Bill Viola

Born in 1951 in the United States. Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA. Bill Viola; " Nine Attempts to Achieve Immortality", 1996 Video installation with sound

Viola is a pioneer in international video art. He has been active since the early 1970’s and has created a large number of works of various expressions and technical realization; from videotapes and soundscapes to architecturally oriented installations, performances accompanied by electro music, and works created specifically for television. Viola’s interests center on the perception and consciousness of man, the way in which our experiences are engendered and how the mechanisms of our perception and interpretation of our surroundings work and what they look like. Besides the visual aspect, sound is an important element to Viola. Apart from that, many of his works uses his own self and body as a starting point, and the artist himself figures prominently in his works, e.g. the video installation ”Nine Attempts to Achieve Immortality” from 1996. The video is projected from behind onto a screen hanging from the ceiling, and shows the artist in deep concentration, holding his breath until he is about to die from asphyxiation. When he at last breathes out, the sound and reaction comes close to a shock. The work is an excellent example of the precision and apparent simplicity that characterize the works of Viola

Cross Pathway Project, Collaboration – Conclusion

The project required us to collaborate and use the skills we are learning from of individual pathways to influence and produce a piece of work that is titled the

door way.

We initially got together and brainstormed as many ideas we could think of to enable us to produce the best idea that we could all agree would be the right one. We used tutor contact time and mainly chose Ian Parkin to give is input from a fresh perspective

and we found this to be very useful.

We arranged weekly contact with our mentor Christinia Marishell

And informed her of our progress and time management and what

we intended on doing in the week ahead.

We spent most of the first two weeks researching our ideas and we resisted the temptation to jump in and go forward with an idea.

We were fully aware that our idea is just that and that the execution of it was not as important as the idea behind. For example the prints we produced were not as strong as we would have liked but it was the idea that is most important.

When we had agreed and this was a heavily debated concern as we all argued what we felt would be important for the collaboration, we then decided who was to gather what information and how we would progress that aspect of the project.

We all did exactly what we said we would do and this was important and helpful in meeting the deadline and also in our agenda meetings with our mentor as it showed our progress

time management was correct.

We found it particularly pertinent that the artists we researched for example Christian Boltanski, Bill Viola and Andy Warhol would be reflected in our project and that is the main reason we found it helpful to spend two weeks researching their work. We do believe that this is reflected in our final piece.

This has been a successful adventure and we have learned from each other through good communication and sharing the workload. We have produced a blog that chronologically shows our progress through out the project and includes information from the various lectures that were designed to inform us about collaboration and what it involves. Also we have produced a short film that we have included.

We have included as many sensory experiences that we needed and we intend to make the viewer uncomfortable and claustrophobic through sound, touch, feel and sight. This is our work and we have titled it claustrophobia behind closed doors.