An Interview With Bill Viola

An Interview with Bill Viola
Author(s): Raymond Bellour and Bill Viola

Source: October, Vol. 34 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 91-119
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778491 .
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An Interviewwith Bill Viola
RAYMOND BELLOUR
Bellour:You started doing video when it was brand new. Why were you first
drawn to it?
Viola: Probably for a lot of the wrong reasons in the beginning. I was in art
school at Syracuse University,and I was one of the worstpainters in the class.
The school was very traditional; we had to sit all day and draw apples and
oranges on a table, or nude models, like in the seventeenthcentury.Abstract
paintingwasn'teven being taughtyet. There was an explosionofmedia, process,
and informationall around us, but at the school therewasn't even a hintof this
new "software"approach. As with most art schools, the approach basically revolved around a notion of art classes as shop classes, as building things.
Bellour:Like carpentry?
Viola: Yes. So I would tryto make a square box and the cornerswould come
out one stickingup over the other, or I'd make somethingwith a drawer that
you couldn't close. I just had no physical connection. I was really doing badly,
and was about to leave the school when one of my teachers,Jack Nelson, saved
me. He created a departmentforall the studentswho didn't fitinto the other
departments,sort of an orphans' home. It was called the experimentalstudio,
and it was a totallyfreespace. Nelson was the one who introducedsuper-8 into
the school, and later broughtin video. He didn'teven know how video worked
at the time, he just thoughtwe should have it, and that the students would
figureout how to use it- that'sthe kind of rare, open-minded teacher he was.
Bellour:When was this?
Viola: 1970. Until then the only thing I had really connected with was music.
It's still very importantto me.

92
OCTOBER
Bellour.Did you study music?

Viola.Not formally.I startedplaying drums in a rock and roll band when I was
in high school, and continued into my universitydays. That was the real focus
of my life. It was the firsttime I reallyhad the experience of practicingand developing something,perfectinga skill- of pushing it beyond an initial stage.
This has always stayed with me and helped me develop my video work.
Bellour.And that'swhat gave you the strongconnectionwith sound thatyou've
shown fromthe very beginning.
Viola. Yes, in the universityI also took classes in electronicmusic. We had one
of the firstof the early music synthesizers,the Moog; workingwith it was like
doing sculpture. I had always liked tape recorders,microphones, and so on,
and this took me even furtherinto electronicsand technical things.
Now I always advise my studentsto take a class in electronicmusic, because a lot of video technologywas predated by electronicmusic technology,
which was itselfpredated by the telephone. In fact,much of media comes from
the telephone, which ties everythingback to communication.
Just an example: John Cage, in the late 1950s, beforeelectronicsynthesizers, used one of the firstelectronicmusic circuits,called a ring modulator.
It's a simple circuitinventedby the phone company to send long-distancetelephone calls. It takes the normal speaking voice and transposes it up to a fre- thisprocess is called modulation. Then
quency which can carrymuch further
the circuitdemodulates it at the other end - subtractsthe carrierfrequencyso
thatyou're leftwith the original voice signal. What Cage and othersdid was to
modifythe circuitso that once the voice has been modulated up to the special
carrierfrequency,it was kept thereand never demodulated down to a normal
voice. And that'sthe familiarsound thateveryonerecognizesnow - it'sa classic
electronicmusic cliche. In the scene on the boat in my tape Hatsu Yume,when
you hear a strangevoice, that's the sound. It's the boat captain talkingon the
CB radio.
Bellour:So, foryou, the technical aspect of electronicmusic was the most important?
Viola: Yes. At the time I was seriouslytryingto compose music, but when I
look back I realize that the work I was doing was not really good. The crucial
thing forme was the process of going throughan electronicsystem,working
with these standard kinds of circuitswhich became a perfectintroductionto a
general electronictheory. It gave me a sense that the electronicsignal was a
material that could be worked with. This was anotherreally importantrealiza-

An Interview
withBill Viola
93
tion. Physicalmanipulationis fundamentalto our thoughtprocesses-just watch

the way a baby learns. It's why most people have so much trouble approaching
electronicmedia. When electronicenergiesfinallybecame concreteforme, like
sounds are to a composer, I reallybegan to learn; as I said, it all became a primary process again, like sculpture. Soon I made what was for me an easy
switchover to video. I never thoughtabout it in termsof images so much as
electronicprocess, a signal.
Bellour:And even though therewas super-8 in the department,you weren'tinterestedin it rightaway?
Viola: No, I was too impatient. I'd shoot it and thenwant to see it immediately.
When I firstsaw video, firsttouched it, that was it. There was no question.
Bellour:And fromthat point, making video became a regular activityforyou?
Viola: Yes, I did more tapes in 1973 than I ever have in any other year.
Bellour:Could you compare those early tapes, which I don't know, to yourlater
tapes? Could you describe them briefly?
Viola: Red Tape, from 1975, was a sort of bridge. Before that, the tapes were
didactic, the contentwas the medium, like structuralfilmin a way. For all of
us, I think,the whole focus was on the medium. We were all learning what it
could do. So the act of making a tape became a process of discoveringand demonstratingsomethingabout video. When I look back now I realize thatwhat I
was doing was solving a series of problems I had posed formyself.
Bellour:Do you mean that every tape was about one specificproblem?
Viola:Yes. For example, I made a tape in 1973 called PassageSeries.It's a series
of three or four pieces, and each one has a differentproblem. In one, for instance, I saw that therewas a huge differencebetween a zoom and a dolly (the
zoom being, I think,stilltodaythe most overused thingin video; video cameras
all come withzoom lenses so everybodyjust does it, like Pavlovian training).If
you look down a hallway you see a perspective,the classic Renaissance vanishing point. I experimentedwithwalking down the hall in a way that looked like
a zoom, and zooming in a way thatlooked like a walk. Finally I tookthecamera
and I put it against the wall of this very long hall and scraped it all the way
down and back along the walls. You see the wall scrapingpast at the side of the
frame. The sound was very strong.
Bellour:It sounds like an exercise, a total training.

