Christa Sommerer is an internationally renowned media artist, researcher and pioneer of interactive art. She worked at the IAMAS Academy in Gifu, Japan, the ATR Research Labs in Kyoto, Japan, the MIT CAVS in Cambridge US and the NCSA in Champaign-Urbana, IL, USA. In 2004 together with Laurent Mignonneau she set up the department for Interface Cultures in Linz, Austria. Sommerer held visiting professor positions at CAFA Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, Tsukuba University and Aalborg University, Denmark. Together with Laurent Mignonneau she created around 40 interactive artworks shown in around 350 international exhibitions. They received numerous awards, including the Austrian State Art Award in the category media art. Between 2021 and 2024 their 30 years retrospective exhibition “The Artwork as a Living System,” curated by Karin Ohlenschläger is touring from the ZKM in Karlsruhe, to the OK Center in Linz, to the iMAL in Brussels and the Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao. This exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive overview of their art works in the book “Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau — The Artwork as a Living System” edited by Karin Ohlenschläger, Peter Weibel and Alfred Weidinger. It was published in 2022 at the MIT Press, Leonardo Book series.
interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent
Francesca Franco is a Venetian-born curator, producer and art historian based in the UK and Italy. She is Visiting Professor at Danube University Krems, where she teaches Media Art and Curatorial Practice. From 2019 to 2023, she was Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project “Documenting digital art: re-thinking histories and practices of documentation in the museum and beyond” at the University of Exeter. In 2022 she produced and curated Vera Molnár: Icône 2020, an exhibition centred on a new commission, “Icône 2020”, at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. In 2017, she was curator-in-residence at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa Venice, where she curated Algorithmic Signs, an exhibition that explored the history of pioneering generative art. The central theme of Francesca’s research is the history of art and technology and the pioneers of computer art. A major focus has been the history of the Venice Biennale culminating in a series of publications that have been translated into various languages. Her first solo-authored book, Generative Systems Art, was published by Routledge in 2018. Her second monograph, The Algorithmic Dimension, was published by Springer in 2022. Her forthcoming book on the history of computer art at the Venice Biennale will be published by Springer in 2024.
francescafranco.net
