Bill Viola

One of my first real engagements with Video Art was the Bill Viola retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art, and it was a transformative experience for me. In the dark galleries, Viola transforms time and space through unique combinations of projected videos. A video river runs through one room through a series of mesh screens, while a man burns- and is simultaneously flooded on an opposite screen in another. The sound for both is the same, and works equally well with each image. The tragedy of Viola's work is that it is impossible to adequately share in the classroom. You have to be in the environment that he creates. However, to give students a sense of his work, The Reflecting Pool is one of my favorites: