Squeeker: The Mouse Coach
Run with Squeeker - a running program, app, and interactive installation.
Run with The Mouse Coach to earn scroll distance on social media and treats for your coach. Match mouse coach’s daily half-marathon, one paw at a time!
Squeeker is an App, an interactive installation, and a running program.
Mice have been used extensively in scientific research. Every year hundreds of millions of mice get fat or depressed, some glow in the dark — all in the name of understanding ourselves, humans’ health better. What if we switch the dynamic and let the mouse control our health?
With Squeeker’s smart running wheel, whenever the mouse coach starts running, you will receive a notification to prompt you to run. If you run and your running distance matches the mouse’s distance, you both get a reward. The mouse gets a treat or toy. You get to scroll on social media, with the scroll distance the same as your running distance.
This approach leverages the habit loop theory, where cue, action, and reward are essential to forming healthy habits. The cue is the mouse running. The action is you run. The reward is the mouse gets a treat and you receive the dopamine from social media.
The app “Squeeker: The Mouse Coach” is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, free for everybody to download and engage in a healthy lifestyle.
Mice run around 4-20 km per day. It’s a half-marathon! To testify the mouse coach’s training on me, I successfully ran the Austin half-marathon on Feb 18, 2024. I was surprised by how effective their training could be, beating AI Coach and Human Coach! The last time I ran a marathon was 9 years ago and I haven’t been able to get back to running until the mouse coach appeared.
At its premiere at IDFA Doclab, people can run on the treadmill at the interactive installation. The speed of the treadmill is controlled by the mouse. If the collective running distance surpasses the mouse’s running distance of the day, we open a champagne in the evening. I also organized running events at the Vondelpark Pavillion and around the world. Many strangers on the street joined the run and formed communities.
Exhibitions
“Hope”, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria. Sep 2024. “Of Sublime and the More-Than-Humans”
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) theater, New York, screening, 2024
f.l.i.p. X Lapin et Halot, “interactivité”, Tokyo, Japan. 2024
IDFA DocLab: “Phenomenal Friction”, Flemish Cultural Center de Brakkle Grond, Amsterdam. 2023
Progenitorial Hysteresis 祖细迟滞. 12 Dec 2023 - 13 Apr 2024. Duande Art Museum 巽美术馆, China
Ecological Soup: Interspecies Encounters. 5 May 2023 – 20 Aug 2023. Currents New Media, Santa Fe, NM, US
To testify the mouse’s training on me, I successfully ran the Austin half-marathon on Feb 18 2024!
You’ve heard of a running coach, someone to keep your motivation high. Now, imagine this: what if the coach is a mouse? Inspired by her pet mice and the use of mice in labs, artist and technologist Jiabao Li created Squeeker: The Mouse Coach. It’s a running program, app, and interactive installation—Squeeker invites participants to run and to contemplate. How layered can the relationship among animals, humans, scientific research and everyday technology be?
To take part in the installation, you run on a treadmill. A digital mouse, running on a spinning wheel leads your running speed. If the participants’ accumulative running distance matches the mouse’s daily half-marathon, we will open a champagne in the evening.
Scan the QR code to follow Squeeker on your phone. Then, every time her mouse takes off a spirited run, you’ll get a notification and, perhaps, a jolt of inspiration to run together. Each mile you run earns you a mile to scroll on social media and a treat for your coach. Cue, Action, Reward, one paw at a time!