Bill Viola: Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House

Bill Viola is recognized internationally for his work in video and sound installations. For thirty years he has used innovative multimedia technologies to explore the phenomena of sense perception, drawing on mysticism, poetry, shamanism, Taoism, Sufism and Zen Buddhism

This book brings together a selection of essays, notebook entries, interviews, drawings and descriptions of projects that map Viola’s personal course through the readings, observations, experiments and associations that form the groundwork for his art. Each work illustrated is accompanied by a description by the artist himself or by comments on the work’s origins from Viola’s personal notebooks.