Mignonneau and Sommerer: Digital Artists as Friends of Nature

Laurent Mignonneau (Angouleme, 1967) and Christa Sommerer (Ohlsdorf/Gmunden, 1964) began collaborating in the 1980s, combining visual arts with biology and botany. Their early work Interactive Plant Growing (1992) allowed real plants to interact with digital projections, reacting to gentle touch. This was a pioneering reflection on ecology in digital art, later evolving into Bioart. In 1994, they created A-Volve, an interactive installation where audience-drawn shapes appeared as virtual organisms in a real pool of water, living for minutes before dying. The duo's practice aligns with Expanded Cinema, blending analog, digital, concrete, and virtual materials. In 2008, their exhibition You_niverse at the Biennale of Seville demonstrated how interactive art fosters participatory universes. They spent years in Japan at universities and research centers, producing works since the 1990s. For the last fifteen years, they have taught "Interface Culture" at the University of Art and Design Linz, with visiting professorships in Japan, Denmark, and France. Their recent work Portrait on a Fly uses interactive software to transform real-time images into swarms of flies on large screens, marking a departure from technological optimism and evoking references to science fiction, Lord of the Flies, and Kafka's Metamorphosis.