Bill Viola

Bill Viola was mentioned by Cyan in my Crit. I've looked at his work before and im sure we saw one of his video pieces (on youtube) in Su Ballard's class last year BUT i realised that there are no image of his up here. So here we go:



- Ocean without a Shore - 2007
This is a video installation of his created in 2007. This qoute is sited as partial inspiration on his website:
‘Ocean Without a Shore’ is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in the church of San Gallo become portals for the passage of the dead to and from our world. Presented as a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the video sequence documents a succession of individuals slowly approaching out of darkness and moving into the light. Each person must then breakthrough an invisible threshold of water and light in order to pass into the physical world. Once incarnate however, all beings realize that their presence is finite and so they must eventually turn away from material existence to return from where they came. The cycle repeats without end.


- Dissolution - 2005
Color video diptych on plasma displays mounted vertically on wall


This image i couldnt find details for and the site i pulled it down from was in Japanese. hmm.


The Crossing-1996 Video/Sound installation.

There is something so beautiful and yet so graphic and disturbing about Viola's large scale video installations and associated pieces. His use of light and motion are incredibly powerful and are on an epic scale. I am drawn to these images of his but i am sure that the actual video works would be much more impressive than these images./ I wish i could get anywhere near his beautiful and powerful use of lighitng and amazing (yet simple) use of effects - water, fire etc.

Post - Crit +

So, despite my misgivings about fridays Crit it actually went really well! the whole week was a really interesting process, not only being able to see and review the Digi Film groups work but to have Crit sessions with 40+ students and four or five members of the faculty made things much more interesting and wide ranging in discussion.
I think in terms of my Crit that talking to R Gillies the night before was crucial. She made me realise exactly how my work has kind of split into two much more distinct catergorys since coming here. There is the work that is the continutaion from the rest of my Fourth year at art school; which almost culminate with the images osted earlier on this blog. And then there is the body of work that has changed and moved on from there and drawn on the influences i have been exposed to while studying here at KCAI. The important realistion for me was that the three prints presented on Friday were images that belong to this expanded project that is drawing on the influences here at KCAI and is still an ongoing and shifting project.

Points that came out of my Crit:
-Austin's comment about my use of the word "suspended" and how that the images have such a gravity and weight (due to the figures position and movement and the black space) that there isnt a feeling of suspension in them. There is much mire a feeling of gravity and movement. My comeback that its a phrase i use influenced by the process of creating the images and that i agree does not reflect the nature of the images.
-The use of lighting and the change of the lighting and clothing to suit individuals and there relationship within the photograph.
-Use of the massive black space to create and highlight the feelings and emotion of each figure. The way on which this space also creates the feelings of movement and space.
-Joe Fuller's comment to me afterward about how the distance the camera is from the subject also lends this diagrammatic element to the whole thing.
-The images were read as part of a series but they are not identical and do not suffer due to this. In fact they work brilliantly together because of the subtle differences in lighting and position etc.

ok that is enough text/writing for now...

This is not a Mock Up...

Untitled I, II and III from the series [ ]
Inkjet Print
40x21 3/4 inches

This is on the same wall as the image in the mock up (see earlier post)


Really bad stitched image, i couldn't get far enough back form the wall with my wee point and shoot so this is two images cobbled together.
I will document it properly tomorrow when i can roll in with me 20mm.

Japanese Robot Company...its not Gundam but its epic

Please just watch this...it'll will make you laugh and go wow at the same time.

Thanks Jesse!

Getting in on this Mock Up game...

Mock up 1 - its enourmous i know but its an idea haha

Space shots - Gallery space attached to the Photo/New Media Dept at KCAI

F*ck

My images for review look like the images of artists that are of influence to this project. Dam. I arrived at similar images...but i got there a different way...does that count? Even if it does i feel like this half a semester has been a...well a lot of dicking around i guess...
Shit...not feeling good about friday now. Not at all.

Just for kicks...

A little tiny giant City heheh

Images...

The Space itself marked out by me. Photos not in chronological order.





I marked off an approximately 1 metre by 2 metres on the footpath next to an entrance way on the north side of W47th Street, Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, MO. It was a blank piece of concrete, on my right were steps leading to another road, to my left was an entrance way that eventually lead to the doors for a parking building. The wall i was in front of was blank and not marked with any signage. But very interestingly on the wall above me there was a small dome security / surveillance camera.
In the course of the 25 minutes that i took to act out this securing of public space i was approached by 3 groups of people, all genuinely believing that i was a security guard employed by the Plaza.


Panorama taken from inside the space that was guarded/ reclaimed from the authority of The Plaza:


Some of the video footage from this piece can be viewed here... [CLICK_ME]

Thanks to A.C.E who did an epic job of filming and photographing!

Mid-Semester Review Prints

So over here, there is a mid-semester review, much like the one that we went through just before I left Otago. Except over here it seems to be a much more intense process, although perhaps it seems that way to me as an outsider who isn't that familiar with procedure yet.
Anyhow, these three images are going to be my presentation for the review this friday. I have printed these images so that they are 40x21 1/2 inches in dimension. So there pretty big while not being so big that they cannot be hanged.
At this point in time i am not that happy with them. I do not really like where this work has taken me this semester so far. While this is only mid-semester for these guys it is under a month before i have to have show here and document it to submit for SITE09 and i am not that happy with the direction of the work.
I set out to capture these images that contained something that would look impossible, a figure suspended and floating above a surface, suspended in space and disloated fomr the space that they are in. I do not like how the space has become simply black, but it does make for an elegant space and one that emphasizes the figure within it. I wanted this over-all body of work to talk about a sense of isolation and a sense of dislocation...something which i dont know if these works do, the figure is certainly isolated but...i don't know its making me go kind of crazy right now. Feedback of ANY sort would be epic!

All yo!