An interspecies journey of care and transformation by Mélodie Mousset.
Inside the inner courtyard of a vast corporate building, a fragile virtual bird flutters. Flaming red, trembling on the edge of burnout, it circles endlessly, pecks at cigarette butts, and knocks its head against concrete walls. Poor creature, so exposed, so sensitive, breathing in the invisible weight of human fatigue.
The participant encounters this sensitive bird and follows it into a lush, dreamlike garden - a living refuge tucked within the machine. There, through simple gestures of care - breathing, blowing, singing, feeding, playing - a fragile bond begins to form, and joy resurfaces.
Like a collective Tamagotchi, the work invites visitors to slow down, reconnect, and engage in shared rituals of attention and tenderness. Human and bird learn to soothe one another, rediscovering care, play, and joy as gentle acts of resistance in a world overheated by productivity.
Developed during an Artist-in-Lab residency at the Mobiliar Lab for Analytics at ETH Zurich, the work grew out of the Lab's research into chronic workplace stress. The team had developed machine-learning algorithms that could estimate stress levels in office employees from typing patterns and mouse movements, as well as guided breathing VR experiences using biofeedback to help regulate heart rate. Their research pointed to a wider problem: nearly one third of Swiss employees were close to chronic stress, making burnout a systemic condition of contemporary work rather than a purely individual issue. This became the literal point of departure for Empathy Creatures. The virtual environment begins as a replica of La Mobilière's headquarters, then lets the employee step out of routine and into a garden of possible change, care, and reconnection. The experience first appeared as a prototype at La Mobilière's headquarters in Bern (Ctrl+Alt+Relax, March 2025) before premiering at Venice Immersive 2025.
Empathy Creatures is a dual-system participatory installation combining behavioral AI technology and virtual reality. Two interconnected components run simultaneously in the same exhibition space. Each one shapes, and is shaped by, the other, creating a shared living world.
A large screen displays the bird's autonomous daily life in continuous real time, connected to the rhythm of the exhibition space through day and night cycles. Without a fixed script, the simulation acts as a living window into the bird's emotional ecosystem: it searches for food, eats, flies, sings, bathes, plays, naps, and tends its garden. Its behaviour evolves in response to the care, or neglect, it receives from VR participants, allowing spectators to observe the consequences of each encounter ripple through the shared garden over time.
Inside a circular curtain pod lit by LEDs that mirror the bird's emotional state, a single participant enters the virtual world. Controller-free and using hand tracking, breath, voice recognition, and embodied interaction, the experience invites them to form a unique bond with the bird through micro-rituals of care: blowing bubbles, breathing together, feeding, caressing, singing, and conducting its melody. As trust grows and the heartbeat slows, the bird's feathers shift from burnout red to radiant blue, and the participant is invited into a parallel transformation.
The installation is designed to foster conversation, attachment, and collective dynamics of care and responsibility. It is reconfigurable, and can be presented as a full scenographic installation or in a more minimal touring setup.
Technical specifications
Empathy Creatures has already lived as a physical installation in several contexts: the first working prototype at La Mobilière in Bern, the world premiere at Venice Immersive, and its presentation in Shanghai with AltNext and Slush China.
Empathy Creatures is a living, evolving installation. Available for licensing - contact melo@patchxr.com
Mélodie Mousset
Mélodie Mousset was born in 1981 in Abu Dhabi. She is a French award-winning artist and XR pioneer based in Switzerland. Her artistic research merges performance, art installation, and emerging technologies to craft playful, psychologically charged, multisensory experiences exploring porous identity, sympathy and embodiment, and collective transformation.
Previous immersive works include Organ Island, HanaHana, and The Jellyfish. Her works have been widely exhibited in museums and festivals, including MOCA (Los Angeles), ZKM (Karlsruhe), M+ (Hong Kong), HEK (Basel), and the Zabludowicz Collection (London). Mousset is also the co-founder and CEO of PatchXR, the creative tech company behind PatchWorld, a top-rated immersive platform reshaping collaborative creation in virtual worlds.
Mélodie Mousset · PatchXR AG
Chriesbaumstrasse 6
8604 Volketswil, Canton Zürich, Switzerland
melo@patchxr.com
+41 78 768 66 24
AltNext - Shan He
SFP HOPE Smart Media Park, Shanghai
altnext@altstory.com
altnext.co
Digital Rise
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