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Moirai, Thread Of Life

What is quantum mechanics and how can we explain it? Moirai attempts to describe quantum phenomena using Southeast Asian design.

  • Mark J Chavez
    Director
  • Ina Conradi-Chavez
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Short
  • Genres:
    Sci-fi, art and science, animation, vfx, fine art
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 36 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 2, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    70,000 SGD
  • Country of Origin:
    Singapore
  • Country of Filming:
    Singapore
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Mark J Chavez, Ina Conradi-Chavez

Mark J Chavez and Ina Conradi-Chavez collaborate as an artistic duo working across experimental animation, computational media, and large-scale digital installations. Their practice explores the intersection of mythological systems, scientific thought, and emerging visual technologies, using animation and generative processes to examine questions of time, cosmology, memory, and cultural narrative.

Their work has been presented internationally in film festivals, media art exhibitions, and public media architecture environments. Chavez’s animated short Moirai, Thread of Life received Best of Festival at the SIGGRAPH Asia Electronic Theater (2023), one of the most selective international venues for computer animation and visual effects. Together, Chavez and Conradi-Chavez have produced projects ranging from experimental short films to large-scale animated works for public digital screens and immersive exhibition spaces.

Their collaborative approach integrates procedural animation, generative imaging techniques, and cinematic storytelling to create hybrid visual languages that merge symbolic imagery with contemporary computational aesthetics. Through these works, they investigate how technological systems reshape cultural narratives and visual perception.

Mark J Chavez and Ina Conradi-Chavez continue to develop films, installations, and research-driven media artworks presented internationally across festivals, galleries, and media architecture platforms.

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Director Statement

Moirai, Thread of Life developed from a shared inquiry into how ancient mythological systems and contemporary scientific thought approach similar questions about time, causality, and human existence. The Moirai—the figures in Greek mythology who spin, measure, and cut the thread of life—function as an enduring metaphor for forces that shape life beyond individual control. Their presence in the film becomes a symbolic framework for examining how cultures have historically attempted to visualize destiny, continuity, and transformation.

The work places mythological symbolism in dialogue with contemporary computational image-making. Instead of treating myth as a static narrative from the past, the film approaches it as a speculative model for understanding complex systems. In classical mythology the Moirai determine fate; in modern science, however, reality is increasingly described through probability, emergence, and interdependent systems. The film navigates this conceptual tension through animated structures that evolve, branch, and recombine across time.

The visual language of the film draws from procedural animation, algorithmic transformation, and generative digital processes. Threads, networks, and woven forms appear throughout the film as visual analogues for biological structures, informational systems, and cosmological patterns. Through these evolving structures, the animation reflects the fragile continuity of life and the interconnected processes that sustain it.

Rather than presenting a conventional narrative arc, Moirai, Thread of Life unfolds as a contemplative visual sequence. Cycles, repetition, and transformation structure the film’s rhythm, suggesting that the forces shaping existence operate across multiple scales—from individual lives to larger systemic patterns.

For us, the film examines an enduring human effort: the attempt to understand how individual agency exists within vast, often unknowable systems. Mythology and scientific inquiry appear not as opposing perspectives, but as parallel attempts to interpret the same fundamental questions about time, destiny, and the nature of life.