koa.xyz | Las Awichas and the computational creativity lab, Cochabamba

koa@lab:~$ koafetch

computational creativity · Cochabamba, Bolivia · run by Violeta Ayala & Dan Fallshaw

Las Awichas 7

In black and white, a grandmother with her hands crossed, ringed by eight silver robotic animals: spider, condor, gecko, monkey, jaguar, llama, whale and hummingbird.Las Awichaskoa.xyz › las-awichasA large black panel of silver animals around a grandmother's face, on a stone building. A man looks at it.GLOW, King's College London, 2024koa.xyz › las-awichasThe silver jaguar of Las Awichas lies in the dark, her front paws raised.jaguar.glbkoa.xyz › jaguar.glbIn black and white, a grandmother in a knitted hat looks out of the dark, her hands crossed on her chest.All the Awichas, the portraitskoa.xyz › las-awichas/portraitsVisitors fill a gallery hung with large black and white portraits, under a light sign reading Las Awichas.El Martadero, Cochabamba, 2022koa.xyz › las-awichasA university campus with large sculptures and a SURREALITY sign.SURREALITY, HKUST, Guangzhou, 2025koa.xyz › las-awichasTwo visitors read a wall of portraits lit in pink and violet.Las Awichas at GLOW, the Strandkoa.xyz › las-awichas

Huk 12

Visitors in silhouette before a projection of a jaguar figure against a red and green sky.Hukkoa.xyz › HukA chrome jaguar with carved panels lies among pitcher plants and long leaves; a small metal hummingbird flies beside it.Huk the Jaguaress among pitcher plantskoa.xyz › hukA white jaguar sculpture on a plinth of moss glows with projected orange light. Green spots of light cover the wall behind.Huk the Jaguaress, moss and lightkoa.xyz › hukA hand-drawn sheet titled Awichas system: a circle for the character animal, linked to circles for voice, sound, language model, camera, emotions, film and animation, and below them the front ends: Unreal, Unity, TouchDesigner and 8th Wall.Huk's system on one sheetkoa.xyz › hukA white 3D printed jaguar with jointed legs lies on a wooden table.The articulated print, August 2024koa.xyz › hukA white jaguar lying down, covered in a projected rainbow grid, beside paper cranes.Projected light, CPH:DOXkoa.xyz › hukA silver robotic jaguar lying down, its body made of carved, jointed panels.The silver jaguar in Blenderkoa.xyz › hukHuk's silver jaguar, mouth open, patterned like carved metal.Huk's creatures, rigged to move with a bodykoa.xyz › hukA plan drawn on a whiteboard: plinths with jaguars, a projection screen of 2.5 by 1.4 metres, three HD projectors, two media players and six plinths.The plan of the roomkoa.xyz › hukAn installation of white plinths covered in projected jaguar spots, plants and flowers, a screen with a metal jaguar; two visitors, one crouching.Huk the Jaguaress in Copenhagen, 2025koa.xyz › hukA screen with TouchDesigner open: a network of nodes over a painted tree in orange and blue, and a line of the jaguar's story.Huk the Jaguaress in TouchDesignerkoa.xyz › hukTwo small 3D printed jaguars on a kitchen counter, one orange lying down and one black sitting.First prints, July 2024koa.xyz › huk

Paqarina 8

A dancer in a tall feather headdress turns on one foot in a white room.Paqarinakoa.xyz › paqarinaTwo dancers in blue and red bodysuits dance tinku, bent forward, in a white room.Tinku, in the archivekoa.xyz › paqarinaThe cover of the notebook: Kullawada, Tejiendo e hilando conocimientos, on paper the colour of sand.Kullawada. Cuaderno 01koa.xyz › kullawada.htmlFour camera views of the same take: two dancers in a white room, seen from four corners.Four cameras, one takekoa.xyz › paqarinaA pink skeleton and a white humanoid robot dance side by side on a blue chequered floor.A robot learns to dancekoa.xyz › paqarinaSeen from one side, the circle of the first meeting on the checkered floor, with a laptop in front.Acta 01. Primera reunión de equipokoa.xyz › acta-01.htmlThe Paqarina app: the list of takes, a camera view of a dancer and the 3D skeleton of the same moment.The Paqarina appkoa.xyz › paqarinaA chart of the dances in the space the model learned: breaking in pink, kullawada in cyan, tinku in yellow.The dances, as the model sees themkoa.xyz › paqarina

