What’s More with Many

Dispⁿ series
Interactive image, on the web and as installation, 2001
Samuel Bianchini

Programming: Emmanuel Méhois (web)
and Oussama Mubarak (installation)
To access the online work (desktop computer only): https://dautan.dispotheque.org

To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

What’s More with Many, Samuel Bianchini, 2001
PRAXIS: Art in Times of Uncertainty, 2nd Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art, Greece, from May to September, 2009.
Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

What’s More with Many uses an image of two people seated on bleachers, one behind the other. The image is repeated like a wallpaper pattern and forms a crowd. As the image is small and its colors a bit faded, it is difficult to date it, or situate its context, or identify the two figures. Is it a historical document? Or is it from a current event, a political meeting or sporting match?
Although initially still, sections of the crowd are animated whenever the cursor passes over them. The person in the back, a woman, starts applauding; then the person in front, a man, gets up and starts emphatically pumping his arm. Now it is the viewer who is also animated. The more he moves the mouse on the stand, or the hand on the touch screen, the more he makes the individual patterns react, one after the other, creating a movement in the crowd that follows the trajectory of his gesture. The viewer produces a sort of ‘wave’ or, depending on one’s interpretation, a collective and orderly salute.
At first, the playful discovery of the process prompts the gestures of the spectator and leads him to coordinate them so that the animation of the crowd obeys a regular pattern. Very quickly, though, these same gestures acquire substance, a meaning that implicates him. The ambivalence of the crowd’s movement, dependent as it is on our gestures, incites us to action at the same time that it makes us question the drives–not always easy to resist–that invest a collective situation.

What’s More with Many, Samuel Bianchini, 2001
PRAXIS: Art in Times of Uncertainty, 2nd Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art, Greece, from May to September, 2009.
Video - 1mn08s - High band request
Images and editing: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

What’s More with Many, Samuel Bianchini, 2001
PRAXIS: Art in Times of Uncertainty, 2nd Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art, Greece, from May to September, 2009.
Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

What's More with Many, Samuel Bianchini, 2001
and Free Time, Samuel Bianchini, 2004
Solo show “Performances à l'image”
Abbaye de Maubuisson - Contemporary Art Center, June - August 2023
Curator: Marie Ménestrier with the collaboration of Sybille Roquebert
Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

What’s More with Many, Samuel Bianchini, 2001
Hors Pistes, collective exhibition, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, from January to February, 2011.
Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

To download the image series in HD (Tiff), click here

What’s More with Many, Samuel Bianchini, 2001
Auf Die Plätze / On Your Marks, collective exhibition, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, Germany, from April, 2011 to February, 2012.
Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

To download this image in HD (Tiff), click here

What’s More with Many, Samuel Bianchini, 2001
Palais de Tokyo - Site de création contemporaine, Paris, November - December, 2004.
Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

To download the image series in HD (Tiff), click here

What’s More with Many, Samuel Bianchini, 2001
PLAY(S) - International Digital and Multimedia Arts Exhibition, in the framework of the 3rd China International Animation & Digital Arts Festival, Changzhou, China, September - October, 2006
Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP