Maurice Benayoun

Maurice Benayoun  is a French pioneer new-media artist and theorist. Most of his work resolve around the use of artistic ideals with interactive media, science and the virtual world. Born in Mascara, ,he 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 private 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. 

Here are a few displays from his works;

Quarxs - One of the very first 3D Computer graphics animation series

"First of all, the QUARXS are characters in a series of twelve computer animated films of three minutes each. Each one presents itself as a program of popularized science: the narrator, a scientist (a researcher in "comparative cryptobiology"), takes us through the evolution of his research about the Quarxs. In parodying popular science programs, this series constitutes a new frontier in 3D computer graphics animation, serving as a true screenplay and not merely as a demonstration using computer graphics."

  

To watch: http://www.benayoun.com/projet.php?id=89 

Cosmopolis - Giant interactive installation

"Cosmopolis endeavours to examine urban realities through people's eyes. It is an artistic, and scientific interpretation of urbanization, making a visit a physical and intellectual experience.The visitor enters a big, moving panorama of a constantly changing city. Twelve observation binoculars, much like those found at scenic lookout points, allow one to be surrounded 360° by twelve urban environments. Only later does the visitor realize that his or her viewpoint through the VR binocular is “captured” and used to create the big panorama of Cosmopolis –the permanently mutating World City- at the centre of the exhibition. Little by little, a surprising city is built, both strange and familiar, the fruit of visitors' intersecting gazes and visual experiences."

 The Tunnel under the Atlantic - Tele-virtual installation 1995

"The Tunnel Under the Atlantic, televirtual art installation, established a link between Montreal and Paris, two towns physically distant by thousands of miles. The Tunnel enabled hundreds of people from both sides to meet. From each side, a two-meter-diameter tube, made us think of a linear crossing of our planet, as if it were dug under the ground, shouting up in the middle of the Contemporary Art Museum in Montreal on one side, and in the lower floor of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The route that lies between the two spots is no simulation of the ocean underground, it is a block of symbolic matter in which the geological strata leave the place to iconographic strata. They are layers of pictures taken in the history of the two cultures that everybody can reveal each time they dig. The collective exploration uncovers fragments of rare or familiar pictures, which are as may opportunities to wake up the collective memory of the participants. Helping us to loitering and talking to people, these remains transform everybody's digging route into a unique experience, into a personal assemblage made up of sounds and pictures amidst a three dimensional space architectured through their moves. While digging, the visitors can talk with their partners across the Atlantic Ocean. The sounds of their voices are anchored in space and they enable everyone to find out the directions where to meet the other. It takes six days to built and pave the symbolic space before the de visu meeting of the two-continent diggers."

To watch: http://www.benayoun.com/projet.php?id=14

I personally find Benayoun's contributions to the virtual 3D world to be highly vital. They are indeed the seeds of a vast virtual reality.

You can find more of his works at: http://www.benayoun.com/