Maurice Benayoun

Maurice Benayoun
Maurice Benayoun in 2000
Born Maurice Benayoun
(1957-03-29) 29 March 1957
Mascara, French Algeria
Education Pantheon-Sorbonne University
Known for New Media Art
Notable work Quarxs (1991)
Tunnel under the Atlantic (1995)
World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War (1997)
Awards Golden Nica
Ars Electronica 1998,
Chevalier des Arts et Lettres 2000,
Siggraph 1991,
Villa Medicis hors les murs, 1993,
Imagina, 1993,
International Monitor Awards...
Website http://www.benayoun.com/

Maurice Benayoun (aka MoBen or 莫奔) (born 29 March 1957 in Mascara, Algeria) is a French pioneer new-media artist, curator and theorist based in Paris and Hong Kong.[1] His work employs various media, including (and often combining) video, immersive virtual reality, the Web, performance, EEG, 3D Printing, large-scale urban media art installations and interactive exhibitions.

Biography

Born in Mascara, Algeria in March 1957, from a father killed before his birth in the Algerian independence war, his family moved to France in 1958 to live in Paris suburbs during most of his childhood. To finance his studies he became a secondary school teacher (1978) in fine arts and literature. Graduating in Fine Arts (Pantheon-Sorbonne University) in the early 1980s, Benayoun directed video installations and short videos about contemporary artists, including Daniel Buren, 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, the first animation series made of HD computer graphics, exploring variant creatures with alternate physical laws.[2] 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.[3] More than a technical performance, as the first intercontinental virtual reality artwork (called "televirtuality", Philippe Quéau, 1994), this installation was one-of-a-kind example of what Maurice Benayoun calls architecture of communication, as another way to explore limits of communication, after Hole in Space by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinovitz. The Tunnel under the Atlantic introduces the concept of dynamic semantic shared space.

In 1997 he creates with Jean-Baptiste Barrière World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War, an immersive installation, often mentioned as a reference in virtual art, which was awarded with the Golden Nica, Ars Electronica 1998.

World Skin (1997), Maurice Benayoun's Virtual Reality Interactive Installation

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, that opened 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 avec felicitations du jury" (First-Class Honors with Distinction).

To extend his vision of Urban Media Art, Maurice Benayoun launched in 2014, as a curator, Open Sky Project, allowing artists (Open Sky Gallery), and students (Open Sky Campus) to conceive and present works for one of largest screen in the world, the ICC media façade (70 000m2). This program offered more than 100 artists and students, the opportunity to exhibit their work in the public space. The ICC media façade represent about half the surface of the Hong Kong Skyline video displays.

As a theorist, Maurice Benayoun coined the concepts of Critical Fusion, as "the fusion of fiction and reality to decipher the world" and Extended Relativity, a model from physics to understand the process of subjective data mining and urban navigation. He considered his recent works as a form of Open Media Art, paraphrasing Jon Ippolito, not limited to the traditional forms, media and economic schemes of art.

From 1984 to 2010 he was an 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 was dedicated to research and creation (R&C) in the emerging forms of art. In 2010 he became an associate professor at Paris 8 University, where he founded (2011) and heads H2H Lab (the Human to Human Lab), a cluster of public and private labs envisioning art as an advanced form of human mediations. The same year he co-founds Arts-H2H Labex (Lab of Excellence) a research lab lead by Paris 8 University. In August 2012, he becomes full Professor in the School of Creative Media of City University of Hong Kong.

Key concepts

Infra-realism

(Infra-realisme in French, could be interpreted as 'sub-realism') has been coined in the early 90s to describe the specificity of the new form of realism emerging from 3D computer graphics.

History of the concept

During the production of Quarxs (1989–1993), the author, new media artist and theorist Maurice Benayoun intended to make the difference between visual realism based on the transcription of how the world reflects light, and what he called Infra-realism, or "realism of the depth" or "the deep realism behind the surface"[4] where, beyond the perceptive appearance, shapes stem from the application of principles coming from physics, optics, chemistry or biology. We could call this procedural, parametric, generative, or biomimetic simulation. To illustrate the concept, Maurice Benayoun used during his talks and lectures, to differentiate visually represented water - as light effects that can be translated into shades or colors - and the same effects generated thanks to fluid simulation and light propagation algorithms. 3D graphics allow to "simulate" clouds, water, smoke but also behaviors like flocks of birds or fishes... Even light reflection becomes an application of physical phenomenons. more than the automatization of visual analogy as practiced by painters and photographers, 3D computer graphics realism becomes an activation of the sub-layer of reality.

In virtual reality and augmented reality

Based on real time graphics, virtual reality and augmented reality make an extensive use of infra-realism. The VR artworks created after 1993 by Maurice Benayoun like "Is the Devil Curved" or the "Tunnel under the Atlantic" often refer to the concept of infra-realism even regarding the use of artificial intelligence.