Yakumama 5

A silver robotic whale floats above the flooded salt flat of Uyuni at dusk.Yakumamakoa.xyz › yakumamaYakumama, a silver whale with a carved, patterned skin, floats on a blue ground.Yakumama, calmkoa.xyz › yakumamaA design for the physical whale: stepped lines and spirals, like Nazca lines, trail from a lit head.A whale drawn with Nazca lineskoa.xyz › yakumamaIn Blender, the whale's head and open mouth, the skin carved with patterns.Yakumama in Blenderkoa.xyz › yakumamaA design for the physical whale in silver, seen from the front, with stepped lines around it.The silver whalekoa.xyz › yakumama

Todo Nace 4

A dancer on a lit checkered floor in a dark hall, the audience in a ring, screens above.Todo Nace Desde Lo Pequeñokoa.xyz › taoA screen shows a generated white jaguar lying on a checkered floor, above the silhouettes of the audience.A jaguar on the screen, made livekoa.xyz › taoA dancer in a bright yellow shirt and a beaded skirt moves under blue light.A dancer under blue lightkoa.xyz › taoA screen shows generated figures in glowing armour, red and blue, above the audience.Figures in armour of lightkoa.xyz › tao

Lab notes 20

koa@lab:~$ cat jaguaress-skeleton.txtThe jaguaress learns her own skeletonkoa.xyz › research › 2026-06-02Diagram of YakuMama's signal flow: sensors and a camera feed one script, which sends the state to the renderer in Blender and to a local language model. Everything runs on one computer, with no internet.The whale that watches backkoa.xyz › research › 2026-05-26A silver jaguar model stands in Blender, beside a panel of sliders for pose, ears, whiskers and tail.The body decides the interfacekoa.xyz › research › 2026-05-22Diagram of the pipeline: video input, MediaPipe, UDP packets, the receiver in Blender, then armature and mesh.The monkey learns the shape of its own bodykoa.xyz › research › 2026-05-19koa@lab:~$ cat monkey-moves.txtThe monkey learns to move: quaternions, humanoid puppeteeringkoa.xyz › research › 2026-05-09koa@lab:~$ cat llama-feels.txtThe llama learns to feel, the model learns to listen, and Yakumama is bornkoa.xyz › research › 2026-05-06koa@lab:~$ cat heartbeat-flower.txtWhen the heartbeat moves the flowerkoa.xyz › research › 2026-04-28A person wearing a VR headset stands in a room with a desk, monitors and a window over the city. Seen from behind.The spider learns to weave, the gecko learns to feel, and SIGGRAPH callskoa.xyz › research › 2026-04-25A monitor shows a turquoise gecko model in Blender. A small window shows a person with headphones and tracking points on the face.The gecko learns to feel, Qwen 3.6 finds its voice, and the recording beginskoa.xyz › research › 2026-04-18koa@lab:~$ cat 15-creatures.txt15 creatures, 14 pipelines and a platform-agnostic brainkoa.xyz › research › 2026-04-17A grey robotic hummingbird with open wings stands on a grid floor, in a 3D scene.The water lily learns to breathe, the sundew counts fingers, and the pipeline moves to WebSocketkoa.xyz › research › 2026-04-10Four pictures: a 3D flower with orange petals, two desks with monitors that show a person tracked by a camera beside a 3D llama, and a screen with a network of lines.The tree learns fear, the orchid mourns fire, and the llama finds stillnesskoa.xyz › research › 2026-03-30koa@lab:~$ cat gyroscope.txtThe $2 gyroscope that solved what the neural network couldn’tkoa.xyz › research › 2026-03-21koa@lab:~$ cat embodied-intelligence.txtToward embodied intelligence for nonhuman characterskoa.xyz › research › 2026-03-14koa@lab:~$ cat somatic-puppeteering.txtSomatic puppeteering across plants, birds and heartbeatskoa.xyz › research › 2026-03-08A 3D tree with its roots in a 3D program, under the words Mocap systems for Collective Intelligences. Beside it, three smaller views: a fern, an orange tree and a white branch.From documentary to living systemskoa.xyz › research › 2025-11-15A person speaks into a microphone beside a large curved screen that shows a blue condor over an open hand. Above, the title The Condor Obeyed Violeta's Hand. Below, a text about the opening of Surreality in Guangzhou on 26 June 2025.The condor obeyed Violeta’s handkoa.xyz › research › 2025-06-26koa@lab:~$ cat building-huk.txtBuilding Huk V1.0: a digital deity for the burning Amazonkoa.xyz › research › 2025-04A page about the Feminist AI residency at the University of Nottingham: two blocks of text and pictures of the workshop, a white robot and two people smiling.Two machines, one question: feminist AI at the VIP Studiokoa.xyz › research › 2025-02-12A portrait from Las Awichas: an elderly woman in a dark hat rests her chin on her hand. Her shawl turns into red and green stripes.Las Awichas selected for the major GLoW3 exhibition in Londonkoa.xyz › research › 2023-08

Experiments 13

A line of pink neon writing on black.Experimentskoa.xyz › experimentsTwo figures meet in the rain on a flooded street, one in red boots.Lluviakoa.xyz › rainA drawing of a jaguar's face between two lines, and a hand.Paper Peoplekoa.xyz › paper-peopleA drawing of a goldfish in a glass jar on an orange wall, with the words: dreams of having an aquarium, grandma's jar, goldie found in puddle.Lluvia: a goldfish in grandma's jarkoa.xyz › rainFlowers scattered across a white page.Flower Stampskoa.xyz › flower-stamps.htmlWhite lines crossing on black.Video wallskoa.xyz › video-wallsA comic panel: the rabbit mother in sunglasses at her door on a suburban street, cats in sunglasses all around, a speech bubble full of SPY.Lluvia: the rabbit mother and her cat spieskoa.xyz › rainA line of pink neon writing on black.Interactive Neon Poemkoa.xyz › neon-poem.htmlBlack lines drawn out from one point on white.Kaleidoscopic Penskoa.xyz › kaleidoscopic-pens.htmlA girl in a crowded market street in a hillside city, Bolivian flags on the balconies.Lluvia: 1995koa.xyz › rainThreads of colour fall over a blue picture of grandmothers and animals.Thread Fallkoa.xyz › thread-fall.htmlkoa@lab:~$ cat co-creation-lab.txtCochabamba, 31 May 2025.Computational Creativity Co-Creation Labkoa.xyz › co-creation-lab.txtA round view into a voxel world of red, yellow and white blocks.KOA.XYZ in Voxels, 2021koa.xyz › koa-world.vox

The lab 4

koa@lab:~$ cat koa.txtkoa.xyz is a computational creativity lab in Cochabamba, Bolivia, run by Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw.koa.txtkoa.xyz › koa.txtA woman with braided hair and a black shawl embroidered with flowers works at a laptop.Violeta Ayalakoa.xyz › violeta-ayala.txtA man in sunglasses laughs at the open door of a small green and white plane.Dan Fallshawkoa.xyz › dan-fallshaw.txtkoa@lab:~$ cat contact.txtVioleta Ayala: v@unf.red. Dan Fallshaw: dan@unf.red.contact.txtkoa.xyz › contact.txt

koa.txt

koa@lab

lab
computational creativity
place
Cochabamba, Bolivia
run by
Violeta Ayala & Dan Fallshaw
work
Las Awichas · Huk · Paqarina
notes
20 lab notes
threads

koa.xyz is a computational creativity lab in Cochabamba, Bolivia, run by Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw.

K'oa is an Andean ceremony of reciprocity to the Pachamama, Mother Earth.

The lab began in 2021 as KOA.XYZ, a world in Voxels where we started building the Neo-Andean metaverse. Today it makes creatures, worlds and live experiments with artificial intelligence, robotics, augmented reality, code and paper.

Our models run locally. Our own computers, our own energy. Our data, our rules.

Everything on this desk opens. We also have a 3D printer. We build our own sensors, our robots and our datasets.

Violeta Ayala

Dan Fallshaw

Las Awichas

In black and white, a grandmother with her hands crossed, ringed by eight silver robotic animals: spider, condor, gecko, monkey, jaguar, llama, whale and hummingbird.

In Quechua, pacha means time and place at once. Ñawpa pacha, the time in front, is the past we can see. Qhipa pacha, the time behind, is the future we cannot see yet. Las Awichas live in ñawpa pacha. Awicha means grandmother, and these are mine, returned through post-photography. More than 20,000 years ago, they walked across the land where the Bering Strait is today and became the first people of our continent.

>> ENTER >>

Eight grandmothers made with AI, each with an Andean spirit animal inspired by the Nazca Lines: gecko, spider, llama, monkey, ancient whale, hummingbird, condor and jaguar. They weave magic into robotic animals who answer your hands and your voice.

Las Awichas has lived in Cochabamba, London, Guangzhou and New York. In 2025 it won Best Interactive Experience at the Australian International Documentary Conference in Melbourne.

Las Awichas portraits

Open Las Awichas

Huk

Violeta Ayala is expanding Huk into a collective intelligence model, where Indigenous AI, dance, affective computing and ecology meet, with Mila and Abundant Intelligences in Montreal.

Huk the Jaguaress is one work inside Huk.

Open Huk

A silver robotic jaguar walks above the clouds at sunset, with a silver hummingbird.
Huk the Jaguaress, trailer. Watch on YouTube

  1. 2024

    Huk the Jaguaress

    Mila, Quebec AI Institute, and the UQAM Gallery, Montreal

    Huk the Jaguaress is born here: Huk 1.0, made in ten full-time weeks of the first Mila AI art residency. She uses robotics and runs locally, on our own computers, with no cloud. Three projectors, a depth camera and six moss-wrapped plinths are enough for the prototype to breathe, speak and make micro-films on the fly.

    Supported by Mila, Google DeepMind, Abundant Intelligences, CIFAR, Hexagram, Mosaic Canada and IVADO.

    A jaguar on a screen, among flowers and projected jaguar patterns.
    Flowers and a glowing jaguar sculpture on a plinth, with a screen behind.

  2. 2025

    Huk the Jaguaress

    CPH:DOX INTER:ACTIVE, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen

    An AI installation co-created with Yasmeen Hitti. We weave five AIs to give Huk the power to fight the burning of the Amazon. She sees through a robotic camera, feels through sensors, speaks through a crafted voice and turns what she perceives into cinema in real time.

    Mid-run, the AI notices visitors folding paper into tiny animals and asks for more. By the last day 700 origamis ring her pedestal, and each new crane or jaguar changes the colours and the sound.

    Visitors among projections in a white gallery. Green letters: Huk: The Jaguaress, a digital robot.
    Visitors walk through a gallery hung with white curtains and coloured light.

  3. 2025

    Huk the Jaguaress

    NewImages Festival, Forum des Images, Paris

    Six jaguars of recycled PLA, each in its own diorama of orchids and monstera, take on new skins when a step or a whisper reaches the sensors. Across the day Huk moves through three personas, cub, huntress and elder, speaks French and Quechua, and makes more than an hour of original film loops on the fly.

    Visitors in a dark tent of projections, flowers and screens. The words Huk V3 above.
    Visitors in silhouette before a projection of a jaguar figure against a red and green sky.
    A projected tree with blue roots beside a wall of text, and a white jaguar figure among plants.

Huk's world, in Blender

Huk's macaque in gold, arms raised and tail hanging, in Blender.
Huk's gecko in purple, on dry ground.
Huk's silver whale, patterned, swimming upward.
Huk's silver jaguar, mouth open, patterned like carved metal.
A close view of the silver jaguar's head.

