04 February 2008
Bill Viola + Nine Inch Nails
I first encountered Bill Viola's work unknowingly, through this very image in the teaser for Nine Inch Nails' Still album. I really, really love the video pieces he made projected in the background of La Mer, The Great Below and The Mark Has Been Made during the Fragility tour. The image above is part of an incredibly beautiful sequence shot in poppy fields.
I've always really loved the aesthetics of The Fragile and La Mer and The Great Below are two of my favourite songs on that record. It's wonderful to see the sentiment in the music both reflected and complemented so well by gorgeous visuals.
"I wanted to let the images actually provide a base for the music. I'm really not interested in illustrating music and certainly not in cutting on the beat or throwing in every little movement in the song. I think images can function, in contrast to a lot of music videos ... as kind of a base or a steady state that allows the music to flow and ebb and crest over the top of it."
- Bill Viola in the DVD commentary on And All That Could Have Been
One of the last few images from The Great Below and also one of the strongest and most enigmatic. Viola talks about how this is an image "of ascension... into another world, another state". Interesting, considering that it reminds me a lot of The Hanged Man of the tarot.
Check out the videos:
posted by Abigail at 23:58
Latest entries
Powered by Blogger
