Four walls of a space are "painted", with video projectors, into a single photo realistic 360º landscape representing a public garden. The space, set in Montreal's Mont-Royal Park, is being visited by real and virtual characters. If the virtual characters appear to come and go in the garden, real visitors will need help to walk in and explore. For this they have to make contact with one of the virtual character by selecting, using voice or touch, questions or comments from imposed sets. Questions on, for example, where they are, what is around, where one can go from here will engage a conversation leading to some form of relationship. The exchange may be cut short with everyone going back to their business or it may reach a point where visitors will convince a character to lead them somewhere. In such case, visitors are being pulled through the landscape after their virtual guide and the whole room appears to be moving in this direction.
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau are internationally renowned media artists working in the field of interactive computer installation. They are Professors at the University of Art and Design in Linz Austria where they head the Department for Interface Culture at the Institute for Media. Sommerer and Mignonneau previously held positions as Professors at the IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan and as Researchers and Artistic Directors at the ATR Media Integration and Communications Research Lab in Kyoto Japan. They also were Visiting Researchers at the in Cambridge US, the Beckmann Institute in Champaign Urbana, IL, USA and the in Tokyo.
Sommerer originally studied biology (botany) at the University of Vienna and modern sculpture and art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (masters degree) .
