CG short film with trans-species motion capture, 2023.

The film is about a mouse that transformed into a child, but preserves her rodent behavior and rodent preferences of spaces her body likes to occupy. It calls back the ancient mythological archetype of the mouse-turned maid that originated from India and traveled westward to Europe in Middle Ages and also eastward to East Asia. Traveling Soul is the first artistic production that employs zoomorphic trans-species motion capture choreography, investigating non-anthropocentric metempsychosis, the MIGRATION OF THE SOUL, mapping animal behavior and movement onto human body. The mouse-child’s body is traveling in all the in-between spaces, the soul is traveling, and the myth is traveling. Across bodies, across space, across time. In collaboration with DANNCE team of Harvard Biology, the world’s first markerless animal mocap system, this piece questions mind-body relationship, otherness, and objecthood of animal. A Harvard Mind Body Behavior Initiative funded interdisciplinary research creation project.