Maurice Benayoun Explained

Maurice Benayoun
Birth Date:	29 March 1957
Birth Place:	Mascara, French Algeria
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...
Field:	New Media Art
Works:	Quarxs (1991) Tunnel under the Atlantic (1995) World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War (1997)
Training:	Pantheon-Sorbonne University
Website:	www.benayoun.com

Maurice Benayoun (aka MoBen or 莫奔) (born 29 March 1957) is a French new-media artist, curator, and theorist based in Paris and Hong Kong.^[1]

His work employs various media, including video, computer graphics, immersive virtual reality, the Internet, performance, EEG, 3D Printing, large-scale urban media art, robotics, NFTs, and Blockchain based artworks, installations and interactive exhibitions.

Early life

He was Born in Mascara, Algeria, in March 1957, as a war orphan. His father was killed before his birth in the Algerian independence war. He moved to France in 1958, following his mother and his brother, to live in popular suburbs in north Paris where the family stayed during most of his childhood.

Education

Bennayoun's doctorate thesis at the Sorbonne, Artistic Intentions at Work, Hypothesis for Committing Art, was published in 2011.^[2]

Career

Benayoun taught in contemporary and fine arts at Pantheon-Sorbonne University. In 1987 he co-founded Z-A Production (1987–2003), a computer graphics and virtual reality private lab.

Between 1990 and 1993, Benayoun collaborated with Belgian graphic novelists François Schuiten and philosopher Benoît Peeters on Quarxs, the first animation series made of HD computer graphics, exploring variant creatures with alternate physical laws.^[3]

For his first solo show, Benayoun presented a virtual reality installation linking two art museums: the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.^[4] Benayoun conceived and directed the exhibition Cosmopolis, Overwriting the City (2005), an art and science immersive installation presented during the French Year in China in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, and Chongqing. This was Maurice Benayoun's first experience in China, and the reception by the public played an important role in later Benayoun's move to Asia.^[5]

Key concepts

Open Media, in 2000, considered his works as a form of Open Media Art, paraphrasing Jon Ippolito, not limited to the traditional forms, media and economic schemes of art, but also not necessarily based on a specific medium, digital or using technologies. Open takes here the sense of freedom in the means of expression.^[6]

Infra-realism – (Infra-realisme in French, could be interpreted as 'sub-realism') was coined in the early 90s to describe the specificity of the new form of realism emerging from 3D computer graphics. During the production of Quarxs (1989–1993), the author, Benayoun wanted to identify 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".^[7]

Selected awards

• Prix Ars Electronica Visionary Pioneer of Media Art (nomination), 2014
• SACD Award, Interactive Arts, Paris, June 2009
• Golden Nica (first prize), interactive art category, ARS ELECTRONICA Festival, Linz, Austria, 1998
• Jose Abel Prize, Best European animation film, Cinanima, Animation Film Festival of Espinho, Portugal, October 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
• 1st Prize, Artistic Animation category, Truevision competition, SIGGRAPH, Las Vegas, 1991

References

General sources

• ADA, Archive of Digital Art, Missing Matter, https://www.digitalartarchive.at/database/general/work/missing-matter.html
• FMX/09, Paris ACM SIGGRAPH, ZA Story, the Quarxs, God and the Devil,http://paris.siggraph.org/media/fmx/Benayoun-ZA.html, 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.
• Benayoun, M., http://www.benayoun.com/projet.php?id=56, "Architecture reactive de la communication" (French), July 1998

Further reading

• Timothy Murray, Derrick de Kerckhove, Oliver Grau, Kristine Stiles, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Dominique Moulon, Jean-Pierre Balpe, Maurice Benayoun Open Art 1980 - 2010, Nouvelles éditions Scala, 2011, French version,
• Sara and Tom Pendergast, Contemporary Artists St James Press, 2001, pp. 155–158,
• Peter Weibel, Jeffrey Shaw, Future Cinema, MIT Press 2003, pp. 472,572-581,
• Oliver Grau, Virtual Art, from Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press 2004, pp. 237–240,,
• Frank Popper, From Technology to Virtual Art, MIT Press 2005, pp. 201–205,
• Derrick de Kerckhove, The Architecture of Intelligence, Birkhäuser 2005, pp. 40,48,51,73,
• 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,

External links

• • Official Blog/creation The Dump

Notes and References

1. Paul Catanese, Director's Third Dimension: Fundamentals of 3d Programming in Director 8.5, Sams Publishing, 2001, p314.
2. Maurice Benayoun, The Dump, 207 Hypotheses for Committing Art, bilingual (English/French) Fyp éditions, France, July 2011,
3. Stephen Wilson, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, MIT Press, 2002, p705.
4. Lars Qvortrupp, Virtual Space: Spatiality in Virtual Inhabited 3d Worlds, Springer, 2002, p222.
5. Web site: BENAYOUN, Maurice | School of Creative Media.
6. 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,
7. 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., 9781447100638