Maurice Benayoun

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Maurice Benayoun (AKA Moben) is a new media artist born in 1957. His work uses various media from video, to Virtual Reality, Web and wireless art, public space large scale art installations and interactive exhibitions. Benayoun's work has been widely exhibited all over the world and received numerous international awards and prizes. Co-founder in 1987 of Z-A (Paris) a pioneer computer graphics and Virtual Reality lab, Maurice Benayoun, between 1990 and 1993, writes with François Schuiten and directs Quarxs, the first HDTV 3D computer graphics series. In 1993, he is the prize-winner of the Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs for his Art after Museum project, a contemporary art collection in Virtual reality.

After 1993, he starts creating Virtual Reality and interactive art installations. Among them, in 1995, the Tunnel under the Atlantic, televirtual project linking the Pompidou centre, in Paris, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Montreal. In 1998, he is prize-winner of the Golden Nica, Prix Ars Electronica, Interactive Art category for World skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War. Both works are considered by critics as notable works in the field of interactive art.

Beside his art works, Maurice Benayoun has been involved in large scale exhibitions, events and architecture projects. Just to mention some of them: the Navigation Room (1997) and the Membrane (2001) -introducing the concept of organic exhibition design- for the Cité des Sciences de la Villette, the Panoramic Tables for the Planet of Visions pavilion for Hanover EXPO2000 directed by François Schuiten. Maurice Benayoun conceived and directed the exhibition Cosmopolis, Overwriting the City (2005), a giant art and science immersive installation presented in the frame of the French Year in China and the permanent exhibition of the Arc de Triomphe, Paris.

Since 1984, Maurice Benayoun has been teaching video and media art at the Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and invited artist at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, National Fine Arts school of Paris. He is cofounder and art director of the CITU research centre (Création Interactive Transdisciplinaire Universitaire) Universités Paris 1 and Paris 8.

Contents 1 Video and Art works by Maurice Benayoun 2 Interactive Exhibition Design 3 Awards and official selections 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Video and Art works by Maurice Benayoun

• Quarxs, 3D animation series, 1991-1993, in cooperation with François Schuiten

• The Big Questions:
  • Is God flat? 1994. Considered by Jean-Paul Fargier in Le Monde as "the first metaphysical video game".
  • Is the Devil curved? 1995. The sensual and perverse seduction of mass media.
  • And What About Me? 1 (1996) and And What About Me? 2 (1997), the Big Questions on line using Java...
• The Tunnel under the Atlantic, on 1995, was the first intercontinental televirtual event connected the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris and the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Montreal, dug in 5 days.
• The Paris-New Delhi Tunnel, was dug In January 1998, creating a cultural link between France and India.
• World Skin, a virtual reality installation, for the CAVE. In this work, a group of 6 to 8 people are immersed in a virtual Land of war. They are given cameras and told that they can take photos if they want to. The result is a Photo Safari in the Land of War...This thought provoking, questioning work was presented for the first time in Ars Electronica CAVE. This work done with an interactive music by Jean-Baptiste Barriere obtained the Golden Nica award for interactive art in 1998.
• Crossing Talks, Communication Rafting: a virtual reality/Internet CAVE installation created for the Tokyo ICC Biennale '99. The visitor tries to survive in an infinite no-communication universe.
• Art Impact, Collective Retinal Memory, Interactive installation where we -on site and on line- take part in the refresh of the collective memory. In collaboration with Jean Baptiste Barrière. Centre Pompidou, 2000.
• Labylogue. 2000. Brussels, Belgium, Lyon (museum of contemporary art), France, Dakar, Senegal. A VR dialogue inside a virtual maze linking the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon, Bruxelles and Dakar (Senegal). Labylogue is a tribute to Borgès where the space becomes a meeting text. Together with Jean-Pierre Balpe (text generation). Music by Jean-Baptiste Barrière.
• Parallel Architectures: Instant City: Immersive documentary co-directed by Odile Fillion. Inside the immersive room, Peter Cook can explore and comment his own utopian project turned into a real time 3D environment. The visitor will be able to visit the interactive version, meeting the architect path and video image. A prototype of the immersive television concept.
• Watch out!, 2002, a Wireless, Internet, Video installation, Art Center Nabi, Seoul Korea and 4 other locations in the city.
• Watch out! The Eyes on the City, 2004, a new version of Watch Out!in the streets of Athens during the Olympic Games.
• So.So.So. Somebody, Somewhere, Some Time, an interactive installation Using the same VR binoculars than for Art Impact, So.So.So. a narrative version of the Art Impact concept of Collective Retinal Memory. Future Cinema exhibition: ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
• Mechanics of Emotions: a series of works including :World Emotional Mapping Dynamic cartography of the emotions of the planet. Scanning the World Nervous System. At the origin of different projects:
  • Frozen Feelings, Series of sculptures, frozen emotion of the World as a physical object. Physical avatar of the World Emotional Mapping produced with a digital prototyping tool (digital carving).
  • SFEAR, Internet, search engine and physical digital sculptures. April 2005
  • Emotional Market (e-Market), Internet, search engine and physical digital sculptures. The market of the emotion of the world presented as a luxury shop. Shanghai, Gallery BUND 18, May 1-7 2005.
  • Emotional Stock, (e-Stock), Gallery Bund 18, Shanghai (2005).
  • Emotional Traffic, music performance with Jean-Baptiste Barrière, opening event, Ars Electronica Festival 2005.
  • Emotion Vending Machine, exhibition Smile Machines, Transmediale, Berlin (2006),
• Cosmopolis, Overwriting the City, Art and science exhibition, probably one of the largest interactive installation ever done using 12 VR binocculars and 12 projections sceens about urban planning and sustainable developpment. Done in the frame of the French year in China this installation is a new use of the Collective Retinal Memory concept. Shanghai, China, April 2005, ChonQing, China, July 2005, Chengdu, China, August 2005, Beijing, China, September 2005
• The DUMP, art blog where Maurice Benayoun discard everydays new projects.

