Cat Island
Science Gallery Melbourne
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“Cats and the internet are a match made in heaven. Humans could not be more obsessed with our online icons. We scroll through endless cat content, but what does the digital world look like through a cat’s eyes? Watch cats from Ainoshima Island, Japan, fondly called ‘Cat Heaven Island’, view videos of themselves for the first time on digital screens - creating a meme within the cat meme. Strike your best cat pose and flip the lens to experience the same footage in ‘cat vision’. Informed by animal sensory perception research from the Stuart-Fox Lab at the University of Melbourne, tune into a more feline perspective and explore a shared language of curiosity and play.”
- Science Gallery Melbourne
Cat Island is a metameme in which many memes are nested within one epic cat video, featuring 81 videos in simultaneous motion. Although the raw footage spans more than 34 minutes, the exhibition compresses it into a dense, hypnotic loop lasting one minute and 49 seconds.
Valender says, “it feels like watching every scene of a film at once: chaotic, immersive and strangely mesmerising.”
Read more about the research behind Cat Island on Pursuit
Exhibited as part of the exhibition DISTRACTION at Science Gallery Melbourne, 26 July 2025 – 02 May 2026
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July 2025
Science Gallery Melbourne
“Cats and the internet are a match made in heaven. Humans could not be more obsessed with our online icons. We scroll through endless cat content, but what does the digital world look like through a cat’s eyes? Watch cats from Ainoshima Island, Japan, fondly called ‘Cat Heaven Island’, view videos of themselves for the first time on digital screens - creating a meme within the cat meme. Strike your best cat pose and flip the lens to experience the same footage in ‘cat vision’. Informed by animal sensory perception research from the Stuart-Fox Lab at the University of Melbourne, tune into a more feline perspective and explore a shared language of curiosity and play.”
- Science Gallery Melbourne
Cat Island is a metameme in which many memes are nested within one epic cat video, featuring 81 videos in simultaneous motion. Although the raw footage spans more than 34 minutes, the exhibition compresses it into a dense, hypnotic loop lasting one minute and 49 seconds.
Valender says, “it feels like watching every scene of a film at once: chaotic, immersive and strangely mesmerising.”
Read more about the research behind Cat Island on Pursuit
Exhibited as part of the exhibition DISTRACTION at Science Gallery Melbourne, 26 July 2025 – 02 May 2026
July 2025