The Form of Human Values is a solo exhibition by French new-media artist Maurice Benayoun at MEET Digital Tradition Middle in Milan, Italy. It’s open from Thursday, October 29, 2026, by means of Sunday, January 31, 2027, Thursday to Sunday from 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. native time, at Viale Vittorio Veneto 2. The opening evening was Wednesday, October 28. At its heart is the Neuro-Design Station: you placed on an EEG headset, form a 3D kind for a human worth like Love, Peace or Energy along with your mind exercise, and that kind is recorded on the blockchain as an NFT that belongs to you.
That makes it a museum present the place the customer is the one who mints. MEET calls Milan one of many remaining stops of Worth of Values, a mission it dates to 2016 that has toured cities around the globe, and presents the present as a fruits of ten years of analysis. For NFT collectors, it’s additionally a pointed piece of artwork concerning the factor this market retains arguing over: what makes one thing helpful, and who will get to determine. Right here’s what’s within the present, how the token aspect works, and why Benayoun’s lengthy profession makes it price a glance.
What’s in The Form of Human Values
MEET’s information to the works on show lays the present out room by room. The trail begins along with your mind and ends with a map of the world:
Lounge: Metropolis Provides Worth, about how a metropolis pushes values on its residents by means of public messaging and promoting, plus a video tour of Morphogenesis of Values, the mission’s 2022 present at Asia Society Hong Kong.Artistic Studio: a Conceptual Artwork Map tracing 40 years of Benayoun’s experiments, and a video choice of 22 of his works, from Quarxs to D.Rive (2025).Gallery 1: the Neuro-Design Station, then Crypto Characters (the 3D values became printed, ideogram-like photos), The Reader (an AI that tries to “learn” these shapes) and The Interpreter (two AIs, one with a creative bias and one with a advertising bias that writes captions to promote values as merchandise).Gallery 2: the Worth Buying and selling Room, the place contributors can barter the values they made; the Periodic Desk of Values; and The Origin of Minting Values, a sculpture by collaborator Nicolás Mendoza Leal evaluating the minting of Thai amulets with crypto tokens.Gallery 3: Reified Absence, 3D-printed sculptures of the empty area the place a worth ought to be, and Transactional Poetry, which turns trades into strains of algorithmic verse.Immersive Room: Emotion Winds, which reads on-line information concerning the moods of three,200 main cities and lays it over real-time wind maps, so emotions drift throughout the planet like climate.
The exhibition is introduced with Nicolás Mendoza, underneath the patronage of the Institut français Milano, with assist from Nanjing College’s College of Arts and MobenFact.
How the brainwave NFT works
Benayoun calls contributors “Mind Staff.” In Benayoun’s personal description, the shapes begin as a form of evolving ecosystem, and your mind exercise steers which varieties survive as you attempt to match an idea akin to FREEDOM or POWER. MEET places it this fashion: the algorithm proposes the visible kind, and the human mind acts as filter and supervisor. It’s the reverse of the standard prompt-and-generate AI workflow.
Every completed form turns into a named, numbered 3D mannequin, like FREEDOM 0001 or FREEDOM 0002, and is registered on the blockchain as a token. In accordance with MEET, you scan a QR code to redeem the token into your pockets. From there, the mission says, you may hold it, give it away, promote it or barter it, and also you’re free to make use of the 3D mannequin to make different artworks or objects.
The buying and selling is the paintings, not a aspect characteristic. “The transaction is the one solution to know the target worth of a given worth,” the mission’s about web page says. Swap PEACE and LOVE for MONEY and the system writes it up as poetry; Benayoun’s personal instance line is “I had PEACE, I obtained LOVE, and now I would like MONEY.” The Periodic Desk of Values then reshuffles itself primarily based on how individuals group values of their collections, so Cash might drift towards Energy whereas Love drifts towards Household. The mission additionally runs a public net app at vov.artwork with its buying and selling platform and monitor.
Earlier than you scan something: MEET’s pages don’t say which blockchain the tokens use or whether or not minting or buying and selling prices something past admission, so ask on web site and browse what your pockets asks you to signal. Use solely the QR code on the station or the mission’s official web site, not hyperlinks despatched in replies or DMs. Our information to forgotten market approvals explains why that issues lengthy after the go to.
Who Maurice Benayoun is
Benayoun, often known as MoBen, was born in 1957 in Mascara, Algeria, and relies in Paris and Hong Kong, in keeping with his official bio. He has been constructing artwork out of recent expertise for the reason that early Nineteen Nineties: the 3D computer-animated sequence Quarxs (1991–93); Tunnel underneath the Atlantic (1995), a virtual-reality tunnel connecting the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Musée d’artwork contemporain de Montréal; and World Pores and skin (1997), “a photograph safari within the land of struggle,” proven in Linz. His bio additionally lists two road works in Barcelona made with Refik Anadol.
Worth of Values grew out of The Mind Manufacturing facility, which Benayoun started in 2016 with architect and artist Tobias Klein, and the blockchain aspect got here with Mendoza, whose work focuses on artwork and cryptocurrencies. The mission is tied to the Neuro-Design Lab at Metropolis College of Hong Kong’s College of Artistic Media, which lists Benayoun as director. Earlier than Milan, variations of the work have been proven on the Bauhaus 100 exhibition in Macerata, Italy, in 2019, curated by MEET founder Maria Grazia Mattei; at Asia Society Hong Kong in 2022; and on the tenth Beijing Worldwide Artwork Biennale, which opened in December 2025.
How you can go to
The place: MEET Digital Tradition Middle, Viale Vittorio Veneto 2, 20124 Milan, Italy.Dates: October 29, 2026 – January 31, 2027.Hours: Thursday by means of Sunday, 2:30 – 7:30 p.m. native time.Tickets: MEET’s web site sends guests to its ticket web page on Fever, the place the doorway ticket covers MEET’s complete present program. Examine there for costs and time slots.
Why this present issues for onchain artwork
Most NFT artwork in museums arrives as completed work on a display screen. Right here the museum palms guests the entire cycle: making, proudly owning and buying and selling, after which exhibits them the outcomes as a portrait of what individuals prize. Benayoun was making virtual-reality artwork on the Pompidou in 1995, so this can be a pioneer of digital tradition taking the token severely sufficient to critique it from the within. It additionally matches a run of establishments making room for this historical past, from the Centre Pompidou’s new digital artwork committee to Rhizome’s web artwork anniversary present and Emi Kusano’s upcoming AI artwork museum present in Japan. For extra artists and exhibitions like this, browse our NFT artwork protection.