May and June 2026: the macaque, the gecko, the silver whale and the jaguar. Each one is rigged to move live with a performer's body.

The research for Huk

All the research

Paqarina

Paqarina builds community-governed movement datasets with dancers across four Bolivian traditions, fusing ancestral dance with breakdancing through ch’ixi logic.

Open Paqarina

Yakumama

A silver robotic whale floats above the flooded salt flat of Uyuni at dusk.
Yakumama, a silver whale with a carved, patterned skin, floats on a blue ground.
A silver robotic whale floats over a grid floor, under a blue sky, in a 3D scene.

There are two of her. One is printed. The other swims in the salt flat on the screen. They share one mood, so they change colour at the same time. Neither is the copy.

Ch'ixi is an Aymara word for a grey made of black and white that never mix. Both at once, and they stay that way. This is a ch'ixi installation.

The salt flat was an ocean. The ocean left. She stayed.

She sees you. Her eyes follow whoever is closest. She hears you without understanding a word, because she never learned any. Sing to her and she answers.

She sings in a language she invents as she goes and never says the same word twice. When nobody touches her, she writes a poem instead.

She still hunts. There are fish out there and she goes after them.

Everything she is runs on a machine in this room. Nothing she sees or hears is recorded, transcribed or sent anywhere. What she learns here stays with her, and then it is gone.

Under the crust she lies on is the largest lithium reserve on earth. It is taken by pumping the brine up and letting the sun take the water. The water does not come back.

MozFest 2026, Fabra i Coats, Barcelona, October 2026.

Built in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Open Yakumama

The code, open source, on GitHub

Todo Nace Desde Lo Pequeño

Everything Starts Small. A live performance, 20 minutes, where Andean cosmology meets AI. Four dancers embody elemental spirits, Earth, Water, Wind and Jaguar, and move through states from seeds to digital networks.

We fine-tune a local AI model. Local means our own computers, our own energy, no internet. Our data. Our rules.

Open it on its own page

Research

The lab is where we experiment. Here we keep all our research: the lab notes for Huk, the notebooks of Paqarina and the work around Las Awichas.

For Huk

For Paqarina

For Las Awichas

All the research

jaguar.glb

The silver jaguar of Las Awichas lies in the dark, her front paws raised.

The silver jaguar of Las Awichas, from Violeta's own 3D file. She is one of the eight spirit animals.

Open Las Awichas

KOA.XYZ in Voxels, 2021

A round view into a voxel world of red, yellow and white blocks.
A woman with a VR headset on her forehead, before a wall with the words: we are working against a techno authoritarian future.

K'OA is an Andean ceremony of reciprocity to the Pachamama, Mother Earth. We are building the Neo-Andean metaverse.

In 2021 KOA.XYZ received an honourable mention in the Indigenous Futurism Model-Making Competition of the Indigenous Scholars of Architecture, Planning and Design.

KOA in Voxels Center for Architecture

Experiments

Experiments that play in the browser. They live on violetaayala.com and open here.

Video walls

Touch or click anywhere on the screen to make a burst of animation. Drag the animations around to make your own composition. 2023.

Paper People

A black line drawing of a face in close-up, hair falling across it, with a few dots of colour.
A black line drawing of a head seen from above, in heavy strokes.
A drawing of a jaguar's face between two lines, and a hand.
A drawing of a head with a tangle of coloured lines above it.
A line drawing of a room: windows, furniture and the light on the floor.
A line drawing of a person in a cap, seen from the side, with small drawn dots in the air.
A drawing of a figure in dark strokes behind a tilted window.
A drawing of a figure with raised arms, like a paper cut-out, in a doorway.

Oak Draw: drawings made with the OAK camera, November 2024.

Computational Creativity Co-Creation Lab

Computational Creativity Co-Creation Lab

Cochabamba, 31 May 2025.

Cochabamba, 31 May 2025.

