Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artist working in the field of interactive computer installation. They currently hold positions as Professors for Interface Culture at the University of Art and Design in Linz Austria and at the IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan.

Sommerer and Mignonneau collaborate since 1992, their interactive artworks have been called "epoch making" (Toshiharu Itoh, NTT-ICC museum) for pioneering the use of natural interfaces to create intuitive and natural interaction and for linking dynamic and evolving image processes to user interaction parameters. Their collaboration has been influenced by the combination of their different fields of interest, including art, biology, modern installation, performance, music, computer graphics and communication.

After joining these interest in 1992, Mignonneau and Sommerer created pioneering interactive computer installations such as "Interactive Plant Growing" (1992), "Anthroposcope" (1993), "A-Volve" (1994), "Trans Plant" (1995), "Intro Act" (1995), "MIC Exploration Space" (1995), "GENMA" (1996), "Life Spacies" (1997), "Life Spacies II" (1999), "HAZE Express" (1999), "VERBARIUM" (1999), "Industrial Evolution" (2000) and "PICO_SCAN" (1999/2000), "Riding the Net" (2000), "The Living Room" (2001), "The Living Web" (2002), "Nano-Scape" (2002) and "Mobile Feelings" (2003).

These works have been shown in numerous exhibitions world-wide and are permanently installed in media museums and media collections around the world, including the Media Museum of the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, the NTT-ICC InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, the CARTIER Foundation in Paris, the Millennium Dome in London, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Japan, the AEC Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, the NTT Plan-Net in Nagoya, Japan, Shiroishi Multimedia Art Center in Shiroishi, Japan and the HOUSE-OF-SHISEIDO in Tokyo.

Sommerer and Mignonneau have won mayor international media awards, for example the "Golden Nica" Ars Electronica Award for Interactive Art 1994 (Linz, Austria), the "Ovation Award" of the Interactive Media Festival 1995 (Los Angeles, USA), the "Multi Media Award '95" of the Multimedia Association Japan and the World Technology Award in London (2001).

Sommerer and Mignonneau have published numerous research papers on Artificial Life, interactivity and interface design and lectured extensively at universities, international conferences, and symposia around the world. They hold doctoral degrees from CAiiA-STAR, University of Wales College of Art, Newport, UK and Kobe University, Japan. Mignonneau and Sommerer have organized workshops and invited sessions at various international conferences, such as SCI2001 (Orlando, 2001), KES2001(Osaka, 2001), AlifeVII (Portland, 2000), KES2000 (Brighton, 2000) and ART-Science-ATR (Kyoto, 1997).

Sommerer is also an international Co-editor for the LEONARDO Journal, MIT Press and in 1998, together with Laurent Mignonneau, she edited a book on the collaboration of art and science called "Art@Science," published by Springer Verlag Vienna/New York (ISBN 3-211-82953-9).