Otis College Convocation 2009 Presenter: Bill Viola

Every August, right before the semester begins, Otis College of Art and Design hosts a day of Convocation, where new and returning faculty attend presentations by visiting artists and educators. Convocation 2009 Presenter Bill Viola showed a piece called Fire Woman from a longer project called Tristan and Isolde and spoke about Media, Metaphor, and the Productive Unknown.


Bill Viola is considered a pioneer in the medium of video art and is internationally recognized as one of todays leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. For over 35 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Violas video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism.

Category:

Education

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• Otis
• college
• art
• design
• faculty
• convocation
• 2009
• bill
• viola
• presenter
• fire
• woman
• media
• metaphor
• productive
• unkown

[AndrejStudent3116590]

who are you to judge the greatest new media artist in the world have you got a PHD in art do you even know how to write your name legibly?

[issak]

I love and respect Bill's art, I can only add that the seemingly elusive definition of what technology "is" by alluding to Bucky Fuller and others- where technology at its most fundamental

has to do with anything that counters Entropy, any ordering of a chaotic process constitutes "technology". Good lecture.

[wyncko]

art school is a ponzi scheme

dont buy the propoganda