OCTOBER
94
Viola.:Yes, a physical reexperiencingof that hall, a translation,so that instead

of becoming an image the hall became tactile- a physical thing.A lot of these
problems and exercises came frommy studies in perceptionand experimental
psychology,which I was introduced to throughMcLuhan.
During my firstfewyears with video, I was totallyinto electronics,using
synthesizers,image processing, building little circuits, wiring things myself.
I was making a copy
Then- again in 1973- I made a tape called Information.
betweentwo machines and by accidentI plugged the outputintothe inputof the
same machine, pushed the record button, and suddenly therewas this strange
feedback, a signal that was no signal at all. But since it was routed throughall
the equipment in the studio- the switcher,the chroma keyer,all the monitors
- everytime I pushed the button it did somethingdifferent.That was the best
tape I'd ever made, at that time. (Laughs) And I feltthat if the best thing I'd
ever made was a mistake, I needed to understand thingsa littlebetter.
Up until that point I thoughtthat the raw material in video was the technology, and then I realized that was wrong, or only half the issue. The other
halfwas the human perceptionsystem.I began to realize thatI needed to know
not only how the camera works, but how the eye functions,and the ear, how
the brain processesinformation,etc. This investigationbroughtme intoa whole
new area in my later work. I slowly began to consider video as a total living
system.
Bellour:In practical terms,how did thisaffectthe way you used the technology?
Viola: I began to relyon it less. I got a sense, which grew strongerthroughall
my later works, of an unseen presence or missing element "out there"all the
time, which it was necessary to contact in order for the work to live. It was
somethingnot yetmanifest,and so it made the immediatework- the recording
- incomplete in a sense. This missing element was, of course, the viewer, or
the viewing experience- the otherhalf of the system.It's the dynamic interaction between these two systems,notjust the technologyand language of video
alone, that is the fundamentalnature of the medium.
Bellour:Were you influencedby other work being done in video then?
Viola. I should say firstthat this was really a unique time forvideo and I was
veryluckyto be a studentjust then. While stillin school I was showingin exhibitionswithpeople like Nam June Paik, Bruce Naumann, Richard Serra, Peter
Campus - all the leading early video artists.No one had made any more tapes
than anybodyelse at thattime. Video was stillreallynew; we were all discovering it together.My influences,initially,were more fromthe art world. I was
interestedin performanceart, which was just beginningthen, and a littlelater

withBill Viola
An Interview
95
in experimentalfilm.A friendof mine took me to see work by Michael Snow,

Ken Jacobs, Hollis Frampton, Stan Brakhage, etc.
Bellour:Did you feel a connectionbetween those filmsand the immediate feeling you had forvideo?
Viola:Well, even in those days I didn'tthinkof filmand video as being that different.When myfriendsand I discussed film,we were reallydiscussingimages,
camera, and structure;we would thinkabout them in video terms later.
But gettingback to the question of influences,one thingthatwas veryimportantforme was Gene Youngblood's book ExpandedCinema.This was mainly
because he devoted part of thebook to describingsome of thetechnicalprocesses
of video as key formalelements of the aestheticsof the medium. He decided
what the basic elementswere and listed them. It was very clear. No critichad
done that; many still don't because they don't understand the technology. By
doing this he also demystifiedthe medium to some extent, since in those days
technologylike chroma key was only available at TV stationsand verydifficult
to access. Our main problem in the early days was how to get to these tools,
and thenhow to have enough time using them so that theybecame part of ourselves. This is still one of the primarydifficulties
forartistscoming to videohow to personalize a technologywhich is economically and politicallya corporate institutionalmedium.
Bellour:To situate your work a littlebetter,I'd like to concentrateon the series
of tapes called The Reflecting
Pool (1977-80), and particularlyon the titlepiece,
which lasts seven minutes. Here is the way I would roughlydescribe the tape,
having seen it a few times and taken notes on the last viewing.
The camera is still. In the foregroundthere is a pond, or pool, and in the
background a forest.Throughout the tape a kind of windlikesound of varying
intensitycovers the soundtrack. A man (you) emerges fromthe forest,walks
up to the edge of the pool. We see his reflectionin the water. He staystherefor
a long time, and then suddenlyjumps, but his body freezesin midair above the
water. In the pool the light changes, the water is animated by various movements. The reflectionreappears. The frozenfiguregraduallyfades intothe landscape. More movementsin the water, thistime in backward motion. Then the
reflectionalone. The water turnsblack, thenback to its originalcolor, and suddenly a man, the same man, emerges fromthe water naked, his back to us,
climbs onto the edge of the pool and disappears, in small fragmentedmovements, into the forest.
First: how was all this done technically?
Viola: It's actually fairlyprimitiveas faras video effectsgo. It would be easier to
do today than when I did it a fewyears ago. The key elementof the piece, as in

96
OCTOBER
a lot of my other work, is the stationarycamera. Keeping the camera in the

same place automaticallymeans that any objects thathave not moved between
differentrecordingscan be registered(aligned) again, broken up and put together,and reconstructedto make a whole image. So the finalimage seems like
a complete coherentspace, althoughI've actually cut specificareas of the frame
sectionsof time. It's somethingI've been tryingto workwithfora
into different
while: recombininglevels of time withinthe frame,times which are not strictly
dependent on the sortof absolute timeof the runningof the videotape machine.
I had three elements in the piece, three separate recordings(or series of
recordings). First: a series of recordingsof all the thingshappening withinthe
pool. Second: a recordingof the scene where I come out of the forestand jump
into the water. Third: a recordingof the scene completelyempty,with no one
in it at all.
The finaledit was done in stages. I firstcombined all of the different
spontaneous actions thatI did to thepool, like throwingthingsin thewater, walking
around the edge to show my reflection,and so on, and made a submaster. This
is a preedited tape; it was edited using very slow dissolves to link each of the
pool actions to create the appearance of continuouslymergingactivity.That
became source number one. Source number two consisted of the walking out
fromthe forest,jumping into the air, and freezingthe videotape frameat that
point. The primitivepart is next: I firstmeasured out on the monitorscreen
what the shape of the pool was in the frame. Then I made a card, a black and
white graphic design where the pool shape was white and the rest of the frame
was black, and I put that on a stand in the studio. (This could be generated
electronicallytoday, but when I did it a lot of studios were stillusing graphic
cards for titles.) I pointed the video camera at the card and with the zoom I
lined up the shapes on the black and white card with the image in the original
shot as preciselyas possible. Then we did what's called an external key.
Bellour:Could you brieflyexplain what that is?
Viola. In video there are two kinds of keys that allow one image to be matted
onto another. A key can be determinedeitherby differencesin brightnessbein color(chroma
tweentwo partsof thepicture(luminance key) or by differences
at
one
a
camera
is
is
In
the
that
used,
pointed
object, forexnormally
key
key).
is
then
his
in
of
a
blue
front
a
newscaster
electronically
shape
background;
ample
"cut out" by dropping out of the picture anythingthat is that particular blue
color. Then another source is inserted in place of the blue area behind him.
The externalkey is done the same way, except thatthe newscastershape is also
filledin with a differentsecond source, so that the only thingremaining from
the original image is his shape. You don't see his face anymore,thereis another
image inside him and a second image around him.
This is what I used: the card itselfdisappeared and just became the two

