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| Bianchini Samuel What’s more with many? In Samuel Bianchini’s interactive installation entitled What’s more with many? (2001) the viewer is surrounded by screens run over by the same image: one man applauds standing up; another man seated, gets up raising and moving his fist. These standard gestures, performed in determined speed and short duration, are cursor-activated by the viewer, the passing of which causes motion just like an electric current flowing through this peculiar crowd and then calms down. The miniature figures emerging from a dark background, without any contact point among the pairs, do not clarify the notional framework of their presence. The outcome reflects the historical aspiration of any totalitarian state, as well as many democratic ones, to shape the collective consciousness so that people react reflectively, like a controlled crowd. As the figures confront the viewer, rendering him/ her recipient or agent of their action, some critical questions are raised: which is the unsighted mechanism that winds this virtual crowd of people? Is it a gesture of reaction or submission? Where is the line between biological and psychological or social cloning? Apart from the playful first impression, the work reveals the issue of personal liability and in competency of the individual to act beyond some specifically determined parameters, weaving a reflection on artificial collectivity and adjusted behavior through political mechanisms and social rituals. However, the viewer, realizing that regardless the route selected on the screen the outcome remains virtually the same, becomes aware that his/ her own freedom is pre-determined as well; his/ her actions leave no traces, but rather remain acts without any history or consequence, just like those of the images who are surrendered to his/ her own will – unless the viewer escapes the rules of regularity in a world beyond homogeneity and predictability. Bianchini's artistic strategy remains consistent in a series of works, where contemporary digital technology comprises photography and video in an interaction which critically examines and urges the viewer’s participation in the field of art and society, yet without its superficial characterization as a convenient or painless procedure. Iraklis Papaioannou  Download CV |  What’s More with Many, 2006 |
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