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Maurice Benayoun




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.Stephen Wilson, ''Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology'', MIT Press, 2002, p705. ISBN 0262731584 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.Lars Qvortrupp, ''Virtual Space: Spatiality in Virtual Inhabited 3d Worlds'', Springer, 2002, p222. ISBN 1852335165

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 .


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''. 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.


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)



REFERENCES



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

  • Maurice Benayoun's official web site



EXTERNAL LINKS