Vegetable Memory (1980)

The title of Vegetable Memory derives from the writings of Jalaludin Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet. Evolving as what Viola terms a "kind of temporal magnifying glass," the work explores the perceptual phenomenon of repetitive, cyclic viewing. A loop of images recorded at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo is extended in progressively slower cycles, changing the form, feeling and ultimately the meaning of the original images as they move further into the subjective and pictorial.