The video masterpieces I experienced at the Bill Viola exhibit were inspired not by money, but by soul. While video games engage minds, they leave bodies inert. Not so the Bill Viola exhibit, in which the body responds to the artist's constructions by speeding up, slowing down, turning around, stopping, walking slowly forward toward looming objects, and retreating down narrow passageways from which emanate eerie noises and odd flashing lights. No drugs are required to appreciate this psychedelia. Slowly, the pool comes to life, but seemingly occupies a different space and time than all around it.
Dimensions become blurred, and what is real and what is reflection rely on the imagination.
What distinguishes Viola's work from less imaginative video art is the spirit that enlivens it. Viola has drawn inspiration from Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism, the physics of optics and the mechanisms of perception, Sufi poetry, and the free verse of Walt Whitman. His work is textured, neither muscle-bound nor insipid, but alternately muscular and brainy. In his range of imagination and technique, Viola demonstrates what video-art can be, while putting commercial video art to shame. This article originally appeared in the Bay Area Reporter.