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Maurice Benayoun

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Maurice Benayoun (AKA MoBen) is a media artist born in 1957. His work explores the potentiality of 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 CG and VR lab, Maurice Benayoun, between 1990 and 1993, writes with François Schuiten and directs Quarxs, the first HDTV 3D computer graphics series widely awarded and broadcast in more than 15 countries. In 1993, he is prize-winner of the Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs of the Foreign Ministry for his Art After Museum project, a contemporary art collection in virtual reality.

After 1993, he creates VR and interactive art installations. Among them, in 1995, the Tunnel under the Atlantic, televirtual project linking the Pompidou center, in Paris, and the Museum of contemporary art, in Montreal. In 1998, he was obtained 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 major works in the field of interactive art.

Beside his art works, Maurice Benayoun has been involved in many large scale exhibitions, events and architecture projects. Just to mention some of them: the Navigation Room (1997) and the Membrane (2001) for the Cité des Sciences de la Villette, the Panoramic Tables for the Planet of Visions Pavilion for Hanover EXPO2000, the Multimedia Tour for the Abbaye de Fontevraud. Maurice Benayoun conceived and directed the exhibition Cosmopolis, Overwriting the City, a giant art and science immersive installation, presented in the frame of the French Year in China and he is working now on 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 of Paris. He is co-founder and art director of the CITU research center (Création Interactive Transdisciplinaire Universitaire) Universités de Paris 1 et Paris 8.

Video and Art works by Maurice Benayoun

  • 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.
    • Ars Electronica (Linz), september 1997
    • Imagina 1998
    • SIGGRAPH 1998 (Orlando)
    • KTH Stockholm 1998
    • Aalborg (Danemark) 2000.
    • Golden Nica interactive art Ars Electronica 1998
    • ISEA 2000 Paris.
    • Digital Avant Garde, Moving Image, New York
    • Digital Avant Garde, Eyebeam, New York
  • 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: An original VR series. co-directed with Odile Fillion. Inside the immersive room, the architect can explore and comment his own utopian project turned into a real time 3D environment. The visitor will be able to explore the interactive version, meeting the architect path and video image. As a prototype of the 'immersive television' concept, Instant City by Archigram is explored and commented by Peter Cook.
  • 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. can be considered as a narrative version of the Art Impact concept of 'Collective Retinal Memory'.
    • Future Cinema' exhibition at the ZKM of Karlsruhe,
    • Gaité Lyrique, Paris (2003).
  • 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. A giant helium ballon displaying the map of FEAR (World Emotional Mapping) flies in the Church Saint Pierre aux Nonnains, Metz. In the middle of the church, the Frozen Fellings are presented like relics. 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
    • Emotion Vending Machine,
      • exhibition Smile Machines,
      • Transmediale, Berlin (2006), Espace Paul Ricard, Cinéma d'ameublement(2005),
      • Gima Gallery 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.
    • Science Museum, Shanghai, China, April 2005
    • Three Gorges Museum, ChonQing, China, July 2005
    • Exhibition Centre, Chengdu, China, August 2005
    • Exhibition Centre, Beijing, China, September 2005
  • The DUMP, art blog where Maurice Benayoun discard everydays new projects.

Interactive scenography

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. Hanover World Expo (EXPO2000), Planet of Visions pavilion conceived by François Schuiten. The multimedia tour, in the Abbaye de Fontevraud, with 3 different installations (by Alain Escalle, Jean-Baptiste Barrière et Hyptique).

  • 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 Navigation Room, a 500m² space design New Images and New Networks at la Cité des Sciences e la Villette- Paris 1997. This event was one of the first exhibition using broadband network. The installation was made up of eleven two meters wide screens. More than eight hundred thousand visitors came to the science museum to experience the Navigation Room.
  • Hypercube In the field of navigation interfaces, Maurice Benayoun conceived the 3D interface Hypercube (US and EU patent). Hypercube's success and appeal with the public was reported on at length in the French national papers such as Liberation and Le Monde. Importantly, Hypercube is the interface masking a powerful non-declarative intelligent profiling system.
  • The Z-A Profiler has proven so effective, that both Hypercube and Profiler have since evolved the following directions:
  • HyperTV, an EPG (Electronic Program Guide)
  • The Travel Tunnel and the Lux Tunnel: a travelling into photo landscapes and virtual 'lêche vitrine' guided by intelligent agents into visitors' desires.
  • The Blue Station Conceived in collaboration with the French architect Jean Nouvel, Maurice Benayoun won in 2001 the competition to create the very first interactive subway station in the heart of Paris. Funded by the RATP (Parisian Transport Company), this unique project was meant to be a subway station dedicated to creation. Interactive, sound lighting and up 200 plasma screens should allow the public as well as artists to interact.
  • 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.

references

  • Sara and Tom Pendergast, Contemporary Artists St James Press, 2001. ISBN-10: 1558624074
  • Peter Weibel, Jeffrey Shaw, Future Cinema, MIT Press 2003, ISBN-10: 0262692864
  • Oliver Grau, Virtual Art, from Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press 2004, ISBN-10: 0262572230
  • Franck Popper, From Technology to Virtual Art, MIT Press 2005, ISBN-10: 026216230X
  • Derrick de Kerckhove, The Architecture of Intelligence, Birkhäuser 2005, ISBN-10: 3764364513
  • Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf, Flesh Factor Ars Elctronica Festival 1997, Verlag Springer 1997.
  • Maurice Benayoun's official web site
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