Selected awards

The Tunnel under the Atlantic (1995), Maurice Benayoun's Virtual Reality Interactive Installation
Cosmopolis (2005), Maurice Benayoun's Giant Virtual Reality Interactive Installation
  • Prix ARS ELECTRONICA Visionary Pioneer of Media Art (nomination), 2014
  • SACD Award, Interactive Arts, Paris, June 2009
  • Qwartz Award, digital art, Paris, April 2009
  • Golden Nica (first prize), interactive art category, ARS ELECTRONICA Festival, Linz, Austria, 1998
  • Honorary Mention, Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria, April 1995
  • Jose Abel Prize, Best European animation film, Cinanima, Animation Film Festival of Espinho, Portugal, October 1994
  • Silver Trophy, Espace Creation, F.A.U.S.T., Toulouse, November 1994
  • Distinction (2nd prize), ARS ELECTRONICA Festival, Linz, Austria, June 1994
  • Best Electronic Special Effects, International Monitor Awards, Los Angeles, 1993
  • Best Video Paint Design, International Monitor Award, Los Angeles 1993
  • First Prize Pixel INA, Opens Title category Imagina '93, Monte Carlo, February 1993
  • First Prize, Third Dimension Award, SCAM, Paris, November 1991
  • Honorary Mention, ARS ELECTRONICA Festival, Linz, Austria, September 1991
  • 1st Prize, Artistic Animation category, Truevision competition, SIGGRAPH, Las Vegas, 1991

Selected works

Le Diable est-il courbe? (Is the devil curved?), 1995
  • 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 Dump (blog, 2006- )
  • Last Life (online game, 2010)
  • Emotion Forecast (Internet, urban screens, 2010)
  • Dildomatic opera (music instrument, 2011)
  • White Cube, The spirit of Contemporary Art (perfume, 2011)
  • Sans Armes Citoyens (Internet collaborative work, 2011)
  • Occupy Wall Screens (Urban screen, Internet real time video, 2012)
  • Osmotic World (Interactive installation, exhibition, Athens, 2012)
  • Tunnels around the World (Telematic installation, Seoul, San Jose, Hong Kong, Montreal 2012)
  • E-SCAPE TODAY! (Urban screen, Internet, Seoul Square, Seoul, 2012)
  • Color Shifts (Video loop, Show Of, Paris, 2013)
  • Emotion Winds (Urban screen, Internet, Media Fest, Mumbai, 2014)
  • Colors Tunnel (VR, Internet, video, Osage Gallery, HK, 2016)
  • Borders Tunnel (VR, Internet, video, Osage Gallery, HK, 2016)
  • Brain Factory Prototype (EEG, VR, 3D Printing, Art Center Nabi, Seoul, South Korea, 2016)

References

  1. ↑ Paul Catanese, Director's Third Dimension: Fundamentals of 3d Programming in Director 8.5, Sams Publishing, 2001, p314. ISBN 0-672-32228-5
  2. ↑ Stephen Wilson, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, MIT Press, 2002, p705. ISBN 0-262-73158-4
  3. ↑ Lars Qvortrupp, Virtual Space: Spatiality in Virtual Inhabited 3d Worlds, Springer, 2002, p222. ISBN 1-85233-516-5
  4. ↑ Madsen, Kim H., Qvortrup, Lars. "Production Methods: Behind the Scenes of Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds. Springer Science & Business Media, 6 dec. 2012 (1st edition 2002) - pp. 53-54. ISBN 1447100638, 9781447100638
  • ADA, Archive of Digital Art, Missing Matter,
  • FMX/09, Paris ACM SIGGRAPH, ZA Story, the Quarxs, God and the Devil,, 2009
  • Benayoun, M.,"A Nano-Leap for Mankind" in The Dump, 207 Hypotheses for Committing Art, bilingual (English/French) Fyp éditions, France, July 2011, pp. 349–351. ISBN 978-2-916571-64-5
  • Benayoun, M., , "Architecture reactive de la communication" (French), July 1998

Bibliography

  • Maurice Benayoun, The Dump, 207 Hypotheses for Committing Art, bilingual (English/French) Fyp éditions, France, July 2011, ISBN 978-2-916571-64-5
  • Timothy Murray, Derrick de Kerckhove, Oliver Grau, Kristine Stiles, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Dominique Moulon, Jean-Pierre Balpe, Maurice Benayoun Open Art, Nouvelles éditions Scala, 2011, French version, ISBN 978-2-35988-046-5
  • Maurice Benayoun, Josef Bares, Urban Media Art Paradox: Critical Fusion vs Urban Cosmetics in What Urban Media Art Can Do: Why, When, Where and How, Susa Pop, Tanya Toft, editors, AVedition publisher, 2016, pp. 81–89, 450–453, ISBN 978-3899862553
  • Sara and Tom Pendergast, Contemporary Artists St James Press, 2001, pp. 155–158, ISBN 1-55862-407-4
  • Peter Weibel, Jeffrey Shaw, Future Cinema, MIT Press 2003, pp. 472,572-581, ISBN 0-262-69286-4
  • Oliver Grau, Virtual Art, from Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press 2004, pp. 237–240, ISBN 0-262-57223-0,
  • Frank Popper, From Technology to Virtual Art, MIT Press 2005, pp. 201–205, ISBN 0-262-16230-X
  • Derrick de Kerckhove, The Architecture of Intelligence, Birkhäuser 2005, pp. 40,48,51,73, ISBN 3-7643-6451-3
  • Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf, Flesh Factor, Ars Electronica Festival 1997, Verlag Springer 1997, pp. 312–315
  • Fred Forest Art et Internet, Editions Cercle D'Art / Imaginaire Mode d'Emploi, pp. 61 – 63
  • Christine Buci-Glucksmann, "L’art à l’époque virtuel", in Frontières esthétiques de l’art, Arts 8, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004
  • Dominique Moulon Moulon.net, Conférence Report: Media Art in France, Un Point d'Actu, L'Art Numerique, p. 123
  • Barbara Robertson CGW.com, Without Bounds in CGW volume 32 issue 4 April 2009
  • Dominique Moulon, Art Contemporain, Nouveaux Médias, Nouvelles éditions Scala, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-35988-038-0
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