An Interview
withBill Viola
97
different
levels ofbrightness,black and white,necessaryto cut the externalluminance key. It definedthe pool and the background. Inside the pool I inserted
the submaster that I made first,with all the changes and the actions. I used a
"soft"key to cut the edge - where the edge of the shape that is being matted is
softenedand blended in withthe background. I combined the othertwo recordingsof my walking out, jumping, and freezingin midair, and the shot of the
empty space in real time- by doing a slow fade, about threeor fourminutes,
fromthe frozenfigurebackgroundto the emptybackground.The figureappears
to disappear into the landscape. All the while, the pool activitysequences are
only visible withinthe cut-outpool shape and appear as reflectionsand ripples
on the surfaceof the water in an otherwisestillor empty scene. Finally, I did
one last dissolve fromthis whole compound image of my climbing out of the
pool and walking away into the woods. So the frame is broken up into three
distinctlevels of time--real time, still, and time lapse- and reconstructedto
look like a complete image of a single space, since the lines along which it was
divided match the geometryof the original scene.
Bellour:It's farmore complicated than what one can imagine on firstviewing,a
simple division, a split screen between the bottom and top of the image.
Viola: It is more complicated: like sculptingwith time.
Bellour:What ideas were you tryingto get across with the piece?
Viola: I was tryingto get at the original notion of baptism in a way - a process
of cleansing or clearing away, and the idea of breakingthroughillusion. Water
is such a powerful,obvious symbolof cleansing, and also of birth,rebirth,and
even death. We come fromwater and in a way slide back into its undifferentiated mass at death. There is the emergence of the solitaryfigure- the process
of differentiation
or individuation out of an undifferentiated,
natural ground.
There is also the suggestionof the events of thisworld'sbeing illusory,or transient, since theyare only visible as reflectionson the surfaceof the water. The
direct realityis never perceived-like Plato's cave.
Bellour:And then you come out of the water.
Viola. Yes, I come out of the water. The key element in the piece is the frozen
action. There is a transformation
that'sall based on the originaldecision to give
I
think
it
relates
to
in
death
some
up;
way, or lettinggo of the thingsthat you
know, just releasing everything.The image I have is of a cliff,you're rightat
the edge, and you have to decide to go ahead or go back. I thinkwe mustjump.

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100
OCTOBER
Bellour: The Reflecting

Pool is one of fivein a series of tapes.
Viola: Yes. When I starteddoing the early tapes I would put a lot of pieces on
one reel,just to have them on one tape. Then I began to realize that thisobviously made them affecteach other and that I could make a sort of metapiece
which had discrete parts, yet could be considered a single work. I thoughtit
would be like a record album; you could take one song fromit and play it on
the radio or you could listento the whole thing. I firstdid this in Red Tape and
most recentlyin The Reflecting
Pool.
Bellour:Your tapes are oftenvery abstract, paradoxical, illusory,in terms of
perception and the experience of time, and part of this comes fromediting,
special effects,and so on. What impressesme is thatunlike a lot ofvideo artists
who use effectsto get away fromrealistic images, real time, etc., your tapes
almost give an impressionof "reality,"of a spatial and temporal continuity.
Viola: Yes, I thinkthis ultimatelycomes fromthe realization that forme all of
video has its source in the live image. When I broke away fromall the imageprocessingstuffand startedworkingwithreal situationsagain, the firstthingI
did was begin strippingaway all unnecessaryelementsto tryto get back to the
basics. For several monthsI ended up exploringthe most fundamentalunit in
video- the camera and the monitor.In film,recordingis the inseparableessence
of the medium. In video, it is the secondarystage. You don't need a recorderto
have video. You turnit on, and the circuitsare all activated- it'shumming,it's
going. It's more relatedto sound thanto filmor photographybecause it'sexactly
the same as the microphone/speakerrelationship.We have a microphonehere
and all of a sudden your voice is coming out across the room, it's all connected
- a living, dynamic system, an energy field. There are no frozen, discrete
moments.
When you make video you're interfering
with the ongoing process which
between video
existsbeforeyour intentionto use it- that'sthebiggestdifference
and film.It's sortof like a lightis on when you come intothe room. It's all there
sense of creatingsomething.The decision to record is to
already. It's a different
turn on the video recorder,not the camera. The camera is always on, there is
always an image. This duration, this always-there,can be said to be real time.
You're workingwith the image- I don't want to say creating images because
the camera is creatingthe images - and it's synchronizedwithyour experience
at the moment you're there. That's what I meant when I said I was impatient
with super-8- the image would come tomorrow.
Bellour:Do you always have a monitorwith you when you work?

withBill Viola
An Interview
101
Viola: Yes, everywhere,so that I'm always seeing a color image. People sometimes look at my work and say I must have studied lighting.I've never read a
single book on lighting,but I have done a lot of testson myown, just changing
lights,until I got what I wanted- creatingspace, destroyingspace. It's so clear
that way; it becomes a physical skill. You see the effectsof your actions on the
image while you are carryingthem out.
Bellour.And this is what you mean when you say: "I'm thinkingwith my hand
instead of with my head"?
Viola: Yes: thinkingwith the hands, images in the hands. When I teach workshops in video, one ofthe firstthingsI do is cover the viewfinderin the camera.
That way you're pointingthe camera in one directionand your head's turning
in the other,looking fivemetersaway at your image on the monitoracross the
room; it'sreallya disembodied kind of situation. That's why I like the la paluche
mini-camera: it teaches you thatthe image is in your hand, it'snot in your eye.
It's like those incredibleanimals, certaincrabs and so on, thathave theireyes at
theend oflittlerods. That kindoflinkingto yoursensoryexperiencevia a remote
"image arm" is so wonderful.Video was firstused forremote sensing- all TV
was live. Closed-circuitsurveillance systemsare a major part of video history.
Bellour:So in otherwords we really have three separate "times." First the continuous timewhichinvolvesjust you and your perceptionofrealityas it appears
simultaneouslyon your monitor.Then the recordingtime whichmakes a selectionfromthatcontinuum,and finallythe timeofthe finished,editedpiece which
creates the illusion that the second time, the separate recording,possesses the
continuityof the first.
Viola: Exactly. For me the most importantthing to be developed in making
video is the abilityto sense these "othertimes"as theyare contained in the primary time of experience. The act of recordingas an experience formyselfand
the transformationof that recordingas it becomes a part of a futureeventboth are real and both must exist at the same moment when I make a work.
I've learned so much throughmy video work- farmore than what I need
to practice my profession.The real investigationis of life and being itself;the
medium is just the tool in this investigation.You can see many parallels in
ancient Eastern disciplines of mind and spiritual training. There the skill of
the master, forexample, is considered to be not so much the accumulation of
knowledge or even the acute awareness of the present. Rather it is seen as the
knowinghow a presentaction will be transformedinto the future.This is an incrediblydifficult
thingto do. It's not a matterof futureprediction,but of future
knowledge. "It is much easier to pick up an acorn than to move the tree,"the
Chinese sayinggoes. In meditationtrainingyou are given exerciseswhichdon't

