Living Systems

Interactive artists Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau engage participants to learn more about the scientific content of the exhibition.

Living Systems is the first retrospective exhibition of Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, among the most renowned and innovative artists on the international media and interactive art scene. In a natural and intuitive way, their work develops interactive interfaces that apply principles of the theory of living systems related to ecology, artificial life and the complexity science.

This interactive exhibition offers us the possibility of experimenting in a participative way with all the pieces, which are most closely linked to the study of living systems: Eau de Jardin, Phototropy, Life Spacies II, Mobile Feelings and A-Volve. Ricard Solé, a researcher of complex systems, has collaborated on the compilation of the scientific vocabulary necessary to understand the artists' virtual ecosystems. The glossary of key-words that was born from this research, is also exhibited at the cloister of Arts Santa Mònica. The best thing of this intentional interactivity is the way it engages the participants at first hand with the exhibition project to learn more about the scientific content of the exhibition. The visitors can feel themselves in between a scientific laboratory and a children playground, where you can learn by playing.

<i>Eau de Jardin</i>. Photo by Xavi Soto, courtesy of Arts Santa Mònica — *Eau de Jardin*. Photo by Xavi Soto, courtesy of Arts Santa Mònica

The first interactive installation you find is Phototropy, which focuses on the biological expression to describe the force that makes organisms, such as bacteria or plants, follow the light in order to get nutrition and, hence, survive. Phototropy deals with virtual insects that can be feed and reproduced through the light of a lamp, held by the visitor in the installation. The feeling is strange, because if you keep the light in the same point, you can also kill the insects and burn them to death. So visitors can create or interact with life but also can feel the responsibility of taking life out. Here, light becomes at the same time "source and danger", in Sommerer words.

Glossary of keywords developed by Ricard Solé. Photo by dpr-barcelona

Life Spacies II is part of a research started in 1997, when Sommerer and Mignonneau started thinking on the fact that creating virtual life on computers ultimately brings up the question of how life has emerged on earth. Trying to discover the answer and thinking on how life could have developed from simpler units or particles into increasingly complex structures, here you can interact with whole systems of structures through the computer by typing text messages and create your own artificial creature. Written text is used as a genetic code, and the editor translates the written texts into three-dimensional autonomous creatures whose bodies, behaviors, interactions and survival are solely based on their genetic code and the users' interactions.

The best thing of this intentional interactivity is the way it engages the participants at first hand with the exhibition project to learn more about the scientific content of the exhibition. The visitors can feel themselves in between a scientific laboratory and a children playground, where you can learn by playing.

After being almost "obliged" to interact with such big screens, suddenly you find yourself playing with water in A-Volve, an new kind of environment where visitors can interact in real time with artificial creatures living in a water-filled glass pool. The virtual creatures are born from a drawing, when visitors can design any kind of shape and profile with their finger on a touch screen. The virtual three-dimensional creatures are automatically "alive" and swiming in the water of the pool. On the other side of the cloister is located the installation Eau de Jardin, the bigger one in terms of space and inspired by Claude Monet's later Water Lilies paintings, the interactive installation aims to transport visitors into the imaginary world of virtual water gardens. But how Sommerer and Mignonneau can do that? They have constructed a 3-sided vaulted projection screen of 12 x 3 meters that forms a triptych. The wide horizontal screens immerse the viewers mentally into a virtual picture of the water garden. 8 glass amphoraes hang from the ceiling of the cloister containing water plants such as lilies, lotus, bamboo, cypress and other aquatic plants. When the visitors approach the amphorae, their presence is recognized by the plants using sensor technologies, causing virtual water plants to be drawn on the large projection screens.

The Mobile Feelings installation is the only one that requires two people to work. This art work is focused on exploring this relationship between privacy and ubiquity and connectivity, and how mobile phones have transformed our social and individual lives. Here, users can send and receive body data over a wireless communication network. Being so interactive and a perfect tool for learning, an interesting approach of the exhibition is how it is reinforced through additional activities. From June to September there is a complete program, which includes round tables, summer school and workshops, including schools and summer groups as Phototropy, Fractals and It Isn't All in Our Genes!; Botaniq, which is an open archive of illustrated diaries that show the experience of several interactors with artwork; and family workshops such as Complexity.
Ethel Baraona Pohl