a looking-glass book

viola at the getty

went with mike and will and john (my roommate) to take pictures for block and check out this exhibit. as viola is one of the pioneers of video art and the fact that he is still producing and supporting himself as an artist 25 years later is impressive in itself.
the show topped that though.
the passions series uses a special (dv) camera shotting at 300 frames a second. this allows him to capture an amazing amount of data in a short timeframe, which he then slows down (i am assuming to 24/30 frames a sec) and projects on plasma screens off of dvds.
i have seen a fair amount of video art coming out of the kinetic program at vcu, where the video half (as opposed to the animation half) was very focused on experiemental video art (animation focused on experimental animation, surprise surprise).
these pieces were better than almost anything i have previously seen.

they were strong conceptually, drawing from renaissance religious paintings. but even more than that...there was a video we watched before going through the exhibit. it had interviews with viola discussing his work.
so much of it was trying to capture that space inbetween seconds, in between time. the idea of understanding a person.

and that, in a nutshell, relates to so much of my own personal work. the idea of relationships, of people, of moments. and he captured so much of that so well, i was awestruck.

i certainly think it can continue to be pushed forward. but what a great point to come in on.

how can we push it? can we add sound? (the pieces were silent, as the sound would have droned because of the speed issues.) for viola, the question was 'what is passion and how can i show it?' for me, the question is 'what is identity and how does it impact others through time?'

it was interesting to note his production decisions - framing, color, depth cues, composition, lighting.

it made me want to make more video art, to continue to push myself and not let myself get too absorbed here at usc in production of 'traditional' ways of doing things. this was an issue when i decided to attend usc. i need to bring my art history books back in may and make sure i stay grounded to the experiemental art side of things too.

theres so much to say, after you have seen a great museum show. just do yourself the huge favor of going to see this show before it closes on april 27. please.