Christa Sommerer and her partner, Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artists working in the field of interactive computer installation. They currently work as researcher and artistic directors at the ATR Media Integration and Communications Research Lab in Kyoto, Japan and as Associate Professors at the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) in Gifu, Japan. They also hold respective positions of Visiting Research Fellows at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies in Boston, MA, USA.

Sommerer and Mignonneau have collaborated since 1992, and their interactive artworks have been called "epoch making" (Toshiharu Itoh, NTT-ICC museum) for pioneering the use of natural interfaces to create a new language of interactivity based on artificial life and evolutionary image processes. 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, Sommerer and Mignonneau created interactive computer installations such as "Interactive Plant Growing" (1992/93), "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) and "Riding the Net" (2000).These works have been shown in numerous exhibitions world-wide and are permanently installed in media museums and media collections around the world.

Sommerer and Mignonneau have won major 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, CA, USA) and the "Multi Media Award '95" of the Multimedia Association Japan. Sommerer and Mignonneau have published numerous research papers on Artificial Life, interactivity and interface design and lectured extensively at universities, international conferences, and symposia.

They are currently finishing their Ph.D. degrees on these topics at CAiiA-STAR, University of Wales, College of Art, Newport, UK.

Sommerer and Mignonneau 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 a Guest Editor for the LEONARDO Journal, MIT Press. 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).

Website: http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent/index.html