Maurice Benayoun
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Maurice Benayoun (aka MoBen) (b. March 1957 in Mascara, Algeria) is a new-media artist based in Paris who has won numerous awards for his work.[1] His work employs various media, including (and often combining) video, virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance, large-scale art installations and interactive exhibitions.
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[edit] 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 Buren, Jean Tinguely, Sol LeWitt and Martial Raysse. In 1987 he co-founded Z-A, a computer graphics and Virtual Reality 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.[2] In 1993, he received the Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs for his Art After Museum project, a virtual reality contemporary art collection.
In 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]
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.
Benayoun conceived and directed the exhibition Cosmopolis, Overwriting the City (2005), a giant art and science immersive installation presented for French Year in China.
He is co-founder and art director of the CITU research center (Création Interactive Transdisciplinaire Universitaire) Universités Paris 1 and Paris 8 dedicated to research and creation (R&C) in the emerging forms of art.
[edit] Awards
In 1998, Benayoun won the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica, in the Interactive Art category, for World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War.[2] In 2006, Maurice Benayoun together with the architect Christophe Girault won the competition for the new permanent exhibition in the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, opening 2007.
[edit] Selected works
- Big Questions : Is God Flat? (1994)
- Is the Devil Curved? (1995)
- And what about me? (1996-7)
- Crossing Talks, Communication Rafting (1999)
- Art Impact, collective Retinal Memory (2000)
- Labylogue (2000)
- So.So.So., Somebody, Somewhere, Some Time (2002)
[edit] References
- ^ Paul Catanese, Director's Third Dimension: Fundamentals of 3d Programming in Director 8.5, Sams Publishing, 2001, p314. ISBN 0672322285
- ^ a b Stephen Wilson, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, MIT Press, 2002, p705. ISBN 0262731584
- ^ Lars Qvortrupp, Virtual Space: Spatiality in Virtual Inhabited 3d Worlds, Springer, 2002, p222. ISBN 1852335165
[edit] Bibliography
- 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
