Maurice Benayoun
Encyclopedia
Maurice Benayoun (b. 29 March 1957 in Mascara, Algeria) is a French pioneer new-media artist and theorist based in Paris
. His work employs various media, including (and often combining) video
, immersive virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance
, large-scale urban art installations and interactive exhibitions.
, Jean Tinguely
, Sol LeWitt
and Martial Raysse
. In 1987 he co-founded Z-A, a computer graphics
and Virtual Reality
private lab.
Between 1990 and 1993, Benayoun collaborated with Belgian graphic novelist François Schuiten
on Quarxs
, a computer graphics world that explores variant worlds with alternate physical laws. In 1993, he received the Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs for his Art After Museum project, a virtual reality contemporary art collection.
After 1994 Benayoun was involved with more virtual-reality and interactive-art installations. One of these was described by Jean-Paul Fargier in Le Monde
(1994) as "the first Metaphysical Video Game". One important work from this period includes The Tunnel under the Atlantic
, finished in 1995. This was a tele-virtual project linking the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal. In 1997 he creates with Jean-Baptiste Barrière
World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War, an immersive installation, often mentionned as a reference in virtual art
, which was awarded with the Golden Nica, Ars Electronica 1998.
The Navigation Room (1997) and The Membrane (2001) were created for the Cité des Sciences de la Villette. The Navigation Room presented, through an innovative interface, highly personalized visits and content, ending with a web page dedicated to each visitor. The Membrane (2001) — the core of the exhibition Man Transformed — was a large surface breathing and feeling the presence of the visitors. The Panoramic Tables for the Planet of Visions pavilion for Hanover EXPO2000, directed by François Schuiten
, was an innovative application of augmented reality
. In 2006, together with the architect Christophe Girault, they created the new permanent exhibition inside the Arc de Triomphe
, Paris, opening in February 2007.
Benayoun conceived and directed the exhibition Cosmopolis, Overwriting the City (2005), a giant art and science immersive installation presented for French Year in China
in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and CongQing. In 2008, NeORIZON, a large scale urban installation in Shanghai, converted people into flash codes then becoming the city itself.
Initiated in 2005, the series of works, Mechanics of Emotions presents Internet as the world nerve system and world emotions as a possible material for the new metaphoric model of economy.
In 2008 Maurice Benayoun submitted his blog, The Dump
, a dump of undone art projects, as a doctorate thesis entitled: Artistic Intentions at Work, Hypothesis for Committing Art at Université Paris 1, la Sorbonne. The Phd received the "mention très honorable" (the highest distinction in the French academic system).
As a theorist, Maurice Benayoun coined the concepts of Critical Fusion, as "the fusion of fiction and reality to decypher the world" and Extended Relativity, a model from physics to understand the process of subjective data mining and urban navigation . He consideres his recent works as a form of Open Art, paraphrasing Jon Ippolito
, not limitated to the traditional forms, media and economic schemes of art.
From 1984 to 2010 he was assistant professor at Paris 1 university, Pantheon-Sorbonne, where he was co-founder and art director of the CITU research center (Création Interactive Transdisciplinaire Universitaire) together with Paris 8 University. CiTu is dedicated to research and creation (R&C) in the emerging forms of art. In 2010 he became associate professor at Paris 8 university, were he founded, in 2011, H2H Lab (the Human to Human Lab), a cluster of public and private labs envisionning art as an advanced form of human mediations.
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. His work employs various media, including (and often combining) video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
, immersive virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
, large-scale urban art installations and interactive exhibitions.
Biography
Born in Mascara, Algeria in March 1957, he moved to France in 1958. In the 1980s Benayoun directed video installations and short films about contemporary artists, including Daniel BurenDaniel Buren
Daniel Buren is a French conceptual artist.- Work :Sometimes classified as an abstract minimalist Buren is known best for using regular, contrasting maxi stripes to integrate the visual surface and architectural space, notably historical, landmark architecture.Among his chief concerns is the...
, Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics...
, Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
and Martial Raysse
Martial Raysse
Martial Raysse is a French artist born in Golfe-Juan on 12 February 1936. He lives in Issigeac - France.-Biography: Raysse was born in a ceramicist family in Vallauris and began to paint and write poetry at age 12. After studying and practising athleticism at a high level, he began to accumulate...
