The Archive of Digital Art features Maurice BENAYOUN 3D Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, and Urban Media Artworks- with his works and through various digital media ADA’s featured artist Maurice Benayoun (aka MoBen or 莫奔) explores the multilayered relations between humanity and technology since the 1980s. With a background in Fine Arts, his early work showed an interest in viewer participation and visual perception which channeled to his critical and aesthetic perspectives in digital art.
Today, MoBen has won over 25 awards (a.o. SACD Award 2002, Golden Nica 1998, Imagina 1996, SIGGRAPH Truevision 1991) and has had numerous exhibitions all over the world (a.o. ISEA 2019, MOCA Taipei 2019, Microwave Festival 2018, Animamix Biennale 2015-16, Centre Pompidou 1995, 2000). From Algeria to France and East-Asia, he works as curator and scholar at Hong Kong’s City University and Paris 8 University. His PhD thesis may have been the first one written as Internet Blog (the-dump.net, 2008, La Sorbonne, Supervisor Anne-Marie Duguet). :: Read our Interview with MoBen here :: https://www.digitalartarchive.at/index.php?id=187 :: Discover over 120 works by MoBen on ADA with videos, images, information on technology, literature, events, institutions and more :: http://https//www.digitalartarchive.at/database/artists/general/artist/benayoun.html ARTWORKS MoBen engages in the diverse relations between communication, emotion, memory, finance and technology, showing digital media as critical mirrors to our reality and to our minds. The limits of (digital) communication and our perception of the world are explored ambiguously and with a critical eye as well as a poetic understanding. In his interactive installations, art blends into science with fantastic narratives, hybrid beings and playful investigations of the human condition in the Digital Age. These works are often humorous and explorative like his short film series “The Quarxs” (1989-93), which is one of the very first 3D computer graphic animations shown on TV. Throughout his oeuvre, MoBen has reflected upon digital imagery in its illusionary quality, and has created imaginative mirror worlds and critical situations in immersive environments. These VR installations, interfaces and films showcase a metaphysical questioning of the human/media relation like the "Tunnel under the Atlantic" (1995, VR installation) that connected the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal. In his latest work "Value of Values, Transactional Art on Blockchains" (2018/19), neuro-designs display human values. Interactors give shapes with their brain waves to concepts like freedom, peace and power which then become "VoV" tokens to be traded on www.v-o-v.io. At times, his interest in technology & perception questions the mediation of (geo-)political events and subjects such as in "World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War," which won the Golden Nica in 1998. The virtual reality installation breaks any illusionary effect of VR to create a space of reflection for the viewers/interactors. The connection between photography and reality in terms of knowledge perception and emotional involvement is analysed with the viewer's engagement in the installation. The participatory and collaborative opportunities in digital art are central for most of his works, culminating in his Urban Media Landscapes. In "Emotion Forecast" (2010/11), MoBen created a dynamic interface to display the emotional state of the planet as if based on economy and trade algorhithms. The work was shown on a giant screen in Paris’ city centre and more than 10 other cities worldwide. In Hong Kong, he created the Open Sky Project which presents artworks on ICC’s 77,000 square meter LED screen by cutting edge media artists as well as exceptional works by up-and-coming young artists. QUOTES ”Maurice Benayoun is interested in the poetry and metaphysics of new technologies. He has created a series of award-winning workthe expressive power of new technologies to ask questions about the world.” Stephen WILSON, Information Arts. Intersections of Art, Science and Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, p. 705. ”Maurice Benayoun’s photographic safari makes an epistemological comment on the role of photography in our lives, which is to remove the memory of things from our mind and make them available solely via a recording technology. It is also a comment on the desensitizing effect of even upsetting photographs, such as those of war and violence.” Derrick DE KERCKHOVE, “Augmented Photography”, in The Post-photography condition, ed. by Joan Fontcuberta, Bielefeld: Kerber, 2015, pp.138-143 (here p. 141). "Although many see the notion of presence, virtual reality, or mixed reality as a totally new phenomenon, it has its foundation in a story that ignores immersive images.[...] But the panorama of Benayoun is quite the opposite: it breaks the immersion effect and creates, for the viewer, a space of reflection in the sense of Aby Warburg and it includes his free approach in the broader context of several centuries of 'stories of media art.'” Oliver GRAU, “World Skin, un safari photo au pays de la guerre,” in Maurice Benayoun: Moben Open Art 1980 – 2010, ed. Dominique Roland, CDA Engien les Bains, Paris: Scala, pp. 58-61. BECOME A MEMBER ON THE ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (ADA) Our Introduction Video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/265171805 ARTISTS and SCHOLARS are invited to become members of the online community and set up their ADA profile! To ensure a high academic standard, five published articles and/or exhibitions are required to become members of the ADA community. Apply for an account here: www.digitalartarchive.at/support/account-request.html SHARE YOUR RESEARCH WITH PEERS AND THE COMMUNITY Community members can upload publications and PDFs, announce upcoming events, post comments, document exhibitions, conferences and other relevant news. ADA: THOUSANDS OF ARTWORKS Since its foundation in 1999, the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (former Database of Virtual Art) has grown to be the most important online archive for digital art. In cooperation with established media artists, researchers and institutions it has been documenting the rapidly evolving world of digital art and its related fields for more than a decade and contains today a selection of thousands of artworks at the intersection of art, science and technology. ARTISTS and SCHOLARS are invited to join the community and set up their own archive pages. EXPANDED DOCUMENTATION FOR THE NEEDS OF DIGITAL ART Due to the processual, ephemeral, interactive, technology-based and fundamentally context-dependent character of digital art, it is at risk for becoming extinct without an adequate documentation. Therefore, the ADA is based on an expanded concept of documentation, which takes account of the specific conditions of digital art. ARTISTS represented, among many others: Rebecca ALLEN, Suzanne ANKER, Cory ARCANGEL, Roy ASCOTT, Louis BEC, Maurice BENAYOUN, Paolo CIRIO, Charlotte DAVIES, FLEISCHMANN & STRAUSS, Masaki FUJIHATA, Ken GOLDBERG, Agnes HEGEDÜS, Lynn HERSHMAN LEESON, Ryoji IKEDA, Eduardo KAC, Ken RINALDO, KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH, Lev MANOVICH, George LEGRADY, Golan LEVIN, Rafael LOZANO-HEMMER, Joseph NECHVATAL, Michael NAIMARK, David ROKEBY, Jeffrey SHAW, Julius v. BISMARCK, Paul SERMON, Karl SIMS, SOMMERER & MIGNONNEAU, STANZA, Nicole STENGER, THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD, Peter WEIBEL, et al. Advisory board: Christiane PAUL, Roy ASCOTT, Erkki HUHTAMO, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Martin ROTH, et. al. ADA TEAM: Oliver GRAU Nicole High-Steskal, Janina HOTH, Wendy COONES, Ann-Christin RENN, Viola RÜHSE, (Editorial Team) digitalart.edi...@donau-uni.ac.at www.digitalartarchive.at ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://post.in-mind.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre