Bill Viola Video Black - Leah Flook

Video Black takes us through stages of seeing and how this was done throughout centuries. The examples given work in a non-linear sense by instead pointing to specific notions throughout the history of image making. First given is the idea of a security camera constantly storing memory of a specific space. The security camera acts as a guard while also reproducing actions of the environment, individuals, and objects placed. Each unknowingly recorded day in and out - showing the effects of time. Viola speaks to what the idea of an image is; using examples of paintings, photographs, and cinema. He speaks of duration as a medium of consciousness, meaning duration causes for memory, which then memory causes for understanding and interpretation. I was most interested in his thought of the image securing its place by accepting its own mortality. The thought that once the image is taken it will only be relevant for that second alone because time will change what it has replicated.

Viola uses the pupil as an analogy for the camera lens. The pupil acts as a mirror, boundary, and veil. Although, the mirror acts only as a reflection whereas the pupil works with the brain to produce an image as well as a thought attached to that image. By looking into the eye of another you are able to see yourself. This seems like a poetic idea of seeing yourself, your humanity, in another.