Video installation - Comparison of artists

Artist One: Bill Viola 
Bill Viola is one of the pioneers of Contemporary video art, most famous for his video installations such as the ones I will be looking at here. If you want to know more about him, here's a link to his website.
http://www.billviola.com/index.htm

Emergence (2002) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTPf6mHKYD0

Emergence is based on this painting by the 15th century Italian painter Masolino da Panicale. The video itself looks like a modern take on this painting, unfortunately I couldn't find the official version of the video, there was a poor recording off a TV and a slightly edited one with music, so I'm not sure what the sound is for the video, I think its a sound of a struggle underwater. The video is two woman sat near a cistern and a naked man emerges from it, spilling water onto the floor and is carried to the floor by the women. My interpretation of this video is a metaphor for birth, with one of the women possibly being the mother. I read somewhere that Bills main aim with the video was to emphasize emotional response and to provoke an emotional response from the audience.

To learn more about the video, here's a small behind the scenes making of documentary
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx5Cu7U-Fkg



The Raft (2004)
The Raft is filmed with one shot, but seems to have three sections. The first section is a group of urban dwellers standing about, presumably waiting for a bus or a train, when suddenly the second section begins. A violent flood appears and starts to knock people over, it's chaos, there's people falling over, trying to stay upright, holding on to each other, by the time the flood finishes everyone's on the floor soaked to the bone. As an audience member i knew there was a metaphor behind this, but to be honest I don't really see what it is, perhaps it's just a demonstration of how people help each other when in need, that we put color and creed behind and just help people. Thats what I saw from it anyway.
Viola calls “The Raft” a metaphor for today’s world, but it also provides something of an antidote, countering the noisy spectacle of Hollywood disaster films with a focus on human psychology and a presentation largely stripped of particulars.

Viola says the work is “for cultivating knowledge of how to be in the world.”
Here's a small interview with Viola on The Raft - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwA2TrBzWWI

Artist Two: Sam Taylor-Wood
Sam Taylor wood is an English film maker, photographer and video artist. Started fine art in the 90's and won the Illy cafe' prize for most promising young artist in '97.

Still Life (2001)
Essentially this is just a video of fruit decomposing, sped up to 3 minuets, with a pen next to it. It's not pretty, but its very interesting to watch. I think what the metaphor for this one is meant to be the fruit is our body, its going to wither and die, but our work stays behind, almost immaculate, unscathed by time. Our work being represented by the pen. Unfortunatly i can't find anywhere on what she thinks of the video or what she was trying to show, but from what im reading in different articles, I'm pretty close already. Im reading the phrase "memento mori" a lot in the articles, which is a latin phrase for "remember your mortality" so i can't be too far off.

Hysteria (1997)
This is an 8 minuet video of a woman laughing angrily. At first I thought she was laughing then half way through I thought she was crying. But throughout the whole video your never too sure. I think she was trying to convey different emotions through one movement, the meaning of hysteria is excessive or uncontrollable emotion, usually fear or panic, so I'm guessing the video is more of a negative vibe. My personal opinion of Sam Taylor Wood is that she is probably one the most overrated "artists" of her time.