Crowds

"Crowds", the scientific exhibition on crowd phenomena

A crowd is a group of interacting individuals. How can we understand this singular phenomenon, which is much more than the simple sum of its parts? With "Crowds" the exhibition of the City of Science and Industry, proposes to deconstruct the numerous and complex mechanisms that are at play between individuals when a crowd is created.

• FOR WHOM for everyone from 10 years old
• WHEN until August 6, 2023
• WHERE at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (Paris 19e)
• HOURS Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 6pm - Sunday from 10am to 7pm
• CLOSE Monday, December 25, January 1

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The exhibition is organized around 7 key moments:

• In introduction, crowd samples: an installation made of 5 cabins of 1m2 studies the notion of density (number of people per m2). It is a question here of experimenting in a sensory way the notion of density
• Compact crowds On the wall, excerpts from concerts, religious and sports gatherings show the propagation of waves of jostling. Individuals, within a very dense crowd, are like grains that, by pressing, can block each other: so how to avoid the worst and get out in all serenity?

• Pedestrian crowds Why do pedestrians collide so little and almost always avoid each other?
  Collective behaviors are at work in many animal species. Which ones? The bee? The ants? This is what the collective quiz "Questions for sheep" tries to make you guess. Further on, a multimedia game, "The eye of the foulologist", invites the public to exercise their eyes to spot the characteristic behaviors of pedestrians. Without knowing it, we use them almost systematically and thus make the traffic flow more smoothly.

• Digital crowds : analysis of a less dense crowd at a distance. Even at a distance, we are in relation and form networks, called "small world". The visitor understands that rumors, which ensure the cohesion of a group, have existed for a long time and have not waited for social networks to manifest themselves.

• Between Crowds and Groups How do we go from a crowd to a group? What are the differences?
• The bad reputation This last part of the exhibition intends to break the preconceived ideas about the crowd, historically perceived as uncontrollable and dangerous. It is also an opportunity to question the notion of panic in a crowd situation.

• On the other side of the mirror The visitor is transformed for a moment into a real "foulologist".