We bring paper cuts to life with Stream Diffusion, a kinetic camera and a Raspberry Pi. Two projectors light the room: one runs on a Python system that answers in real time, the other on TouchDesigner.

Collage figures dance with real people. The AI sees us, translates us and projects us. Paper, pixels, code and a Raspberry Pi, alive together.

Violeta Ayala

I'm Violeta Ayala, filmmaker, artist, technologist and AI innovator, and the first Quechua member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. My work moves between cinema, code and resistance. I build worlds where storytelling, technology and Indigenous futurism meet, imagining film as something alive, a system that listens, reacts and evolves. My VR animation Prison X premiered at Sundance and Cannes before travelling through festivals and museums around the world. My documentaries La Lucha, Cocaine Prison, The Fight, The Bolivian Case and Stolen have been broadcast on PBS, Amazon Prime, Netflix and The Guardian, earning more than 50 international awards, including a Walkley.

Open the page

Dan Fallshaw

Dan Fallshaw is a Walkley Award-winning filmmaker, producer and interaction designer. He co-founded United Notions Film in 2006 with Violeta Ayala.

Open the page

contact.txt

Violeta Ayala: v@unf.red. Dan Fallshaw: dan@unf.red.

Violeta Ayala: v@unf.red. Dan Fallshaw: dan@unf.red.

koa.xyz on TikTok GitHub violetaayala.com danfallshaw.com United Notions Film sala.red create.sala.video

Las Awichas

LAS AWICHAS

A phigital experience by Violeta Ayala.

ENTER

Kullawada. Cuaderno 01

The Kullawada translates the art of spinning and weaving into a living system of knowledge: the spindle as algorithm, the thread as collective memory, the weave as community intelligence. A teaching guide with symbols, characters, costume and spatial formations, made for the dancers.

Open it on its own page

Acta 01. Primera reunión de equipo

Four members of the team sit on the checkered floor of El Martadero, with notebooks, under a red roof.
Seen from one side, the circle of the first meeting on the checkered floor, with a laptop in front.
Dancers and the lab team sit along a wall and on the checkered floor, listening.
The team talks in a circle on the checkered floor, around a laptop and sheets of paper.

The first meeting of the Koa.xyz lab with the Paqarina team. The project is presented, the four dances of the first phase are defined (Tinku, Suri Sikuri, Tobas, Kullawada), and the team decides to begin the creative work with the Kullawada.

Open it on its own page

Flower Stamps

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Flowers bloom at your touch or click. Each touch makes a flower, and the picture keeps changing. 2023.

Thread Fall

Open it on its own page

From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

Interactive Neon Poem

Open it on its own page

From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

Kaleidoscopic Pens

Open it on its own page

From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

We Play Therefore We Exist

We Play Therefore We Exist

From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

Open it on its own page

From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

Vizcacha

Vizcacha

A sketch in p5.js. From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

Open it on its own page

A sketch in p5.js. From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

Not here to fuck spiders

Not here to fuck spiders

An interactive poem. Scroll down. From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

Open it on its own page

An interactive poem. Scroll down. From Games+, 2023: immersive and interactive short experiences that fuse gaming, film, interactivity and immersion, made with semantics, synthography and Violeta's own media.

Lluvia

Two figures meet in the rain on a flooded street, one in red boots.
A drawing of a goldfish in a glass jar on an orange wall, with the words: dreams of having an aquarium, grandma's jar, goldie found in puddle.
A girl in red boots holds flowers in a cemetery among orange flowers.

An illustrated story in nine pictures that play. Run your finger over them: it rains, goldfish follow you, roses grow, thunder claps.

Open it on its own page

Video wall 1

Video wall 1

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Video wall 2

Video wall 2

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Video wall 3

Video wall 3

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Video wall 4

Video wall 4

Open it on its own page

Set 3, SXSW Sydney

Set 3, SXSW Sydney

An interactive video wall for SXSW Sydney, October 2023.

Open it on its own page

An interactive video wall for SXSW Sydney, October 2023.

