Otherworldly - Zoomorph at Moxi 2018 - 2019
Lisa Jevbratt


Otherworldly was an installation for children at the MOXI Museum in Santa Barbara. The walls were covered with colorful imagery which was hiding mythical creatures from the human eye. Some of the creatures were borrowed from medieval bestiaries and some dreamed up by my then seven-year-old daughter and her friends.

When looking through animal masks equipped with iPads running my animal color vision app Zoomorph the creatures became visible. The animals represented in the exhibition have fewer color receptors than humans. We see the hues of the colors while the animals see different values of grey or blue/yellow. The mythical creatures were hidden in these values.

My ongoing interest in making people acutely aware of the experiences of other species inspired me to make the app and the installation. I hope that experiencing perspectives of other species, even only one aspect such as color vision, will make us more respectful to them.

Empathy emerges when you put yourself in someone else’s position, walk in their shoes, and see the world through their eyes. In this installation the audience is not only experiencing the color world of other species but is also shown how species we believe see less than us, in some situations see more. It is a humbling experience that invites the audience to start questioning humans’ self-proclaimed position on the top of a species hierarchy.