OCTOBER
102
make sense or are unpleasant and even painful.You protestand maybe even refuseto do them. But ifyou go throughwiththem,a change occurs,and onlylater
does the real value of the experience become clear and possibly indispensable.
Bellour:And how do you connect that, practically,within the elaboration of
your work?
Viola: I thinkthis has to do with the relationbetween spontaneous inspiration
and calculated, rational thought.I sometimesthinkof my work as "rationalinspiration."I don't like the way thingsare done in films:an inspirationgetswritten up and set out as a sort of blueprint. The act of shootingthe filmbecomes
a matterof followingthe blueprintand reconstructingthe original inspiration.
Even though some of my work is preciselypredetermineddown to the individual shots, the experience I'm having while recordingis stillconnected with the
work. It's really the reason why I do it, ultimately.It is importantforme not
always to know what I am doing. If I can sense the experience stronglyenough
while I'm recording,then I thinkit comes out in the finalwork.
Bellour:Isn't there a contradictionbetween this preplanningof every shot and
the powerfulexperience you're tryingto get at the moment of the shooting?
Viola: No, because the knowledge that I have of what the piece will be is not
necessarilyliteral. When I look at the finishedwork, it's like deja vu. We are
here talkingand all of a sudden I think,"This has happened before,"but it'snot
a visual image, not in the sense thatyou have the same sweateron, or your hair
is the same, etc. It's more a feelinginside that the same thing is happening.
Bellour:Then where does the element of planning come in?
Viola:For me it's always been a matterof fightingforcontrol.When I startedin
video, therewas barely any controlat all. It was like drivingdownhillwith no
brakes: you could turn but you couldn't stop. You couldn't edit an individual
framein 1970- the frameexisted,but it was inaccessible until the introduction
of computer editingin 1973. You couldn't shoot in color outside a studio, and
you couldn'tshoot and record in color unless you had a reallylarge, professional
two-inchvideotape recorder. So we all used black and white. At the same time
that my workwas developing, new technologykept coming out, allowing more
and more control. The turningpoint was the introductionof the portable color
camera, which I used forthe firsttime in 1975 forRed Tape.
When I finallygot outside, the studio had already turned into an incredible limitationforme, even though it was so importantin the beginning. I was
determinednot to just shoot at random. I never liked the early documentary
video styleor guerrillatelevision stuffwhere you shot everythingall the time

withBill Viola
An Interview
103
and just put it togetherlater. I always thoughtyou had to startwith an idea,

but when I got out into the real world I found thatyou could never totallypredeterminethings.There are some incrediblybeautifulmomentsin some of my
tapes that were totallyunplanned. The most strikingone is at the very end of
theTeeth,when the photograph falls into the water.
The Space between
My plan was that the photographwould sink into the water (I'd mounted
it on a piece of sheet rock), but just as we were ready to drop it, I saw a boat
coming up the river,and so I told my friendto wait and when he finallylet the
photograph go, the wave fromthe boat submerged it.
Bellour:It's very strong- the moving image suddenly turns into a photograph,
and we get the feelingthat the whole tape gets carried offby a wave.
Viola: Yes, and this kind of thinghappens again in SweetLight.There's a scene
in which I throwa piece of paper down and a moth comes out of it, totallyby
chance. I was making a tape about phototropism- about insectsblindlydriven
on toward light- thinkingabout it in relation to fanaticismand so on. I had
startedat ten in the morning,workingalone almost continuously,performing
thistedious process of moving the camera down in a predeterminedpath, thirty
differentcamera positions to get a sort of simulated zoom. By the time I got
down to the floor,it was night. I had two thousand-wattstudio lights,and the
bugs startedcoming intothe room, going crazy. One actuallywent straightinto
the lightand landed rightin frontof the camera withitswingsburned. My God!
That's what my tape was about! In my more recentworkthiswhole process has
been snowballing. You wonder afterawhile who is controllingwhom. It's like
that principleof quantum physics- the presence of the observer always affects
and becomes inseparable fromthe result of the experiment.
Bellour:What's reallystrikingis thatthe realitythatunfoldsin your tapes is also
a constantflowof mental images. We're always broughtback to the inside and
theoutsideofthe representation.As ifyou were able to projectintoexteriorrealitythe images that go throughyour mind, since realityhas leftits mark there.
Viola: Certain experiences keep reappearing as images; those images, forme,
are crucial, the basis of all my work. In a way my workis veryliteral,but it has
more to do with the after-experiencethan the actual experience in itself.As if
memorywere a sortof filter,anothereditingprocess. In factthe editingis going
on all the time. Images are always being created and transformed.
Bellour:So foryou memory is a constant reworking .
Viola. Yes, it is an active sense, not a past sense at all. I thinkmemory is as
much about the futureas it is about the past.

104
OCTOBER
Bellour.You talk about your work the way certain writersdescribe theirrelationshipto literature.You oftenchoose to use yourselfas "actor,"as ifto show
that it's really your experience, your body, that's at stake. It seems to me that
when making video involves so much subjectivity,such a direct and solitary
relationshipto the act of creating,representingthings,and developing them in
time, it becomes very much like writing.
Viola. Yes, exactly. The work comes froma verypersonal place forme and it's
always a matterof keeping it as close as possible to that source. This is what
makes me feel that there is no differencebetween what I'm doing and what a
writerdoes. In the beginningI had to teach myselfthe language, how to write.
Now I know enough of this technologyto do thingson my own, so it's becoming even more personal than before.
Bellour.What's your relationshipto fiction?In your articlesyou talk a lot about
landscapes, objects, nature, but in your tapes these images always happen to
somebody, in one way or another.
Viola: There are shots in my tapes which are just landscapes withoutpeople,
but you'reright,theyalways come back to a human presence, at least as a point
when a littleblack dot walks across thescreen
ofidentification.In Chott-el-Djerid,
some
animal or littlerollingstone or something
a
it's
not
know
it's
person,
you
like that. All my images, as you say, feel more inner than outer; they are all
personalized.
I thinkthat all my works are narrative, they all have to do with drama.
is phenomenal in this respect. I can show it in a room with fifty
Chott-el-Djerid
the
monitorsare not so big, the black dot on the screen mightbe
where
people
fouror fivevideo lines high, a speck, really, yet it has a personality.Everyone
in the room is watchinga black dot a quarter of an inch high, travellingacross
the square. It's like composing forthe retina, forthe eye, knowing foralmost
every frameexactlywhere someone's eye would be. The meaning that is there
is revealed throughsome kind of action, or resolutionof the scene. Narrative
structure,I think,is part of our centralnervous system;it is biological in origin
and I am interestedin approaching thatorigin. That's why I'm not interestedin
constructingthingsthe way you would fora movie where it is a matterof a simulation of a situation.
Bellour.So there'sa limitforyou, one thatyou don't want to cross, between the
way you work withnarrativeand more traditionalways of tellingstories,as in
cinema, with actors and so on.
Viola:Well, I haven't necessarilydecided not to cross it, you know. (Laughs) If
someday I feel I need to use professionalactors, to create a situationwhich is