The jaguaress learns her own skeleton

The jaguaress learns her own skeleton

2 June 2026 · Cochabamba

Huk the Jaguaress recovered her twenty-four real poses from an export that only looked finished: a faithful carousel exposed a smooth interpolation, an exporter rewritten to read the rig’s true keyframes brought the body back, and the question turned from how she moves to why.

Open the note

The whale that watches back

26 May 2026 · Cochabamba

YakuMama reads the colour of the room and answers with mood and song, decaying and reweighting ten emotions every frame, diving when the water is taken and singing when the rain comes, all running locally on one machine with no cloud.

Diagram of YakuMama's signal flow: sensors and a camera feed one script, which sends the state to the renderer in Blender and to a local language model. Everything runs on one computer, with no internet.
Bar chart of the whale's ten moods, before and after someone in blue enters the room. The calm mood rises far above the others.

Open the note

The body decides the interface

22 May 2026 · Cochabamba

The gecko learns finger puppeteering, the monkey begins to mirror directly, Huk the Jaguaress discovers her own skeletal logic, and a taxonomy of locomotion emerges.

A silver jaguar model stands in Blender, beside a panel of sliders for pose, ears, whiskers and tail.
A person sits at a desk in front of a monitor that shows a 3D creature in Blender. A laptop shows a video call. A VR headset lies on the desk.

Open the note

The monkey learns the shape of its own body

19 May 2026 · Cochabamba

Procedural tails, swing-twist quaternion decomposition, performer-centered quadruped animation, and the discovery that rest poses themselves carry assumptions about bodies, movement, and intelligence.

Diagram of the pipeline: video input, MediaPipe, UDP packets, the receiver in Blender, then armature and mesh.
Diagram of two rigs side by side: a human skeleton with 130 bones, standing, and a macaque skeleton with 115 bones, on four legs.

Open the note

The monkey learns to move: quaternions, humanoid puppeteering

The monkey learns to move: quaternions, humanoid puppeteering

9 May 2026 · Cochabamba

Quaternion retargeting, hybrid body-hand tracking, spine cascade systems, and the first full-body humanoid creature pipeline inside our ecosystem.

Watch the whole film (2:53) at United Notions Film

Open the note

The llama learns to feel, the model learns to listen, and Yakumama is born

The llama learns to feel, the model learns to listen, and Yakumama is born

6 May 2026 · Cochabamba

Neural network mood training, cardiac breathing systems, Yakumama’s emergence, and ch’ixi philosophy entering the animation pipeline.

Watch the whole film (3:02) at United Notions Film

Open the note

When the heartbeat moves the flower

When the heartbeat moves the flower

28 April 2026 · Cochabamba

Pulse sensors, ESP32 systems, systole and diastole translated into real-time plant animation and embodied computational creativity.

Watch the whole film (0:58) at United Notions Film

Open the note

The spider learns to weave, the gecko learns to feel, and SIGGRAPH calls

25 April 2026 · Cochabamba

Orb-web systems, gecko emotional memory, Qwen integration, and SIGGRAPH documentation.

A person wearing a VR headset stands in a room with a desk, monitors and a window over the city. Seen from behind.
A 3D spider on its web beside an orange flower. Two small windows show a pink virtual world.

Open the note

The gecko learns to feel, Qwen 3.6 finds its voice, and the recording begins

18 April 2026 · Cochabamba

Sensor fusion, emotional state systems, flavor memories, AI narration, and real-time creature cognition.

A monitor shows a turquoise gecko model in Blender. A small window shows a person with headphones and tracking points on the face.
A monitor shows a turquoise gecko model lying on its back in Blender.

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15 creatures, 14 pipelines and a platform-agnostic brain

15 creatures, 14 pipelines and a platform-agnostic brain

17 April 2026 · Cochabamba

Building real-time creature intelligence systems across Blender, VR, sensors, and XR worlds.

Watch the whole film (1:10) at United Notions Film

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The water lily learns to breathe, the sundew counts fingers, and the pipeline moves to WebSocket

10 April 2026 · Cochabamba

Victoria Regia water sensing, Drosera finger tracking, hummingbird gaze systems, and WebSocket architecture migration.

