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The Shape of Human Values: the artworks on display
Maurice Benayoun’s The Shape of Human Values was created with the goal of combining neuroscience, art, and blockchain to explore how we perceive, represent and exchange human values such as Love, Peace and Power.
The exhibition transcends the boundaries of traditional art, which relies on manual craftsmanship for the production of artworks, and thanks to an electroencephalogram headset allows the public to give concrete form to abstract concepts such as human values directly from their thoughts. The entire exhibition experience branches out from this concept.
Below an overview of the works on display.
LOUNGE
– CITY ADDS VALUE
This work demonstrates how the city imposes values on its citizens through public communication and commercial advertising. Using various advertising media, the metropolis disseminates the sets of human values expressed by public or private entities. Urban advertising weaves the ethical fabric of the city, shaping normality and desire as inspirational models accessible to all citizens.
– Video tour of “Morphogenesis of Values” at Asia Society Hong Kong Center, with commentary by Maurice Benayoun
The complete tour of the show at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center presenting the developments of the Transactional Art Project Value of Values, combining Blockchain, AI, NFTs, EEG, BCI, 3D Printing, and online trading with Nicolas Mendoza, Jean-Baptist Barrière.
CREATIVE STUDIO
– CONCEPTUAL ART MAP
The Conceptual Art Map serves as an interactive timeline and an orientation map that traces the trajectory of Maurice Benayoun’s experimental work over the past 40 years and demonstrates the consistency of the relationship between the artist’s ideas and the way they become works of art.
– Video selection
A video selection of 22 artworks produced by Maurice Benayoun during the past 35 years: Quarxs, 1992 – Inside the Tunnel, 1995 – Cosmogonie, 1995 – World Skin, 1997 – Crossing Talks, 1999 – Labylogue, 2000 – Is the Devil curved, 2004 – Cosmopolis, 2005 – NeORIZON, 2008 – Still Moving, 2008 – Last Life, 2009 – eMotion Forecast, 2012 – Escape Today, 2012 – Ecosmosis, 2012- Power Chess, 2021 – DïaloG, 2023 – D.Rive, 2025.
GALLERY 1
– NEURO DESIGN STATION
An interactive installation in which, thanks to an electroencephalogram headset, the audience becomes a Brain Worker and uses their minds to give shape to human values, which are metaphorically portrayed here as living entities. Once shaped, these creations become tokens and are recorded on the blockchain, transforming human thought into a tangible digital asset. By scanning the generated QR code, visitors redeem the tokens in their Wallet, and the values thus become monetary units that can be traded as commodities on the market.
– CRYPTO CHARACTERS
A selection of neuro-designed tokens representing 3D human values are converted into two-dimensional printed images, sometimes resembling Chinese ideograms that convey meaning rather than sound, unlike the alphabet we know. Giving form to human abstraction is like inventing a new form of writing, a new language that is the result of the Brain Workers’ efforts.
– THE READER
The 3D shapes representing human values are geometric abstractions that can be interpreted as ideograms. The Reader is an AI-driven agent that seeks to recognize these symbols and “read” them through the “semantic harmonics” that nuance the original meaning of the value. Thus, the “Family” character can express Tenderness or Love.
– THE INTERPRETER
In this artwork, an AI-driven interpreter with a strong artistic bias converts the information generated by The Reader into images in an effort to help machines understand humans. At the same time, another AI-driven interpreter with a strong marketing bias will provide captions for the works, seeking to sell values as commercial products.
GALLERY 2
– VALUE TRADING ROOM
Just like traders who trade financial assets, Brain Workers, after redeeming the value they’ve created into their wallets, can barter and exchange it in the Trading Room. At the same time, they can view real-time data from the trading platform, which reflects how individuals, communities and nations align with their own value systems.
– PERIODIC TABLE OF VALUES
The artwork proposes a system for classifying values based on affinities detected in the public’s wallets. Unlike the traditional Periodic Table of Elements, which organizes substances according to fixed parameters, here the position and relevance of each concept change in real time based on data collected online. When users select specific NFTs to create their own personal collections, an algorithm calculates the statistical correlations according to how the concepts are collected. Money may come closer to Power and Love to Family, creating a constantly evolving visual map.
– THE ORIGIN OF MINTING VALUES
A sculpture by Nicolás Mendoza Leal, that illustrates the similarity between the processes of minting Thai amulets and crypto-tokens that represent human values. Nicolas Mendoza’s PhD thesis was instrumental in the evolution of from the Brain Factory to Value of Values.
GALLERY 3
– REIFIED ABSENCE
3D-printed sculptures representing the negative space of an intangible ethical asset, the absence of human values neuro-designed by the Brain Workers. Here, the intangible value materializes not as a physical mass, but as a void. The invisible takes shape through what is missing, a hollow outline that transforms absence into something physical and visible. The work highlights how the lack of values sometimes says much more about human nature than their mere existence does.
– TRANSACTIONAL POETRY
While participants may previously have exchanged one value for another, trading Love for Money or Time for Power, in this artwork the system captures these syntactic structures and transforms them into algorithmic poetry. By giving voice to these dynamic exchanges, the work reveals the unheard rhythm and silent gravity of human transactions as they relate to the fundamental principles that define us.
IMMERSIVE ROOM
– EMOTION WINDS
An immersive artwork that automatically analyzes data from the Internet regarding the moods of 3,200 major cities worldwide and overlays it onto real-time wind maps. Emotions thus spread across the screen, following atmospheric currents and tracing sinuous shapes reminiscent of Chinese calligraphy and ink drawings. By combining digital data with real meteorological phenomena, the artwork visualizes how collective sentiments circulate across the planet, offering a fluid and sensitive portrait of humanity.