. In 1987 he co-founded Z-A, a computer graphics
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
and Virtual Reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
private lab.
Between 1990 and 1993, Benayoun collaborated with Belgian graphic novelist François Schuiten
François Schuiten
Baron François Schuiten is a Belgian comic book artist. He is best known for drawing the series Les Cités Obscures.-Biography:François Schuiten was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1956....
on Quarxs
Quarxs
Quarxs created between 1990 and 1993, was one of the earliest computer animated series. It predated ReBoot.Each episode was made in HDTV and no more than three minutes long. Only twelve episodes of the original series of 100 have been created...
, a computer graphics world that explores variant worlds with alternate physical laws. In 1993, he received the Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs for his Art After Museum project, a virtual reality contemporary art collection.
After 1994 Benayoun was involved with more virtual-reality and interactive-art installations. One of these was described by Jean-Paul Fargier in Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
(1994) as "the first Metaphysical Video Game". One important work from this period includes The Tunnel under the Atlantic
The Tunnel under the Atlantic
The Tunnel under the Atlantic is an interactive art installation by Maurice Benayoun. The visitors were invited to dig, inside memory, a virtual tunnel between Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal in 1995....
, finished in 1995. This was a tele-virtual project linking the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal. In 1997 he creates with Jean-Baptiste Barrière
Jean-Baptiste Barrière
Jean-Baptiste Barrière was a French cellist and composer. He was born in Bordeaux and died in Paris, at 40 years of age.-Musical career:Barrière first studied the viol, and published a set of viol sonatas...
World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War, an immersive installation, often mentionned as a reference in virtual art
Virtual art
Virtual art is art practice using virtual reality, augmented reality or mixed reality as a medium in a digital environment..-Form:It can be considered a post-convergent art form, containing all previous media as subsets...
, which was awarded with the Golden Nica, Ars Electronica 1998.
The Navigation Room (1997) and The Membrane (2001) were created for the Cité des Sciences de la Villette. The Navigation Room presented, through an innovative interface, highly personalized visits and content, ending with a web page dedicated to each visitor. The Membrane (2001) — the core of the exhibition Man Transformed — was a large surface breathing and feeling the presence of the visitors. The Panoramic Tables for the Planet of Visions pavilion for Hanover EXPO2000, directed by François Schuiten
François Schuiten
Baron François Schuiten is a Belgian comic book artist. He is best known for drawing the series Les Cités Obscures.-Biography:François Schuiten was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1956....
, was an innovative application of augmented reality
Augmented reality
Augmented reality is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is...
. In 2006, together with the architect Christophe Girault, they created the new permanent exhibition inside the Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe
-The design:The astylar design is by Jean Chalgrin , in the Neoclassical version of ancient Roman architecture . Major academic sculptors of France are represented in the sculpture of the Arc de Triomphe: Jean-Pierre Cortot; François Rude; Antoine Étex; James Pradier and Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire...
, Paris, opening in February 2007.
Benayoun conceived and directed the exhibition Cosmopolis, Overwriting the City (2005), a giant art and science immersive installation presented for French Year in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and CongQing. In 2008, NeORIZON, a large scale urban installation in Shanghai, converted people into flash codes then becoming the city itself.
Initiated in 2005, the series of works, Mechanics of Emotions presents Internet as the world nerve system and world emotions as a possible material for the new metaphoric model of economy.
In 2008 Maurice Benayoun submitted his blog, The Dump
The Dump
The Dump is a blog initiated in 2006 by the new media artist Maurice Benayoun, about undone art projects.This blog was probably the first to become a doctorate thesis in art by itself: Artistic Intentions at Work, Hypothesis for Committing Art Université Pantheon Sorbonne This PhD was directed by...
, a dump of undone art projects, as a doctorate thesis entitled: Artistic Intentions at Work, Hypothesis for Committing Art at Université Paris 1, la Sorbonne. The Phd received the "mention très honorable" (the highest distinction in the French academic system).
As a theorist, Maurice Benayoun coined the concepts of Critical Fusion, as "the fusion of fiction and reality to decypher the world" and Extended Relativity, a model from physics to understand the process of subjective data mining and urban navigation . He consideres his recent works as a form of Open Art, paraphrasing Jon Ippolito
Jon Ippolito
Jon Ippolito is an artist, educator, new media scholar, and former curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Ippolito studied astrophysics and painting in the early 1980s, then pursued Internet art in the 1990s...