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1979.
Bill Viola.Chott-el-Djerid.
verymuch like cinema where I want to reconstructan eventwithpeople, I'll do

it. Nor do I have any objections to using words or text. I haven't used them so
far- any spoken words in my workhave just been part of the sound landscape
- but it's not a boundary line that I set up and decided I wouldn't cross.
Bellour:Yes, but theredoes seem to be a line (and thishas been verypowerful
in American culture) which puts experimentaland researchwork on one side,
and mainstream,narrativemovies on the other. What's your feelingabout this
strictseparation?
Viola: I thinkit's unnatural, even dangerous, and it's as much the faultof the
artistsas the public. But I also thinkit'sunfortunatethatthe largerpublic feels
it needs a storywithactors, a dramatic storyin orderto feelit'shad a satisfying
viewing experience. Every once in a while, people from the Hollywood industrywill inviteme to show my work or will come to one of my shows, and I
get the feelingthat what they'rethinkingis: ifhe reallyknew what he was doing, he'd be able to tell a good story,he'd be tryingto workwiththe systemand
break into Hollywood.
Bellour:If Hollywood came to you and asked you to make a film,would you do it?
Viola:It depends. If I were given a dream opportunityto have completecreative
control,I would do it. I've been approached on several occasions by Hollywood

106
OCTOBER
producers,but theyall looked at my workfromthepoint ofview of how it could

help them. They look at the ways I've edited something,the kinds of shots I
used, as a way offindingnew techniquesto use in theirwork. For me, obviously,
the work is not about special effects:all the effectsand techniques are there in
service to an idea. But the people in the industryrefuseto acknowledge those
ideas, since they'renot part of the traditionalstory-tellingmode.
Bellour.But in order to serve your own ideas, you more or less depend, like
most video artists,on foundations,museums, universities,and a whole system
of grants.You don't reallyenterinto the laws of the market,which presupposes
a minimum audience.
Viola:That's true, althoughI am subject to the laws of the video art"market"or
field, as differentand disconnected fromthe mainstream as that might be. I
thinkin some ways advancing into the mass marketwould be a lot healthier
and potentiallya more democraticway to determinethe lifeof a workthan the
fashion-oriented,isolated art-worldsystem. But I still feel that a large part of
theworkof an artist,a scientist,any creativeperson, always existsindependent
of the systemthat disseminatesit. The success and popularityof a work is not
necessarilyrelated to its eventual importancein the historyof ideas. The most
importantthing foran artistis to keep working.
I do think,however, that the mass-audience situation and our relation
to moving images is changing dramaticallyrightnow - with cable TV, home
video, video games, etc., the whole video "revolution."Historically,I thinkthe
firstbig break with convention came with the introductionof video games in
the mid-'70s. That was the firsttime the general public could conceive of a television set as useful for somethingother than watching TV. It became something that people could interactwith. It's fascinatingthat people became so
captivatedwiththeseextremelyprimitiveimages - flatlittlesquares and simple
line drawingsthat don't even give the illusion of three-dimensionalspace. And
yet kids are more interestedin these than in Dallas.
Bellour:Because they manipulate them themselves.
Viola: Exactly. Then the next big change was the home video recorderwhich
allowed you to record TV at any time and make your own tapes. And now
more recentlyyou have music televisionwhich is very interestingbecause ...
Bellour:You mean what we call "video clips" .
hours of
Viola:Yes, in the U.S. there'san entirecable channel withtwenty-four
nothingbut "video clips." I thinkit'sreallya visual interpretationof AM radio,
visual junk food, but everyonce in a while you'll see somethingthat'squite in-

An Interview
withBill Viola
107
teresting.And of course the main genre that they'vebeen drawing on forthese

thingsis the commercials,whichthemselveshave always drawn on experimental
filmand video. I've seen the work of Peter Campus, forexample, reproduced
in a clip by some producer in Hollywood last year. This is now the most popular formforteenagers. When these kids mature, this will be theirexperience.
Three-minute clips, along with home video and computers.
Bellour.:And so you thinkthis will change the way we relate to sounds and images in general?
Viola.-Yes, because some kid is going to take that music video experience and
really turn it into somethingprofound. As Cage stressed over and over, the
most importantthingis not to make value judgments, but to promotecuriosity
and awareness. As you yourselfmentioned, that'sthe mistake the avant-garde
has made: stickingso rigidlyto its position as avant-garde that it has had to
downgrade thingslike TV commercials- some of which are fantasticin themselves, and betterthan many experimentalworks- or else insistingon an antinarrativeapproach, like Brakhage and a lot of other filmmakers.It's always a
divisive position ratherthan an expansive one.
Bellour.This bringsus to the problem of gettingvideo art shown on TV. What
has been your experience?
Viola. Well, as you know, I've been artist-in-residenceat Channel 13 in New
York since 1976. I'm sure a lot of people in Europe know about the experimental laboratories that were set up in the public televisionstations in the States.
Actually,the firstexperimentalworkwas done at WGBH-TV in Boston, in the
late '60s- 1967 or so. They startedbroadcasting experimentalprogramsmade
by the producersof the station,but theywere veryinnovativeand used a lot of
new video techniques. That led to the firsttelevision lab, which was created
around 1969-70 in San Francisco, at KQED. Very soon after,WGBH in Boston and Channel 13 (WNET) in New York also created televisionlaboratories
where theywould inviteartists-in-residence
to use the tools of broadcast television. That was the main idea: not necessarilyto have artistsuse portapaks or
that sortof thing,but to have artistsuse the productiontools of the mass media
to create new work. As usual the firstyears were the best, the most open and innovative, beforethingsgradually changed and became fossilized.I believe that
WGBH still maintains a weekly Sunday night program of artists'works, the
longestrunningexperimentalshowcase, since 1975 or '76. It's the last program
on the air and it's always artists'work. Their works are any length- fiveminutes to an hour.

