Computer Graphics World

hen Paris-based artist Maurice Benayoun created the animated TV se- ries Quarxs with Belgian comic-book artist Francois Schuiten in 1990, people considered the use of CG animation as new media: e HD- resolution series, which starred CG creatures that bent the laws of phys- ics, biology, and optics to explain the world's imperfections, pre-dated even ReBoot. In the years since, the award-winning artist's exploration into digital media has bent artistic perceptions beyond the world of animated fi lms as he's moved through virtual reality, on into augmented reality, and out the other side. Last year, in January 2008, the European School of Visual Arts (ÉESI) in Poitiers, France, organized a 15-year retrospective exhibition of 10 Benayoun installations, including his fa- mous 1995 "Tunnel under the Atlantic" and the award-winning, cave-based "World Skin, A Photo Safari in the Land of War," as well as the more recent "Emotion Vending Machine" co-produced with the ÉESI in 2006. With "Tunnel," as participants in Paris's Pompidou Centre and Montreal's Museum of Contemporary Art watched images, proprietary software developed by Z-A, the production studio Benayoun cofounded in 1985, continuously selected new images based on such criteria as how long participants looked at image areas. Tunnelers "met" when their images matched. For "World Skin," Benayoun put people wearing 3D glasses inside a VR cave, where they focused cameras on sliding layers of Bosnian War photos. Each camera click blanked out a photographed area. Now, for a series of installations called the "Mechanics of Emotions," he's taking "snapshots" of the world's emotional state by using data from the Web. For example, in 2006, his "Emotion Vending Machine" let people create downloadable cocktails of images and sounds from emotions captured in real time via the Internet. In 2007, with help from his longtime collaborator, composer Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Benay- oun turned a map of world emotions into a music score that played at the Palazzo Strozzi in Italy. Last December, he installed "Still Moving," a large, interactive sculpture of emotions, in the main entrance of Paris's Grand Palais. We caught up with Benayoun in his home/offi ce/studio in Paris's densely populated and trendy 11 th arrondissement where he lives with his wife and young daughter. He designed the modern structure, which wraps around an airy atrium between buildings, by working with For "Still Moving," an installation at the Grand Palais, Benayoun used Internet data and rapid-proto- typing tools to sculpt an emotional map of the world. Visitors touching the defl ated globe feel vibrations from unheard music mapped to the emotions by composer Jean-Baptiste Barrière. April 2009 31 Art•Augmented Reality ■ ■ ■ ■ Artist Maurice Benayoun's design for a new permanent exhibit inside Paris's Arc de Triomphe, includes high-defi nition displays with constantly changing images placed at an oblique angle within the space. hen Paris-based artist Maurice Benayoun created the animated TV se- ries people considered the use of CG animation as new media: e HD- resolution series, which starred CG creatures that bent the laws of phys- ics, biology, and optics to explain the world's imperfections, pre-dated even ReBoot media has bent artistic perceptions beyond the world of animated fi lms as he's moved through

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