Peter Bill Peter Bill Peter Bill
Menu
close
  • Blog
  • New Media
    • Photography
    • Design
    • Films-Docs
  • Paint
    • Prague
    • New York City
    • Los Angeles
    • Drawing
  • Pedagogy
    • Student Work
    • Curatorial
    • Press

Peter Bill is an Artist, Activist and Educator. He has, since learning photoshop v. 1.5, been interested in connecting under-represented communities with digital tools so their voices may be broadcast. He has been involved with large scale video projections, guerrilla art actions, and community building since the 90s.

Peter Bill's award winning paint and video landscapes have shown in such diverse venues as The Kitchen(NYC), the Henry Art Gallery(Seattle), FILE Festival(São Paulo, Brazil), and other international venues. He continues in his Oil paintings and video work to weave the painterly with the digital, pixels and paint, indigo and 191970 blue. He envisioned and realized the first time-lapse film festival in North America, the Gila Timelapse Film Festival and has curated and directed shows on three continents. "Art must be realized on the streets, as an agent of change and progress."
***************
Much of my art has been about creating a vessel, a space for meditation. Through my painting and video installations I hope to create a moment of quietude, a contemplation of this world we have built.

In my mural and documentary film work I have balanced a certain transcendentalism in my heart with my didactic scots-yankee bones. In the public sphere arts role is to inspire and provoke. Therefore in my mural projects I have attempted to involve the local community in the conception and realization of my projects. In my animations and short films I have attempted critiques of the bathetic apocalyptic culture we live in, the false utopia of the California landscape, the contested landscape of New Mexico, and tried to get to the situation on the ground in war torn Bosnia, among other subjects. The world is a complicated, granular place. We cannot oversimplify with our stories, but we can in their telling change opinions, and thus change the world for the better.

  • Invite to talk, HIPA
Installation new media new mexico Uncategorized

River, voice, time

September 1, 2017

Godfrey Reggio, when he gave the keynote lecture for the Gila River Time-lapse Film Festival a couple of years ago (First Time-lapse film festival in North America!), talked about what a keynote is, namely the musical note that binds a piece of music together. Perhaps in the same manner, a work of art can be that keynote, that pulls together a sense of place and distills it so it may be apprehended by an observer if not in its totality of resolution and complexity, yet in a manner that at least points the way to these deep passes, shaded gullies, minnows, spiders, muck, and the rocks between your toes that is an experience of the Gila River.
We have been working some time on this, the planning stretching back a couple of years. In its current iteration, River Voice Time consists of 2 parts:
a claycrete Oja vessel, that contains projections on mist, fragrant distillations of river herbs and clay, and the stories of *you* our friends who have taken on the voice of the river, to embody it and give it concrete power that is human will;
and a CNC cut table with a projected history of the geographic quadrant that eventually contains the Gila river watershed region going back 4 Billions years in time.

Projecting onto mist, with river perfumes to embed the experience in  memory

Digging in the river to collect the clay really connected us to the land the river carves through. That slippery clay that slicks your tires on a dirt road after a rain is great building material.

Fabbing the claycreate Oja, with Kate Brown Mibreño clay activist and animator

We had been working and collaborating in our three corners of the country (NYC, Seattle and the Mimbres)- getting together for a couple of weeks in Santa Fe was absolutely key, and we thank SFAI for hosting us as part of their water rights residency.

Creating Olfactory experiences with master perfumer Stephen Dirkes

The other half of our installation is our terrain map table. I have been researching the manner in which to use a CNC machine, essentially a big router on a robot arm you can use to carve and cut pieces of wood, metal, and plastic. Suffice to say there are 15 different ways using 25 different 3d apps that can possibly do this. Finally I was able to get a cut at Make Santa Fe, with the fantastic help of Zane and Stefan at Make Santa Fe, Catherine at Extraordinary Structures, and Jeff Boyd, GIS specialist. (blog post to come as to my particular recipe for achieving our terrain map)

Cutting Topography of the Gila Watershed with übergeek and New Media guru Peter Bill

Finally, we had been working on content to project on the table, and Kate created our stunning animations to bring the history to life.

Kate Brown speed drafts-woman creates Calderesque animations.

This project had the help of many good people! The Hotsprings Ranch for hosting us, SFAI for sponsoring our residency, and The Gila Conservation Coalition for making this all happen, among many others. I would like to thank my Collaborators, Allyson Siwik, Kate Brown, and Stephen Dirkes for being so inspiring and awesome and such hard workers that they inspired this laggard to actually get some things done. The Gila is worth all of the hard work we put towards keeping it free, just as our spirits are free. However there are many deep interests in Grant Co and New Mexico that just want that water, and with our future of climate change, this fight to keep the wildness alive will not end in our lifetimes, nor those of our children.
River Voice Time will be open starting September 21st as part of the Gila River Festival
After that who knows?

Like
Recent posts
Seven Survivors
Animation/Storytelling workshop in Hiroshima

    Leave a comment

Previous post POPUP a New Media Festival 2/18-19
Next post Judging HIPA International Photo Prize, Time-lapse Category
Recent Posts
  • Seven Survivors
  • Animation/Storytelling workshop in Hiroshima
  • Zero Project 2019
  • Mirror to History, 21 years later
  • Zero Project 2018
Recent Comments
    Archives
    • February 2020
    • November 2019
    • August 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • September 2017
    • February 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • May 2015
    • January 2015
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • October 2012
    • September 2012
    • August 2012
    • July 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    Categories
    • animation
    • anna davis
    • Bosnia
    • cinema 4-d
    • doc film
    • festivals
    • general interest
    • green screen
    • Hiroshima
    • Installation
    • media literacy
    • new media
    • new mexico
    • peter bill
    • silver city
    • stephen dirkes
    • stop motion
    • tech
    • timelapse
    • typography
    • Uncategorized
    • utopia/distopia
    • WNMU
    Meta
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    Peter Bill Peter Bill Peter Bill
    Peter Bill © 2021
    To top ↑
    © Peter Bill 2021

    Add comment

    Comments