When I was working on Parks x Needle in 2022 an unrealized dream was to create a teaser video for it where the robot arm left alone during the holidays decides to go out to the parks and is so awestruck by what it sees that it tufts its route and colors from its experience. That didn’t happen due to time constraints and the focus of the exhibit (Data through Design). But three years later when I decided to try out my first short film, I came up with the character and story for Leaf! which feels kindred in spirit to the original inspiration.

Leaf! was made as part of the Super 8 workshop at Mono No Aware and everything was made over 10 days. I had a hectic week of acquiring the robot arm (Yahboom) and rover (Viam), building and hacking them so that they could be powered and controlled together, initially setting up the control using the Yahboom and Viam API that it came with.

I found the setup and response time of the robot slow (maybe because it had to be connected to the internet to use Viam?). Then Owen started rewiring and rewriting the software for controlling it locally which made Leaf much more suitable for live puppeteering.

By the time Leaf was ready it was already Sunday at 1am, and I was scheduled to develop to film by hand on that same Sunday at 10am. Since I had to shoot it in daylight outside, that meant we just had 7am-9am on Sunday to shoot everything, and we did.

Then I spent the whole day at Mono No Aware learning how to develop the film, and edited it the following week.

In December 2025, I got to premiere Leaf! at MoMA as part of the Mono No Aware community screening, as well as at Microscope Gallery for their “New York By Foot” series.

The whole experience was a lot of fun and since then, I’ve been working on a series of short films about small machines living independently of humans which I hope to share too in the near future.

Sally, Leaf, and friends at the MoMA premiere of Leaf! (12/05/2026)