Christa Sommerer

Most Recent Affiliation(s):

University of Art and Design Linz (Kunst Universität Linz), Interface Cultures Department, _Professor

Other Affiliation(s):

Aalborg University

ISEA Bio(s) Available:

ISEA2024

Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artists, researchers and pioneers of interactive art. They worked 10 years in Japan as Associate Professors at the IAMAS Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan and as Researchers and Artistic Directors at the ATR Advanced Telecommunications Research Lab in Kyoto Japan. Before they were artists-in residence at the MIT CAVS in Cambridge US, artists-in-residence at the NCSA National Center for Supercomputing Applications Beckmann Institute in Champaign Urbana, IL, USA and artists-in-residence at the NTT-InterCommunication Center in Tokyo. In 2004 they set up the department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria where they are both professors. Sommerer held positions a Visiting Professor at CAFA Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing in 2019, as Visiting Professor at the Empowerment Informatics Program at Tsukuba University in 2018 and as Obel Guest Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark from 2014-2016. Mignonneau was a Chair International Professor at Paris 8 University in France in 2015. Sommerer and Mignonneau have published numerous books and research papers on Artificial Life, interactivity and interface design and they lectured extensively at universities, international conferences, and symposia. Sommerer is also an International Co-editor for the LEONARDO Journal, MIT Press, among other international media art board and committee memberships. Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau created around 50 pioneering interactive artworks that have been exhibited in around 350 international exhibitions They received numerous awards, f.e. the 2016 ARCO BEEP Award in Madrid Spain, the 2012 Wu Guanzhong Art and Science Innovation Award which was bestowed by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and the 1994 Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica Award and in 2021 the Austrian State Art Award in the category of Media Art. They created pioneering interactive artworks such as “Interactive Plant Growing” in 1992 where visitors can interact with real plants to create artificial plants on a screen (From the ZKM Collection: and Another highlight is the interactive Installation “A-Volve” in 1994 where visitors can create Artificial Life creatures that swim, mate and propagate in a pool filled with water. In 2010 Sommerer and Mignonneau became interested in the attention economy and created a work called “The Value of Art”. Visitors can look at paintings and 10 seconds of their attention increases the value of the artwork by one Euro. The constantly increasing value of the art work is printed on a thermal printed attached to the art work.They also have been interested in digital portraiture and created interactive installations such as “Portrait on the Fly” (2015). Here visitors can produce their own live portrait through a swarm of 10.000 flies or through artificial ants in “Homo Insectus” (2020) Sommerer and Mignonneau have also created several large scale public installations such as “ANTopolis” (2020) where people and passerby in the city could see themselves transformed by virtual ants on a gigantic screen. Sommerer and Mignonneau artworks are mostly concerned with interactivity, the human-nature relationship and ecological topics.

ISEA2022

Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artists working in the field of interactive computer installation. They are Professors at the University of Art and Design in Linz Austria where they head the Department for Interface Culture at the Institute for Media. Sommerer and Mignonneau previously held positions as Professors at the IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan and as Researchers and Artistic Directors at the ATR Media Integration and Communications Research Lab in Kyoto Japan. They also were Visiting Researchers at the MIT CAVS in Cambridge US, the Beckmann Institute in Champaign Urbana, IL, USA and the NTT-InterCommunication Center in Tokyo.

ISEA2020

Christa Sommerer is an internationally renowned media artist, researcher and pioneer of interactive art. Currently she is a professor and head of the department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria. She was a Guest Professor at CAFA Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, a guest professor at Tsukuba University Empowerment Informatics Department and an Obel Guest professor at Aalborg University, Denmark.

Together with Laurent Mignonneau she has created around 30 interactive artworks, for which they received numerous awards such the 2012 Wu Guanzhong Art and Science Innovation Prize (for “Escape”) awarded by Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, the Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica, the Ovation Award of the Interactive Media Festival Los Angeles, the Multi Media Award’95 of the Multimedia Association, Japan and the PRIZE 2008 – uni:invent Award by Ministry of Science and Research in Austria.

ISEA2019

Christa Sommerer is an internationally renowned media artist, researcher and pioneer of interactive art. After working, researching and teaching in the US and Japan for 10 years, she together with Laurent Mignonneau set up the department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria. She studied with Roy Ascott at the University of Wales College of Art, Newport in the UK where she obtained a PhD. She previously worked at the IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan, at the ATR Media Integration and Communications Research Lab in Kyoto Japan, the MIT CAVS in Cambridge US, the Beckmann Institute in Champaign Urbana, IL, USA, the NTT-InterCommunication Center in Tokyo.

She was a Visiting Professor at CAFA Central Academy of Fine Arts Bejing in 2019, a Visiting Professor at Tsukuba University Empowerment Informatics Studio in 2018 and an Obel Guest Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark from 2014-2016. Together with Laurent Mignonneau she created around 40 interactive artworks that have been exhibited in around 350 international exhibitions. She received numerous awards, f.e. the 2016 ARCO BEEP Award in Madrid Spain, the 2012 Wu Guanzhong Art and Science Innovation Prize which was bestowed by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and the 1994 Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica Award.

ISEA2016

Christa Sommerer, Professor & Head of the Department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria.

Christa Sommerer(A), Interface Cultures Department, University of Art and Design, Linz, Austria and Aalborg University, Department of Art and Technology, DK

ISEA2015

Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneauare internationally renowned media artists and researchers. They studied with media art pioneers Peter Weibel and Roy Ascott. After an artist-in-residency at NSCA in Champaing/Urbana, USA, they worked 10 years in Japan as researchers at ATR Research Laboratories in Kyoto and as associate professors at the IAMAS Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu. Currently Sommerer and Mignonneau are professor and heads of the department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria.

Sommerer is also a Obel Guest Professor at Aalborg University’s Art &Technology Department in Denmark. Mignonneau and Sommerer have created around 20 artworks, for which they received numerous awards such the Wu Guanzhong Art and Science Innovation Prize by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China and the Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica Award. They have exhibited in around 250 exhibitions worldwide and their artworks are in collections such as the ZKM Media Museum Karlsruhe, the NTT-ICC Museum Tokyo, the Itau Cultural Foundation Sao Paulo, The View Contemporary Art Space Switzerland, the Contemporary Art Museum Lyon, FR, and Hermès Paris, FR.

ISEA97

Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau are artists and researchers working in the field of interactive computer installations that combine artificial life, art, science, real-time interaction and communication. They have received numerous awards, such as the Golden Nica Award for Interactive Art at the Ars Electronica 94 Festival, the Ovation Award at the Interactive Media Festival in Los Angeles in 1995 and many others. Their works are installed permanently in several museums such as: ZKM Media museum Karlsruhe, ICC InterCommunication Museum Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

They both are researchers and artistic directors at the ATR Advanced Telecommunications Research Lab in Kyoto Japan and also hold a Professor position at the IAMAS Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu Japan. In 1995 they organized and chaired an international conference called ART-Science-ATR, at ATR Kyoto, and in 1997 they published and edited a book called Art C@ Science in Springer Edition Vienna/New York dealing with the recent developments in the collaboration of art and science.

ISEA94

Christa Sommerer, Austria, (Institut für Neue Medien) Christa Sommerer studied Biology (Botany) and Arts (Sculpture) in Vienna, Austria. Since 1990 she works on the combination of Arts and Science. Early works questioned this relationship in a metaphorical sense.