a three day shoot in Long Beach that I had undertaken for several other projects. All I knew was that I wanted to film a man plunging into water, sinking down, below, out of frame - drowning. ‘A year or so later, going through this old footage, I came across five shots of this figure and started working with them - intuitively and without a conscious plan. I became completely absorbed by this man sinking in water, and by the sonic and physical environment I had in mind for the piece.
‘When I showed the finished work to Kira [Perov], my partner, she pointed out something I had not realised until that moment: this was not a film of a drowning man. Somehow, I had unconsciously run time backwards in the five films, so all but one of the figures rush upwards and out of the water. I had inadvertently created images of ascension, from death to birth.’ Bill Viola, 3 June 2003
Remix video of my ‘Calm Tunnel’ video. The whole video has been cut and edited to become faster by up to 400% and with added negative effect to create that strobe light effect. Overall the whole video has a sense to have that endless time sequence of a tunnel never ending fitting perfectly with the soundtrack to Frisky by Tiny Tempa (Shy FX and Benny Page Remix). Which also been edited to complement the speed of the video.
The video repeats the same sequence of footage again and again throughout the whole film. This also is played back in reverse to keep the video together rather than cutting and being out of place like a story being told. When the video first starts, it seem a like the your walking through a coloured tunnel which keeps on going and going and then all of a sudden it reverses, speeding itself up adding more to the experience.
Bill Viola was born January 25, 1951 in the United States and is a contemporary video artist. He is considered a role model in the small generation of artists who express their profession electronically using sound, and image technology in term what’s called ‘New Media’. His works mainly focus on the ideas behind human experiences such as birth, death and part of consciousness mind. Viola grew up in Queens, New York, and Westbury, New York. In 1973, Viola graduated from Syracuse with a Bachelor in Fine Arts. He studied in the Experimental Studios of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, including the Synapse experimental program, which evolved into CitrusTV.
Bill Viola to receive Catalonia International Prize 2009
(via novureyouth)
BILL VIOLA - Ocean Without a Shore, 2007 3-channel High Definition Video/Sound Installation Production stills Photo: Kira Perov
James Cohan Gallery has announced that artist Bill Viola has been awarded the 2009 Catalonia International Prize. The prize was award by the Catalonian government of Spain which is also known as the Premi Internacional Catalunya prize.
The prize has existed since 1989 and is usually given to individuals who can contribute to the development of scientific, cultural or human values around the world through their creative work.
Bill Viola will receive the prize from the president of the Catalan Government during a ceremony scheduled for June 30th at the Palace of the Generalitat, in Barcelona. For more informatin visit, www.jamescohan.com or www.billviola.com.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Video installation is a contemporary art method that combines video technology with installation art. It is an art form that utilizes all aspects of its surrounding environment as a vehicle of affecting the audience. Its origins tracing back to the birth of video art in the 1970s, it has increased in popularity as the means of digital video production have become more readily accessible. Today, video installation is ubiquitous, visible in a range of environments—from galleries and museums to an expanded field that includes site-specific work in urban or industrial landscapes. Popular formats include monitor work, projection, and performance. The only requirements are electricity and darkness.
One of the main strategies used by video-installation artists is the incorporation of the space as a key element in the narrative structure. This way, the well-known linear cinematic narrative is spread throughout the space creating an immersive ambient. In this situation, the viewer plays an active role as he/she creates the narrative sequence by evolving in the space. Sometimes, the idea of a participatory audience is stretched further in interactive video installation. Some other times, the video is displayed in such a way that the viewer becomes part of the plot as a character in a film.
A pioneer of video installation was Nam June Paik whose work from the mid-sixties used multiple television monitors in sculptural arrangements. Paik went on to work with video walls and projectors to create large immersive environments.
Bill Viola is considered a master of the medium. His 1997 Survey at the Whitney Museum in NY is considered a watershed mark in the history of video installation art marking both a period on the sentence of the first generation and a beginning of the next.
Gary Hill has created quite complex video installations using combinations of stripped down monitors, projections and laser disk technologies so that the spectator can interact with the work. For instance in the 1992 piece Tall Ships the audience enters a space where ghostly images of seated figures are projected onto a wall. The movement of the audience was the figures to stand up and approach the viewer.
Tony Oursler’s work exploited the technology developed in the early 1990s of very small video projectors that could be built into sculptures and structures as well as improvements in image brightness so that images could be placed on surfaces other than a flat screen.
In Britain video installation developed a distinctive pattern thanks in part to the existence of regular festivals in Liverpool and Hull and public galleries such as the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford that routinely showcased the work. Sam Taylor-Wood’s early installation pieces are good examples where specially filmed elements are shown as a series of serial projections.
Iranian born Shirin Neshat combines cinematic sensibility to her video installations.
Calm Tunnel Remix HD Demo version (720dpi)
Remix video of my ‘Calm Tunnel’ video. The whole video has been cut and edited to become faster by up to 400% and with added negative effect to create that strobe light effect. Overall the whole video has a sense to have that endless time sequence of a tunnel never ending fitting perfectly with the soundtrack to Frisky by Tiny Tempa (Shy FX and Benny Page Remix). Which also been edited to complement the speed of the video.
The video repeats the same sequence of footage again and again throughout the whole film. This also is played back in reverse to keep the video together rather than cutting and being out of place like a story being told. When the video first starts, it seem a like the your walking through a coloured tunnel which keeps on going and going and then all of a sudden it reverses, speeding itself up adding more to the experience.
Final Phobia Film HD (720dpi)
This is my final installation video. The idea’s behind this film is communicating two ideas of phobias, one being Claustrophobia(fear of confined spaces) and Acrophobia (fear of height). At the beginning of the film we have the water balloon being dropped in reverse and then slowly become into a balloon and finally being dropped again continuously, communicating the fear of heights quite strongly in the first minute of the film. Throughout the film you listen to soundtrack of a Japanese trailer of the film ‘Phobia’ which it fully complements the video being portrayed. Also I have taken some extracts of people and some writing from the film to be as part of my second part of my film. In the second part, it communicates the fear of space. So we have these four guys sleep whilst one of them is dream about a fan spinning around, which in the film the fan is some sort all monster which attacks people in their dream by showing the fear of being trapped inside the fan and being cut and torn apart by the sharp spinning blades, which cause the pouring blood coming out the man’s ear. Finally at the end, he’s put back together again turning him into a living monster to haunt them.
The advantages of digital media are the media or content are always available online using the Internet being easy obtained and share file becoming free. Also working in projects it simply to edit and come back to finish. Its cheap to view and share with people. Many websites have and 360· view of the they museum allowing easy viewing which can easily created using software found free on the internet.
If working with a person from another country the Internet can easy allow sending and receiving files or working in real time. For example, a recording artist in the UK could work artist in Japan without the two people actually ever meeting via email, facebook or other file sharing websites.
The comparison between Raster/Bitmap and vector images.
A defition of a Raster/bitmap as of wikipedia is decribled as
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image or bitmap is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats (see Comparison of graphics file formats).
The difference between the stages of Zaha Hadid of work,during her early work it was hand drawn and painted compared to the new modern generation she uses now being developed of computers using software to create models.
Looking at similarity between the two.The drawings still remain to be the same and all that seem to be changed is the format being used to produce the models.