Maurice Benayoun
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Maurice Benayoun (aka MoBen or 莫奔) (born 29 March 1957) is a French new-media artist,
curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...
, and theorist based in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
and
Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
. His work employs various media, including
video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...
,
computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...
, immersive virtual reality, the Internet,
performance A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Performance has evolved glo ...
, EEG,
3D Printing 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer ...
, large-scale urban media art, robotics, NFTs, and
Blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...
based artworks, installations and
interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...
exhibitions.


Early life

He was born in Mascara,
Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...
, 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.


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 Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...
and
virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...
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.Stephen Wilson, ''Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology'', MIT Press, 2002, p705. 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. Benayoun conceived and directed the exhibition ''Cosmopolis, Overwriting the City'' (2005), an art and science immersive installation presented during the French Year in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
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.


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. 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".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


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 SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...
, Las Vegas, 1991


References


Citations


General sources

* 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. * Benayoun, M.

"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 Moulonbr>Moulon.net
Conférence Report: Media Art in France, Un Point d'Actu, L'Art Numerique, p. 123 * Barbara Robertso
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''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Benayoun, Maurice 1957 births Living people French digital artists French new media artists French installation artists Virtual reality pioneers People from Mascara, Algeria French male writers French male bloggers French people of Algerian-Jewish descent Academic staff of Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis