Life Writer is an interactive installation that merges the boundaries between the artificial and the real. It consists of an antique table and chair, an old-fashioned typewriter and paper that functions as a projection screen.

The artwork evolves and adapts according to the user’s input. As the gallery visitor sits down and types, letters are projected onto the light-sensitive paper. These letters are transformed into insect-like creatures when the carriage return is pressed.

The behaviour and movements of the creatures are determined by the text on which they are based, which acts as genetic code. The creatures move faster or slower depending on their genetic code and eat letters to survive and reproduce. The gallery visitor can interact with the creatures by using the scroll of the typewriter’s cylinder.

Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artists and researchers. They have jointly created around 20 interactive artworks, which have been called «epoch making» (Toshiharu Itoh, NTTICC museum Tokyo) for developing natural and intuitive interfaces and for often applying scientific principles such as artificial life, complexity and generative systems to their innovative interface designs.

Their work has been shown in around 200 exhibitions worldwide and is installed in many international media museums and media collections, including the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam); the Museum of Science and Industries (Tokyo); Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (ZKM); the Cartier Foundation (Paris); the Ars Electronica Center (Linz); the NTT-ICC Museum (Tokyo); the NTT Plan-Net (Nagoya, Japan); the Shiroishi Multimedia Art Center (Japan); the House-of-Shiseido (Tokyo); and the Itau Cultural Foundation (São Paulo).

They have won major international media awards, among others the 1994 Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica for Interactive Art (Linz, 1994). Mignonneau and Sommerer publish on Artificial Life, Complexity, Interactivity and Interface Design and they lecture extensively at universities, international conferences, and symposia.

They have worked as researchers and professors at ATR Research Labs in Kyoto Japan and at IAMAS in Ogaki Japan for ten years and currently head the department for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz, which specialises in interactive art, interactive media and interface design.