108
OCTOBER
Bellour:And is there a real public forthat?

Viola:Oh, yes, by now they'vegeneratedan audience, not a large one, ofcourse.
Channel 13 tried another approach: theymade a shorterseries and publicized
it as much as possible. The Video and Film Review series runs forten weeks
during the summer, again on Sunday nightat 11 P.M. (one of the least popular
viewingtimes). It's reallygottenquite a good response, althoughunfortunately
they'restopping it this year. All my tapes since 1975 have been broadcast on
public television in the States, mainly Channel 13 in New York.
I don't want to work specificallyfor broadcast, however, and I've been
criticizedon thatpoint by the producersat Channel 13. They say: "You should
really acknowledge that you're dealing with a mass audience; you can't hold
these shots on the screen fortwo or threeminutes,"and so on. But I don't believe in stylisticlimitationand the dominance of packaging in broadcast TV. I
thinkthatthereare some universal elements,in the sense thatall human beings
have two eyes, two ears, and a brain, theyhave the same machinery- even ifa
given culturedrasticallydeterminesconsciousness and even perception.We all
share the same basic conditions of life--birth,growth,death-- and can even
have the same aspirations. This has been my model forthinkingabout the mass
media and I have tried to get in touch with that part of everyone. So, even
though I haven't been making works specificallyfor broadcast, I do feel I'm
making workfora larger number of people than the specialized audience of the
art world.
Bellour.Speaking of which, could you talk a little about this recent series of
? It
spots you did, to which you gave the very ambiguous titleReverseTelevision
seems to be directlyconnected with this audience problem.
Viola: That's true. I thinkit's like my videotape ReasonsforKnockingat an Empty
House,which is also related to thatproblem because it makes directlyvisible the
nature of the viewing experience. It's very long and difficultto watch, people
squirm in their seats; it's a sort of confrontation.
Bellour:An appeal to people, to spectators.
Viola: Yes. ReverseTelevisionis related even more to that and is the only piece
I have done specificallyforbroadcast. The idea was to use the space between
programs where publicitywould normally be. In American public TV there
are no commercials, so they tend to publicize themselves: "At eight o'clock,
watch this show," etc. It still has the feelingof a timed, rhythmicdevice that
breaks up the programs,framesthem, and leads the viewer to the next one. So
it's like what's known in computer terminologyas "down time." Down time is

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Bill Viola. Reverse Television-Portraits of

Viewers. 1983-84.

110
OCTOBER
the space between the programs; that'swhat makes the commercialsso powerful- once again that figure/ground
relationship. I look at my fatherwatching
TV; as soon as the show is over, he relaxes. And just when he's the most relaxed- boom, the ad comes on. It goes rightin. It's really smart.
I'm interestedin that space and also in the idea of broadcast schedulingas
a sort of fieldto be used, so that the process of scheduling becomes related to
editing. It's just like montage. Each shot follows the other, but it takes two
weeks instead of fiveminutes forthem all to complete themselves. I call this a
television "micro-series."For ReverseTelevision,I went around to about forty
people in the Boston area; I went rightinto theirhomes, and had them sit in
the most comfortablechair in theirliving room. I framedit so that you could
see theirwhole body and part of the room where theylived. They werejust sitting and staringat the camera in silence. When the normal program is over,
the publicitycomes on and then bang!, there'sthis image of a person sittingin
silence. You hear them breathingbecause I had the microphoneup veryloud,
you hear cars drivingby outside theirwindow, whatever,and the person is just
staringat the screen. And then they go off.There is no label, no title,or anythingattached to it at all. Then the next hour there is another one. This lasts
fora two-weekperiod.
Bellour:Was this the formulawhich was not accepted by the station?
Viola. Of course. You already mentioned the title, which does in fact have a
sort of subversive ring to it; theyfeltthat rightaway. Television is essentially
the art of packaging; everythinghas to be framed. My piece really had to appear to be fromthe ground- like that space in the computer,the data field(the
ground), which exists only forthings(the figure)to happen on. Or the notion
thatunder all of us, thereis some kind of continuum. In televisionI was always
fascinatedby the factthat at any momentthereare millionsof people sittingin
theirown homes individuallywatchingthe same image. My piece arose froma
very spatial idea, as though therewere a sheet over somethingand everyonce
in a while it parted and revealed the ground or fieldthat'salways thereunderneath. You just see it for an instant and then it's gone.
But the TV people reallyhad problemswiththe notion and it finallycame
down to a confrontationwiththe directorof the station,who would not let anythinggo on withouta title.I refusedto put a titleat the beginningsince it would
have really destroyedthe piece, but was forced to put one at the end. They
wanted it to be a whole descriptionof what the piece was, because again you
have to describe in words what everyone'sseeing. I finallygot away withjust
having my name and the date, which was sort of ridiculous.
Bellour.So it was thesignaturethatisolated it as just theprovocationof an artist.

An Interview
withBill Viola
111
Viola:Yes. I didn'tlike that, but it was the only way it could go on the air. Also
theycouldn't give me a minute foreveryhour; theyonly scheduled the pieces
fivetimes a day and theywanted each spot to last just fifteenseconds. For me
this was too short,because my idea relied on breakingwiththe viewer'sexpectation, thishabituation to televisionas words. Someone appears on the screen,
and people are expectinghim or her to talk, and when he doesn't, people think
it's a mistake, that the announcer forgotto signal someone to start. So, forthe
firstten or fifteenseconds, you're grappling with the problem that this person
isn't speaking, and you have to get beyond that point. I thinka lot of my work
deals with the notion of gettingbeyond, breaking some sort of expectation or
patterning,reaching a point where you have to just give up and reevaluate
what somethingis, and come to it a second time.
Bellour:And one way you tryto do this is duration.
Viola: Yes, because thoughtis a functionof time. That's why Hatsu-Yume,for
example, is so long. I really wanted to go beyond desire in that piece, and the
same withthe portraitsI just mentioned. But in televisionduration is a luxury.
Time is money, and when somethinglasts a long time, those producersjust see
the dollar signs rolling. That's why everythingis cut quickly as well. In the end
we compromised with thirtyseconds foreach portrait,which forme was still
too short.
Bellour:I'd like to talk about anotherprojectyou have, one involvingvideo disc,
and about the video disc phenomenon in general.
Viola: The video disc is the biggest change in moving image technologyin the
last fortyyears. It puts the process of editing in the controlof the viewer.
Bellour:In what way?
Viola:Literally.When you sitdown to play back a video disc, you'reediting. So
the whole notion of editing takes on an entirelydifferent
meaning. To me it's
part of a development that began with computer editing systemswhere you
have time codes put on the framesand you're actually writinga computerprogram or "score" to edit the piece.
Bellour:And what exactlydid computereditingchange foryou, besides the precision factor?
Viola: Previouslyediting was always a linear process. I don't mean just laying

