Vivarium 🌲🐾 a happy XR animal place

Welcome to the Vivarium ✨

A cozy little intelligence ecology where animals don’t do “AI monolith” — they do tiny behaviours. They listen to movement, rhythm, touch, and space and then… they vibe. 🌿

🫧 gentle & reactive 🧩 layered minds (V0–V4) 🫶 neurospicy-friendly 🎛️ signals, not prompts
🐾 enter the habitat 🎥 see the public artifacts

Meet the residents

They’re not “chatbots.” They’re embodied little systems with specific sensitivities. (Also: they’re very polite.)

🐴 Horse — the rhythm friend continuity & entrainment • likes steady motion • hums along with you 
   //\
  (o o)   tap tap tap
   \_/    "i can feel the beat"
🐺 Wolf — the watchful buddy alertness & tension • notices bursts + pauses • takes breaks seriously 
  /\_/\ 
 ( o.o )   ...wait...
  > ^ <    "ok NOW we go"
🐙 Octopus — the texture nerd tactility & exploration • loves pressure/touch • curious lil noodly hands 
   .-"""-.
  /  .-.  \   poke poke
  | (   ) |   "ooh, squishy data"
   \ '-' /
    '---'
🌲 the habitat remembers (EWM) 🧠 learning can happen slowly (V1) 🌦️ the environment matters (V4)

Soft rules of the habitat

1) We move first. Words are optional. 🫧

2) Small intelligences are easier to love (and study). 🧩

3) “Memory” is a landscape, not a file. 🌿

4) If you get overwhelmed, the animals slow down with you. 🫶

What is this, academically?

Vivarium is a research-creation platform for studying layered intelligence in embodied XR interaction — without pretending it’s one big brain.

Think: behavioural ecology + presence + gesture & space + gentle computation.

Exhibits / field notes

Here are public pages for papers, videos, and figure sets from Vivarium’s adventures. 🗂️🌲

🎓 IEEE VR 2026 🌀 back to the top