Reflecting+Pool

Reflecting Pool Bill Viola “I think that any time you are making something that touches the inner self of the human being, anything that emerges out of ourselves from a genuine, unguarded place is ultimately a sacred act, no matter whether you follow a religion or not. All of the things that surround us came out of the inspiration of transforming the material world into our inner vision. So in some way, museums are functioning as religious, spiritual places.”
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“It is the individual that is the core of the religious experience: what happens within you, as opposed to the general congregation or the general population. So in today’s world, where our lives are filled with so many messages floating all around us and affecting us, art museums are a special place where you can be quiet and still and focus on another person’s dreams”. - Bill Viola

" I think the Internet today is possibly one of the most accurate representations of the social nature of human beings. Human society is a fundamental network of relations that goes back to each individual’s childhood, families, circle of friends, cultural background and so on, extending out all around the world. For the first time in human life we have an artificial system that can embody and represent that invisible world. What digital technology is giving us is the ability to represent invisible things as well as visible things...The essence of digital is a code, a conceptual, metaphysical element that has no physical existence and yet it’s the most powerful tool we have today to understand our world, both in terms of the ability to model things with a computer and the ability to communicate through digital web systems like the internet. This code is fast becoming the whole way that human beings work: even we ourselves are being revisualized. We no understand the body in terms of force, reaction and hydraulics: today’s model of a human being is a code, DNA. It’s not coincidental that we have remapped the human being as a coded system and that this is the most accurate model of a human being we have. It’s not coincidental that this is occurring in the same age that is giving us the computer, which also functions on a code. It’s part of a much larger movement to somewhere that maybe we don’t quite understand yet but it’s very powerful." - Bill Viola

"The boundary between life and death is a strong theme that runs through some of his work, notably Heaven and Earth (1992). A white column rises from the floor to the ceiling, divided in the middle by two television screens that face each other. The lower screen shows a close-up image of a new-born baby, only days old while the upper screen shows a close-up image of an old woman, hospitalized and in the last week of her life. The glass screens of the television monitors allow both of the images to be reflected in the other: birth and death infuse each other. The monitors are exposed cathode ray tubes, attached to the columns only by four thin metal bars. This exposure of the fragile technology comes across as a strong metaphor for the fragility of human body and was a deliberate conceptual link that Viola aimed to present." - Tokyo Art Beat



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