112
OCTOBER
shots back to back, but that every cut followsevery other cut. The computer
taught me that you can finishyour tape beforeyou actually edit it.
Bellour:Meaning?
Viola:You do all your rough editingon a lower formatsystem.You writedown
frame numbers and so on, and then you make your list which becomes the
computer program to do your finaledit. Of course you have to do it this way
because you are an artistwithno money and you only have fourhours to do an
edit in an expensive studio. But forme, conceptually,what happened was that
I began to see my pieces as somethingthat could exist all at once, as a whole,
ratherthan being put togetherbit by bit. Like a word processor: writeout the
whole textand then make your changes in the software.The finalstep is printfromwritingat the typewriter,where the firststep is
ing it out; this is different
the printing.
Bellour.And how is all that related to video disc?
Viola. The thingthat fascinatedme about computereditingwas that therewas
a fieldor ground whichhad to existbeforethe computercould do anything.By
entering into the computer the list of shots, you're describing the space the
computerworks in. On the video disc itselfyou're laying out programmedinformation.There are 54,000 frameson each side of a video disc; the way the
material is laid out is called the informationgeographyor disc geography.
Now there'sno reason why you have to play those 54,000 framesin the
order in which they've been recorded. Theoretically, you could play frame
number 1, then number 50,000, number 4, number 1700, and so on, at the
same framerate, thirtyframesa second in the American standard. That means
you can jump anywhere.
Bellour:What kinds of effectsdo you imagine this can produce?
Viola: As a startingpoint, let's take a familiarexample fromfilm.In standard
cinematic language you have threebasic shots: long shot, medium, and closeup. The process of editing reconstructsthe illusion of "real time" fromthese
separate parts, as if you'rejumping fromthese differentspatial points in the
room in step withthe real time in the scene. With the video disc, it'spossible to
record all of those differentcamera positions at once and always have them
there. You could record more- ten, twenty,a hundred. It's like an audio recording ifyou have a ten-trackaudio recorder: ten microphonesin the room,
ten people talking.And when you play it back you have those ten microphone

withBill Viola
An Interview
113
positionsall playing back in real time. It's possible tojump over to any one you
want while the tape is rolling.
Bellour.So this is your video disc project . . .
Viola. One of them. It's the idea of having parallel camera points of view, in
termsof traditionalcinema. So, forexample, ifyou want to watch a conversation fromacross the room forthe whole time as a long shot, you can; or ifyou
want to go rightin toward the guy who is talking,you can do that, too. The
importantidea is that the other points of view still exist, whereas in cinema
they'reon the editing room floor. With the video disc, the process of viewing
becomes editing.
This is why the video disc is a newly emergingart form.It's the art of interactivity.One of the areas where we reallyneed new skillsis in deciding what
our scheme for interactivityis. That's the whole notion of "menus."
Bellour:It's difficultif you have 54,000 frames.
Viola. It's incredible. It becomes more like a book than a movie. With a book
you have a sense of the whole beforeyou actually get into it- thereis the physical book in your hand, as well as the table of contentsand index. With the disc,
the trickis to have a menu or some sortof metadescriptionto presentwhat's going on to the viewer. It's all there,but the viewer has to know what to access, to
know it's possible to go to another camera point of view and so on. The question is, how do you mechanically, physically,and conceptually work out this
process of interactionso as to make it as natural as possible?
Bellour:Have you found a way to work this out foryour own project?
Viola.No, that'spart of my excitementin doing it. I reallythinkthereare better
ways than what's been triedup 'til now. Rather thanjust puttinga listof words
on the screen, saying number one is such-and-such and pushing number one
you can go there,etc., I'm looking forways to make it arise naturallyout of the
images themselves.Just the images tellingyou what to do, coupled with the
viewer'sdesire. Part of the workof composing the piece becomes composing for
thisotherlevel. To be able to build pieces fromwithina piece, so thatyou and
I could sit down at the same disc and see completelydifferentthings- there
would be parts I would see that you would never even reach. It becomes a lot
more like exploringa territory,and that'swhy I thinkthe whole process of recording is becoming a lot more like mapping.
Bellour:You mean now that computers are involved in the process?

114
OCTOBER
Viola. Yes. The video disc actually representsthe merger of two of the most
powerful media in this century-video (and by proximitycinema) and the
computer. The computer is becoming more and more integratedinto all these
different
areas. As Youngblood puts it, the computerwill contain and become
all media, all the other individual systemsthat we have. They will retain their
individualitybut all of them, includingphotography,cinema, and writing,will
have as their base some digital code. In that sense the notion of translating
takes on tremendouslynew possibilities,because everythingis writtenin the
same code.
Computer graphics will ultimatelyreplace what we now call camera images. I'm waiting forthat, I thinkwe'll be able to see that in our lifetime.The
end of the camera! I thinkI'm going to buy a big bottleof champagne while I'm
in Paris and save it forthatday - ten, twenty,thirtyyears fromnow - when the
camera will end. I'll pop the cork, not to celebrate a demise, but because it's
going to be one of the major historicalshiftsin imagery.I thinkit could be compared to the development of illusionisticRenaissance perspectivein art.
Bellour:And what makes it so revolutionaryforyou?
Viola:From the camera obscura onward, the prerequisiteof all images has been
light,and that's going to end. We will soon be able to make complex, realistic
images withoutrelyingon light, and once you have an image which does not
use lightas itsprimarysource material,thenyou're in the domain of conceptual
space.
forthe one who's seeing the image, since in
Bellour.Yes, but is it reallydifferent
eithercase he/she is seeing the same effectof light?
Viola.The importantdifferenceis in the process of making the image. The real
nature of a situation is not the visual image, but the informationmodel of objects and space thatthe brain creates fromvisual impressions.The image is just
the source, the input. Now, ifyou're talkingabout creatingentireimages that
don't rely on light anymore, about building images fromthe point of view of
conceptual space, then the mapping aspect comes out again. For example, the
last thingin theprocess of making a three-dimensionalcomputergraphicimage
is positioningthe point of view.
Bellour.Which in a camera is the firststep.
Viola: Exactly. So if you wanted to make a computer graphic image of this
room, you wouldn't take a camera and shoot it; you'd measure everythingin
centimeters,or in millimeters,where all the objects are. Then you'd enterthat
into the computer and you'd have the room.

An Interview
withBill Viola
115
Bellour:And what happens to the point of view?

