As the title suggests, “Toposcan” incorporates the process of scanning
scenes from a set location to question the meaning of vision and time. As
scenes captured with a horizontally panning camera are displayed across eight
linked monitors, single-pixel-width portions of the video image, ahead of the
direction of panning, are stretched into lines that suggest the weaving of
textiles and displayed as stripes featuring only color extraction. In the final
section of the moving video imagery, then, vertical pixels change into still
images one by one, so that the time of each single-pixel line is interwoven into
the resulting panoramic image. The work produces a mode of time that exists
for scenes in a way that transcends human spatial perception.
Commissioned by Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.