The Artwork as a Living System
Ingeborg Reichle
Ingeborg Reichle, "The Artwork as a Living System." In: Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau: The Artwork as a Living System, ed. by Karin Ohlenschläger, Peter Weibel, and Alfred Weidinger. The MIT Press, Boston, 2022, pp. 326-335.
Over the last three decades, the Austrian-French artist duo Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau have created many iconic artworks, which are recognized today as highly significant contributions to the history of interactive computer arts (ICA). With their interactive installations they have developed the concept of “Art as a Living System,” which they define as “a complex interrelation and interaction of real and virtual entities that engage in a dialogue, which causes and gives rise to the appearance of a different space of matter and mind.” Exploring real time human-computer interaction based on the design of emotional and metaphoric interface technologies that enhance the active engagement of their audiences with the virtual worlds of their computer-based artworks became a major incentive for their interactive art research.