Viola: The room is in there,everything- the bottomof the table, the top of the
and it'snot an image, it'san informationalpattern.Then
table, all your
books-the lastthingyou
say is: now I want the pointofview. Even in computergraphics
theycall it "the camera," even though it doesn't exist. Like the movie Tronthat
Walt Disney Studios produced a few years ago. A terriblemovie, but it was
fascinatingto see traditional cinematic camera gestures-that sort of grand,
sweeping panoramic shot and the crane shot- transposed into this computer
program which didn't have to do that at all. But they still did it! Incredible!
Human conventions,not technology,are always thelimitingfactor.But getting
back to the example of this room, to get an image you say: OK, let's put the
point of view one meter fromwall A and two meters fromwall B, and half a
meterhigh, aiming in thisdirection,etc., describingit all mathematically.Then
lenses become mathematicalalgorithms,equations. Of course, that'show they
originallymake lenses, withthemathematicsof optics. What happens in a computer, then, is that the mathematicsof optics doesn't describe the building of a
physicalobject called the lens, but the behavior of lightin that space. So a wide
angle lens becomes a certain equation, and once you have the point of view,
you type in thatequation and thereit is. The laws of optics are enteredinto the
computer data base first,the images of objects come later.
Bellour:But the computer images we see today are so simple and primitivelike cartoons.
Viola:Yes, of course, but the next generationofcomputerswill produce images
that are equal to camera images. The camera, today, stillremains the best way
of generating"realistic"images. And it will continue to be so fora long time.
But once the computerscome up to a veryhigh level of resolutionand information contentin the image, you won't be able to tell the difference.And at that
point it won't matter. The whole notion of what a camera physicallyis might
change, too.
Bellour:For example?
Viola:You could derive enough informationfromthisroom to make a fairlydecent computer graphic image fromsonar, you know. That's what submarines
do: theysend out sound waves whichbounce offobjects, come back, and create
a sound impression.You could put a sonar "camera" here and it would send out
waves all over the room, hit all the objects, and come back and be registered.
That's not a visual recordingprocess at all, it'sacoustic, sound mapping. That's
how theymap the ocean floorand it could be a perfectlyvalid way of creating
an image of this room with a computer.

116
OCTOBER
Bellour:I noticed, in one of your articleson thiswhole issue of evolvingtechnology, that you made many referencesto Oriental culture. Also, the presence of
Eastern imageryand ideas is verystrongin many of your tapes. Could you say
somethingabout the connection you see there?
Viola: I've been realizing thatthereis a stronglink, or a potentiallink, between
what's happening withtechnologynow and the artistictraditionsof the past in
Oriental culture. Or even the traditionsof Western culturebeforethe Renaissance, when the East and the West were really connected in termsof cultural
patterns. Oddly enough, one of the main breaking points between them was
the whole restructuring
of theimage throughperspective- Brunelleschiand the
formulationof illusionisticspace. I thinkthatin a funnyway thisbreakingaway
fromthe lightbasis of images will lead back to certainaspects of the older tradition, to the way that images were created in the Middle Ages in Europe, and
still are in the East. The image is not considered to be a frozenmoment or an
arrestedaction or an effectof lightor anythinglike that. It's reallyconceived as
existingwithinthe spectator. The image is a projection of the viewer and the
whole point is the interactionof the viewer and the image. The image itselfbecomes related more to a diagram. A mandala, forexample, is reallya diagrammatic or schematicrepresentationof a larger system,not necessarilythe depiction of how an object appears to the eye . . .
Bellour:To the outside eye . . .
Viola.Yes, that'sreallyfundamental.And I see thetechnologymovingus toward
building objects fromthe inside out ratherthan fromthe outside in.
Bellour:So - ifI understandcorrectly--you findin the technologyitself,first,a
returnto a whole seriesof human traditions,and second, a sortofuniversallink.
Viola:Yes, I thinkit is a historicalnecessitythat at thistime we have been discovering so much more about the past. We are moving into the past as well as
into the future.It's an organic progression,like the way a tree grows- a tree
doesn't grow from bottom to top, becoming taller. It radiates out from the
center, expanding concentrically.Slice a cross section and you see concentric
circles. That's how a person grows.
Technologically, I can see, for example, the way video reached back to
touch paintingonce artistsmade the breakthroughand developed the abilityto
manipulate line and color electronically.This was the firststage- the firstvideo
images made withouta camera. Soon images will be formedout of a systemof
logic, almost like a formof philosophy- a way of describingan object based on
mathematicalcodes and principlesratherthan freezingits lightwaves in time.
This is the intrinsicrealityof objects in traditionalAsian art.

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Bill Viola.Hatsu-Yume.1981.
Bellour:So, at thatlevel, it becomes almost essential forany artistwho wants to

manipulate images in the futureto have a deep technologicalknowledge.
Viola: Yes, but I thinkthat has always been true, in the same way that if you
want to be a good pianist, you need to know the mechanics of your piano in
orderto play it. That's mandatory.I thinkthatthishas been a problemin video
because the technologyis expensive and exclusive. It's not always accessible,
and there'sa big gap now which has developed between high and low technology. A piece like Hatsu-Yume,forexample, which was done at Sony in Japan,
could never have been done withmost of the video systemsthatwere available
to me in the States. Economics has to be takenintoaccount wheneverwe discuss

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Bill Viola.Hatsu-Yume.1981.
video because it's a huge factor.It's like the piano--unless you spend a lot of
time with the medium, you're stillfumblingaround with the individual notes,
you're not really thinkingabout music.
Bellour:Yes, but in this case the object itselfis so phenomenallycomplex.
Viola:For us, yes, butjust watch the young kids playingcomputergames. The
kind of skills that we need today--not only to make images with video, but
really to do many day-to-daythings--have less and less to do with the skills
we're born with. From birthour whole systemfunctionson a level of manipulation and this structuresall our thoughtprocesses-it's hand to mouth to eye.
Our thoughtsare based on thisphysicalrelationto reality,like thatof burning

withBill Viola
An Interview
119
your hand in the fireor workingwith some clay. We've all developed a very
high level of physical intelligence.But workingwith a computertoday is so incredibly tedious, because at the moment it's still an intellectualtool, not an
intellectual-physicaltool. Mind and body become separated. If you want to
make something red, you type M-A-K-E R-E-D, because the computer abstractseverythingto the level of the writtenword symbols. But if you have a
red pen or a red brush you just go pffffff.
. . . That's such a direct, instantly
understandable experience. Instead of pushing the edit button and typingin
frame numbers, I would much rather move an object with my hand. That's
what theymean when they say "user-friendly":
making the computermore ininto
natural
As
time
people's
tegrated
tendency.
goes on, computers are beless
intellectual
and
more
This
is
the evolution of technology.
coming
physical.
The image I get is more like a monkey manipulating some kind of tool.
Bellour.So in a way we've come back to those firsttapes you made: forexample,
the experience of physicallyscraping the camera back and forthalong a hallway wall.
Viola. Yes, it's always a circle.
Since the interview,Bill Viola wrote to me, "I just received a grant
Postscript.
fromthe American Film Instituteto do a new tape about animals. I'm tryingto
become artist-in-residenceat the San Diego Zoo."
Paris- Los Angeles,
January1984 - January1985
Bellourwishesto thankLisa Krugerwithoutwhoseaid thisEnglishversionof thetext
wouldnothavebeenpossible.


An Interview With Bill Viola

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An Interview with Bill Viola

Author(s): Raymond Bellour and Bill Viola

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