[edit] Interactive Exhibition Design

Beside his art work, Maurice Benayoun conceives interactive scenographies combining physical public spaces (exhibitions, events) virtual environments (interfaces, Hypercube, HyperTV), augmented reality (Panoramic Tables, Planet of Visions, Expo2000 Hanover, Arc de Triomphe, Paris), intelligent agents (Gadevu, Z-A Profiler) and interactive projections.

• Planet of Visions, Hanover World Expo (EXPO2000), Planet of Visions conceived by François Schuiten; 2000

The Multimedia Tour, in the Abbaye de Fontevraud, with 3 different installations (by Alain Escalle, Jean-Baptiste Barrière et Hyptique), 2000

• The Navigation Room, a 500m² space in the exhibition New Images, New Networks at la Cité des Sciences de la Villette, Paris 1997. One of the first exhibition using broadband network. The set was made up of eleven two meters wide screens. More than eight hundred thousand visitors came to experience the Navigation Room.
• The Membrane: the core of the Man Transformed exhibition. la Cité des sciences et de l'Industrie. Nov. 2001. The Membrane featured a large multi-screen, organic VR installation. This work interacting with the visitors body as an interface is a good example of what MB calls organic scenography for museums.
• The Blue Station Conceived in collaboration with the French architect Jean Nouvel, Maurice Benayoun won in 2001 the competition to create the very first highly interactive subway station in the heart of Paris.
• Arc de Triomphe Permanent ScenographyIn 2006, Maurice Benayoun together with the architect Christophe Girault won the competition for the new permanent exhibition in the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, opening spring 2007.

[edit] Awards and official selections

• e-Toile d'Or, Net Art, Paris, Jan. 2005
• 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

[edit] References

• Sara and Tom Pendergast, Contemporary Artists St James Press, 2001, pp. 155-158, ISBN 1558624074
• Peter Weibel, Jeffrey Shaw, Future Cinema, MIT Press 2003, pp. 472,572-581, ISBN 0262692864
• Oliver Grau, Virtual Art, from Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press 2004, pp. 237-240, ISBN 0262572230,
• Franck Popper, From Technology to Virtual Art, MIT Press 2005, pp.201-205, ISBN 026216230X
• Derrick de Kerckhove, The Architecture of Intelligence, Birkhäuser 2005, pp. 40,48,51,73, ISBN 3764364513
• Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf, Flesh Factor, Ars Electronica Festival 1997, Verlag Springer 1997, pp.312-315
• Maurice Benayoun's official web site

[edit] External links

• Maurice Benayoun's official web site
• official Blog/creation The Dump
• official web site of the exhibition Cosmopolis
• official web site of the exhibition Watch Out!
• official site : lebazar.net, objects created or invented by Maurice Benayoun
• CITU official web site