Bill Viola

Bill Viola, in full William Viola, who was born January 25, 1951. Born in Queens , New York, U.S.), American video, digital, and sound artist who was one of the pioneering figures of a generation of artists in the 1970s employing video art and sound technologies. He is a contemporary video artist and a photographer whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in new media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness. Viola is mostly known for his room sized installments that allow prospective viewers to be enveloped with sound and the feature of multiple screens of moving images.

Viola had a near death experience and that's what strongly inspired him to be an artists and become inspired by many that go by the names of Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Alberto Giacometti & Joseph Beuys. Whilst he was in education in two educational societies, The College of visual and performing arts (1969-1973) and The Syracuse university. Throughout Viola's life he travels and always tries something new when it comes to the world of artistic things. However, Viola only started as a janitor which isn't the most you expect from an artists but his life events led him to pursue Arts.

Viola's work is very emotionally catching as well as eye catching as it captures the struggles an the real feelings of human beings that can't really be shown, represent or even explained. His work in my eyes is every powerful as there can be many different thoughts and emotions towards all the types of images he has created. His work feels very relatable and makes me feel as if I have finally been understood in life but in a way of being expressed without being judged and picked on. Viola's work is definitely quite different from other artists and his thoughts are very particular and enclosed off to the world and I believe that this is his way of expressing the pain or confusion he is feeling in life as everyone around us does. I believe create artwork is not only his passion but I also see it as his copping mechanism towards any negative feelings and creating these different type of images makes him feel like he's finally free and shows him that he's not the only one suffering or the only one whose hurt in this world NO ONE IS PERFECT IN THIS LIFE. there are many people who don't know how to express their feeling and what they feel about certain situation. however Viola's work shows a strong minded person through some very mesmerizing and relatable images that have been created.

Photoshoot Plan

Contact Sheets

for this shoot I had the intention of collaborating the ideas of Bill Viola's style of work to my very own techniques and ideas to make this photoshoot. There are many things that went well during this photoshoot for example: The fabric itself that is being moved around as its being projected is giving the images a more interesting look and feeling to them. this is because the movements of the fabrics capture the images at different angles or somethings get hidden and many of them are all just deformed faces or images in general. There were also many things that didn't work well, For example : The way that for this photoshoot I had to have many volunteers to help out with the setup of the photoshoot in general. two people had to hold onto the fabrics and keep the movements going and another person who was holding the projector in the right ways enable to capture these images effectively. If I were to capture these images again I would used a fan while hanging the fabrics onto something other than having people helping I would use the fans and face them onto the fabrics and place my projector on top of something stable and in the right angles. I do believe that this is the right amount of taken images and I believe that I will not have to look more and work more for many more images as the images circled that I have created seem like strong and eye catching images within themselves.

Experimenting with Colour - LookUp

The images below are a set of developments I have created in the style of Bill Viola. To get me thinking about how I should create these images I observed his work and focused on the colours and positioning of the images. I started off experimenting with the different colours and exposure etc until I was pleased with the outcome of an image.For my first development I used the colour look up and changed the colour of the image to make it look more surreal. I then carried on a decreased the brightness and exposure but increased the contrast. This was effective as it made my images stand out. After creating my first development i repeated the steps to create the rest of my images which allowed me to create abstract developments and replicas of Bill’s work. I am very pleased with outcome of my work because they replicate the work of the artist and fit my criteria. For my next set of developments I will try to make the images black and white and attempt to make developments as successful as my first.

Experimenting with Black & White

These images I have used photoshop to draw on the black and white feature for the images to have a slight development done to them as well as them looking different and as well as them making people feel a different sort of way when looking at these compared to the edits above. I have done these types of edits to create a sense of understanding as a photographer that you cannot just be done with a photoshoot after one edit you much experiment and develop your work even if its ever so slight edits. I felt like the black and whit edits made the images have more impact as there was a harsher difference between the light and dark areas. you can also clearly observe the shapes of the fabric.

Further Developments - Mirroring

Futher Developed Mirroring - Black & White

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Redraft Photoshoot - Water Developments

For this photoshoot I had physically made a few designs to my images by firstly printing my images out and placing the images into water. whilst capturing images when the water is being purred into the box in able to get a liquid feeling to the images also to continue the idea of texture being my main focus for my project.

I believe that the reason why I had done this was for the effect of the water to give the fabric in the images more texture and a different form of texture. instead of it being a fabrics movements being captured its developed by using the idea of capturing the textures of the water itself.

Black & White Edits

For this photoshoot I had physically made a few designs to my images by firstly printing my images out and placing the images into a box of water whilst capturing images when the water is being purred into the box in able to get a liquid feeling to the images also to continue the idea of texture being my main focus for my project.

Double Exposures

For these images I had decided to double expose them to each other to see how the movement of the water can change. These images aren't really related to Bill Viola yet somehow still are as Bill Viola does work with people under the water sinking after a big splash. I believe that these images are successful because they show how the movement of water can change the perspective of an images and the way it looks.