[spectre] Archive of Digital Art features Maurice BENAYOUN

[Oliver Grau]

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
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become members of the ADA community. Apply for an account here:
www.digitalartarchive.at/support/account-request.html 

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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.editor at donau-uni.ac.at
www.digitalartarchive.at