Body Language Sequences
'What human beings tell with their bodies'
A net art project of ultra-short films

In the Body Language Sequences I walk through the streets of Antwerp City, to investigate how people are using 'silent language' and 'personal space'. I am interested in the temporality of speed, acceleration, slowness and pause. How 'sub-movements' are expressed. How motion precedes emotion. Up to 90% of all of our communication is nonverbal. The direct actions of the human nervous system are usually subconscious, instinctively meaningful and more honest than verbal communication. Bodies do not lie. The 'subliminal' messages of the body are playing a major role in how we relate to others and how they see us. Our bodies are the most public signals of our identities, and private reminders of who we are. We imagine by remembering, or vice versa. In the ritual quality of interpersonal actions there is a hidden code of behavioural patterns, through which hierarchical and social power structures emerge. The body language sequences of the human figure in motion, are a display of our motives in the flow of time.

The Body Language Sequences are a cinematic study of visualising and discovering time patterns of interpersonal behaviour. The revealed moments are giving an insight in the instinctive feelings, attitudes, expressions, gestures and emotions of human communication. In a series of experimental ultra-short films, each looped sequence draws attention to its own syntax —a rhythmic pattern of body language in motion. These visible acts of meaning are a search into what people tell with their bodies. During the montage I saw the world differently. I became aware that I was also documenting the diversity of changes in life style as an emerging element in society. The re-entered world became transposed, intensified, electrified. It was my intention to explore the micro-motions of human acts, extracted from the flux of life, to convey a message which brings an articulation of visual thinking into play.

Shot on location, at crossroads and streets in the City of Antwerpen, Belgium. Requires the following free software: Netscape or Explorer 5.0+ & Flash 6.0+