— 50.000 SCANS | 2018
Benjamin Verhoeven

50.000 SCANS is part of Benjamin Verhoeven's ongoing project Scanning Cinema, which revolves around the scanning and re-composing of moving images. The project engages in a dialogue with the history of the moving image in general, and with the recording of movement in photography in particular. In 50.000 SCANS, the grid visible in the background serves as a tool for the analysis of motion, evoking the early photographic studies of Eadweard Muybridge and the chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey.

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Using a flatbed scanner and a monitor, Verhoeven converts a series of film frames into a vast collection of digitally scanned image lines. These individual scans are then processed into an animated film, where the reinterpreted motion clearly differentiates itself from the original. A two-dimensional, linear motion, unfolding both horizontally and vertically, appears to collide and intertwine with the original, three-dimensional movement we are more accustomed to perceiving.

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Building on insights from his previous works Sculptural Movement: Chapters I & II, the video-essay 50.000 SCANS focuses on how the human body—captured in a preconceived choreography—takes shape through the application of scanning techniques, which in turn determine how the digitised body behaves within the boundaries of the scanned reality.

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The clearly demarcated sequences in 50.000 SCANS, which Verhoeven calls "Acts," are intended to function like files within the classification system of an archive. These different film sequences contain the formal and technical information necessary to open up possible interpretations, thereby stimulating our imagination.

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The soundscape that accompanies the images is based on the original sound of the pre-scan recordings. These recordings were processed into a kind of self-regulating staircase model that audibly adapts to the scanned images, aligning with the passing of time and the progression of images.