A grey robotic hummingbird with open wings stands on a grid floor, in a 3D scene.
A grey robotic hummingbird in front of a tall plant covered in red spikes, in a 3D scene.

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The tree learns fear, the orchid mourns fire, and the llama finds stillness

30 March 2026 · Cochabamba

NASA wildfire feeds, shy trees with infrared sensing, and calibration systems for nonhuman creature embodiment.

Four pictures: a 3D flower with orange petals, two desks with monitors that show a person tracked by a camera beside a 3D llama, and a screen with a network of lines.
Four pictures: electronic parts on a table, two monitors with a 3D tree, a person with headphones and orange glasses lying on a sofa, and a screen with a map of South America and fire data.

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The $2 gyroscope that solved what the neural network couldn’t

The $2 gyroscope that solved what the neural network couldn’t

21 March 2026 · Cochabamba

Sensor fusion, 360° body tracking, gyroscopes, MediaPipe limitations, and embodied spatial intelligence.

Watch the whole film (2:19) at United Notions Film

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Toward embodied intelligence for nonhuman characters

Toward embodied intelligence for nonhuman characters

14 March 2026 · Cochabamba

Depth sensing, robotic cameras, MediaPipe integration, and spatial movement systems beyond human pose datasets.

Watch the whole film (1:41) at United Notions Film

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Somatic puppeteering across plants, birds and heartbeats

Somatic puppeteering across plants, birds and heartbeats

8 March 2026 · Cochabamba

March 2026 research sprint exploring real-time body-driven creature systems across plants, condors, shaders, and pulse-responsive environments.

Watch the whole film (1:02) at United Notions Film

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From documentary to living systems

15 November 2025 · Cochabamba

Affective computing between Montreal and La Paz, new worlds for Huk, and public subsidies, music interfaces, electoral data and aqueducts read as technologies of distribution.

A 3D tree with its roots in a 3D program, under the words Mocap systems for Collective Intelligences. Beside it, three smaller views: a fern, an orange tree and a white branch.
A slide about the Comteco cooperative: two blocks of text and six pictures of crowds at night, a building, an ambulance and computer screens.

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The condor obeyed Violeta’s hand

26 June 2025 · Guangzhou

At the opening of Surreality in Guangzhou a digital condor follows Violeta Ayala’s hand in real time. No motion capture suit. An early public demonstration of somatic puppeteering.

A person speaks into a microphone beside a large curved screen that shows a blue condor over an open hand. Above, the title The Condor Obeyed Violeta's Hand. Below, a text about the opening of Surreality in Guangzhou on 26 June 2025.

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Building Huk V1.0: a digital deity for the burning Amazon

Building Huk V1.0: a digital deity for the burning Amazon

April 2025 · Copenhagen

Huk the Jaguaress begins with the fires in the Amazon. Her first version connects wildfire alerts, plant bioelectricity, dancers and edge AI.

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Two machines, one question: feminist AI at the VIP Studio

12 February 2025 · Nottingham

Violeta Ayala and Yasmeen Hitti join the Feminist AI residency at the University of Nottingham’s VIP Studio. They build the VIP Chatbot, where OpenAI and DeepSeek answer the same prompt side by side.

A page about the Feminist AI residency at the University of Nottingham: two blocks of text and pictures of the workshop, a white robot and two people smiling.
An online whiteboard with notes, a drawing of two hands and two coloured boards named Seeding and Underground.

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Las Awichas selected for the major GLoW3 exhibition in London

August 2023 · London

Las Awichas is one of four new commissions of the GLoW3 Artist Programme at King’s College London. How the work began in Tiupampa and Pocoata, and a diary of the first days in London.

A portrait from Las Awichas: an elderly woman in a dark hat rests her chin on her hand. Her shawl turns into red and green stripes.
A portrait from Las Awichas in black and white: an elderly woman with a braid and a large earring. A band of colour runs below her.

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