, not limitated to the traditional forms, media and economic schemes of art.
From 1984 to 2010 he was assistant professor at Paris 1 university, Pantheon-Sorbonne, where he was co-founder and art director of the CITU research center (Création Interactive Transdisciplinaire Universitaire) together with Paris 8 University. CiTu is dedicated to research and creation (R&C) in the emerging forms of art. In 2010 he became associate professor at Paris 8 university, were he founded, in 2011, H2H Lab (the Human to Human Lab), a cluster of public and private labs envisionning art as an advanced form of human mediations.
Awards
- SACD Awards, Interactive Arts, Paris, June 2009
- Qwartz, digital art, Paris, April 2009
- e-Toile d'Or, Net Art, Paris, January 2005
- Best multimedia project, Grotte Chauvet, France 2001
- Winner, Architecture competition with Jean Nouvel, Subway Station Franklin Roosevelt, Paris 2000
- Golden Nica (first prize), interactive art category, Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria, 1998
- Second prize, Images du Futur '96, category opens titles, Montreal 1996
- Second prize Pixel INA, Opens Titles Category, Imagina 1996, Monte Carlo, February 1996
- Finalist Best Achievement, International Monitor Awards, Opens/closes category, Los Angeles, oct. 1995.
- Honorary Mention, Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria, April 1995
- JOSE ABEL Prize, Best European animation film, Cinanima, Animation Film Festival of Espinho, Portugal, Oct. 1994
- Silver Trophy, Espace Creation, F.A.U.S.T., Toulouse, Novembre 1994
- Distinction (2nd prize), Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria, June 1994
- 3rd Prize, fiction category, Imagina ’94, Monte Carlo, February 1994
- Best Electronic Special Effects, International Monitor Awards, Los Angeles, 1993
- Best Video Paint Design, International Monitor Award, Los Angeles 1993
- Nomination, Best Computer Animation, International Monitor Awards, Los Angeles 93
- First Prize Pixel INA, Opens Title category Imagina ’93, Monte Carlo, February 1993
- 3rd Prize, FICTION category Imagina ’94, Monte Carlo, February 1993
- First Prize, Third Dimension Award, SCAM, Paris, November 1991
- Best Script Award, Paris Cité 1991, Paris, October 1991
- Honorary Mention, Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria, September 1991
- 1st Prize, Artistic Animation category, Truevision competition, SIGGRAPH, Las Vegas, 1991
- Image fixe prize, Paris Cité, Paris, France, 1990
- 1st Prize Communication Image, Tech Image competition, Paris, 1990
Selected works
- Big Questions : Is God Flat? (1994)
- Is the Devil Curved? (VR installation, 1995)
- And what about me? (Internet participative works, 1996-7)
- World Skin, a photo safari in the Land of War (1997)-Golden Nica, Ars Electronica Festival 1998
- Crossing Talks, Communication Rafting (Virtual Reality Internet installation, 1999)
- Art Impact, collective Retinal Memory (interactive installation, 2000)
- Labylogue (televirtual interactive installation, 2000)
- So.So.So., Somebody, Somewhere, Some Time (interactive installation, 2002)
- Watch Out (urban installation, 2004)
- Cosmopolis, Overwritting the City (Giant interactive installation, 2005)
- Mechanics of Emotions (series of works, 2005- )
- NeORIZON (urban interactive installation, 2008)
- Still Moving (interactive sculpture, 2008)
- The DumpThe DumpThe Dump is a blog initiated in 2006 by the new media artist Maurice Benayoun, about undone art projects.This blog was probably the first to become a doctorate thesis in art by itself: Artistic Intentions at Work, Hypothesis for Committing Art Université Pantheon Sorbonne This PhD was directed by...
(blog, 2006- ) - Last LIfe (online game, 2010)
- Emotion Forecast (2010)
- Dildomatic opera (music instrument, 2011)
- White Cube, The spirit of Contemporary Art (perfume, 2011)
- Sans Armes Citoyens (Internet participative work, 2011)
- Occupy Wall Screens (Urban screen, Internet real time video, 2011)