Samuel Bianchini: niform

niform is an interactive installation. In a large darkened room, the whole of one wall facing an audience of viewers is taken up with a panoramic image; at first, the image is unchanging,  is unchanging and blurred in its entirety. The group, rendered uniform by the blurring, is rendered even more so by the uniform clothing of the twenty men who constitute the group: the picture is that of a cordon of policemen in anti-riot gear, life-size.
The viewers, as they move, change the focal point of the image: as they move towards the screen, and according to the disposition of their bodies, the section of the image in front of them becomes progressively more clearly focused. At a distance of fifty centimetres or less from the screen, a spectator is confronted with one of the representatives of the forces of law and order.
The image no longer has a single depth of field, but several: these are localised, spectator-specific and are different for each viewer.  From an initially fuzzy image, each spectator progresses towards a focusing-in on the image, onto a single man, toward the individual man with whom s/he stands face to face.