For a more symbiotic co-individuation with our technological avatars: how to go, with the Sciences and the Arts, beyond hybridizations?

With interactive computing, the metaphorical use of biological notions of hybridization and symbiosis has become widespread. They refer to the possibilities of mixing as well as to the conditions of emergence of relationships ranging from mutual benefit to instrumentalization between technologies and humans. In order to better understand the relevance of such analogies with the living, this article draws on scientific and artistic research concerning the interactive avatar. These seem particularly instructive on our relationship to technology because this virtual being hybridises the living and the artificial, while constituting the key and the condition of access to digital spaces, to co-evolve with other users, themselves avatarised, or other autonomised agents. The article distinguishes between "cyber" avatars populating persistent universes, video games, virtual realities, i.e., cybermedia environments of simulation and interaction. The "hyper" avatars are those of the Web, online services, 2.0 platforms or socio-numerical networks that are juxtaposed in networked informational and documentary hypermedia. From then on, the challenge is to reinvest the sense and responsibility of their potential for augmentation or simulation, in particular by promoting cooperative interactions through science, art and technology, which are themselves by their very nature synergistic with each other.