pOlymic Games

Multiuser interactive image, both on the web and as installation, 2003
Samuel Bianchini

Programming: Oussama Mubarak
Production: Dispothèque
Thanks to Emmanuel Méhois
To access the online work: http://polymic.dispotheque.org

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

pOlymic Games, Samuel Bianchini, 2003
Maintenance, solo show, École européenne supérieure de l’image, Poitiers, France, from May to June, 2010.
Photographs: © Samuel Bianchini - ADAGP

pOlymic Games is an interactive image shared through the Internet. A sign emerges from this colorful and disorderly mosaic: the five interlinked rings of the Olympic Games, universal symbol for a harmonious international competition, crowned by a flame. The emblem is formed by a disciplined crowd performing a choreography, commensurate with the magnitude of the event itself: the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
If we keep the mouse button pressed, our movements animate this human mosaic and create traces as we reorganize it. Because the image is shared on the Internet, every animation produced by one of the many users is visible to all; everyone can see, and act upon, the actions carried out by the others. With user after user and animation after animation, the image undergoes a slow evolution, in which construction and deconstruction merge. The choreography created in the image has as its counterpart another collective movement, this one in front of the image: the activity of the different members of the public, of the gestures shared across the network. If coordinating the two is difficult, indeed impossible, they are nevertheless susceptible to being guided by the project of composing a universal sign: that of the Olympic Games. But one is also tempted–seduced by the efficiency of one’s individual action–to draw or write in the image, to sign the personal graph one will leave on the screen. Between the desire to stand out and the wish to participate in the collective effort, between the individual sign and the universal symbol, there is little chance of finding balance.

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