4 Emotions 8 Winds

Maurice Benayoun – MoBen

2014

Sound composition by Jean-Baptiste Barrière

4 emotions of the world move and spread around the planet according to 8 real winds data, creating chance arabesques on the world map, forming meandered natural movements similar to the brushstrokes of Chinese calligraphy and ink drawing. Created through the automatic analysis of Internet data representing the emotions of 3200 of the world’s largest cities, the work understands the Internet as a de facto ‘World Nervous System’, or the harbinger of the planet’s emotional sensitivities.

The last avatar of the Mechanics of Emotions series of artworks, Emotion Winds expands the running theme of this far-reaching oeuvre, namely the relationship between ‘big data’ and what MoBen describes as ‘the human factor’ – that makes something tangibly human. The works in the series utilize techniques from economics to measure human sensitivities or feelings, looking at ways in which conventional forms of the quantification of Big Data can give credence to systems detached from, or playing with, the very tenor of human emotions. In other works in the Mechanics of Emotions series, stock market data has been directly compared to information related to real human affects. In Emotion Winds, these same human emotions are overlaid and combined with graphic representations of natural phenomena such as global wind cycles, and a poetic visualization finally emerges of Internet emotion streams from different cities across the world.

Exhibitions (Emotion Winds)

• Emotion Winds, Video Installation 2014, FLUX, Metamorphosis of the Virtual 5+5, Digital Art Today Paris-Shanghai, Shanghai, China, pp.15-20, 2014
• The Age of Experience: Hong Kong – Vienna, White Cube Alpha, Falling Pixels, Emotion Winds, 2017
• Emotion Winds, “Light Year 98: Caution: Beautification in Progress”, Leo Kuelbs Collection, curator Kate Shin, Waterfall Mansion Gallery, video projection on Manhattan Bridge video mapping, June 1st, 2023,
• 4 Emotions, 8 Winds, “Lumière, Espace, Temps”, Le Grenier à sel, Avignon, France, 9 Oct.-19 Dec. 2021.
• 4 Emotion 8 Winds, Internet and video of “Emotion Winds”, Melting Point* exhibition, Festival Accès)s(#20, curator: Jean-Jacques Gay, accès)s(, Bel Ordinaire, Billère, Pau, France, October 9 – December 12, 2020.
• VIII Tashkent International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Emotion Winds, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Oct. 8-14, 2018.
• Cyland International Media Art Festival, Emotion Winds, exhibition Weather Forecast, Digital Cloudiness, St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, St Petersburg, Russia, Feb. 2-12, 2018.
• Angewandte Innovation Laboratory, White Cube, l’essence de l’art contemporain Alpha 10-20, Emotion Winds and Falling Pixels, The Age of Experience, Curated by Harald Kraemer, Organized by Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3, 1010 Wien, Austria, December 1 – 20, 2016.
• Union of Greek Archaeologists, Emotion Winds, Point Zero: Re start, organized by Institut Français -Grèce, Union of Greek Archaeologists, Ermou 134, 105 53, Athens Greece, Feb 28 – Mar 30, 2016.
• Waterfall Mansion Gallery, Installation White Cube Alpha, Emotion Winds, The Need For My Care, organized by Waterfall Mansion and Gallery, 170 E 80th St, New York, NY 10075, USA, Feb 3 – April 20, 2016.
• Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, Emotion Winds – 4 Colours, DA VINCI CREATIVE 2015, Organized by Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, PS333, Warehouse and the entire area of Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, Seoul, Korea, 3-30 Sep 2015
• Espace Pierre Cardin, Paris, Furtive Video Emotion Winds, 20th Anniversary of ISEA Multimedia, curator Françoise Schmitt (IESA), 01 July 2014.
• Chai Wan Mei, Furtive Video Emotion Winds, Chai Wan Mei, curated by 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Art Basel Hong Kong, May 2014
• Techfest 2014, Mumbai Emotion Winds, video, Internet, , curated by Bhupendra Kumar of IIT Bombay, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India, January 2014

Emotion Winds