"Ark of Awakening"), aka Open Your Mind (international title), is a 2005 three-act musical drama presented on a multidisplay IMAX-like theme theater mixing CG-animated video with live-action footage directed by Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Oshii.

Production noteOpen Your Mind was created for the World Exposition 2005's ("愛・地球博 Expo 2005 Aichi Japan") "Mountain of Dreams" (夢みる山, Yume miru yama) pavilion.

[11] Pictures and light effects were also projected on the ceiling, made from eight silk curtains, or the 5 meter acrylic egg-shaped (タマゴ形, tamago) screen.

One was based on the use of taiko, the folkloric drums backing Noh polyphonic chants sung by a chorus of seven women — This is Kawai's signature since Mamoru Oshii's critically acclaimed and cult anime feature film, Ghost In The Shell.

The plot of Open Your Mind follows the extra–terrestrial origin of life coming from outerspace as six deities (Intermission act), evolving into water (Sho-ho) who then emerge into the air (Hyakkin) and to the ground (Ku-nu).

According to the theory, agreed by Oshii (quote interview), that the futuristic projection of science fiction is nothing more than a metaphorous description of the present and current society, just like Montesquieu (in Persian Letters) and Voltaire (in L'Ingénu) implicitly describing -criticizing- their own country through the eyes of a foreign character or civilization, this work could be viewed as a warning (or "Awakening") to preserve our, current, highly menaced, biosphere and ecosystem before it is too late.

The following sequence is set in space with a liquid planet soon entered by six shining globes (the Riki-Shou sent by Pan) moving at fast speed and coming from each side of the screen.

This unnarrated introduction is wrapped with sounds of nature and Buddhist music that is in homage to Kawai's previous score on the prologue of Oshii's Patlabor 2: the Movie which takes place in a Cambodian forest and features a giant Buddha statue.

This act features sequences with a moving crosshair appearing on top of the 3-panel panoramic screen and locking onto flying creatures that explode in a myriad of polygons when fired upon.

These were made through scientific achievements as the civilization was actually human and used nanomachines to modify DNA sections in order to create new hybrid beings; the anthropomorph animals.

The shock comes less from the creation of a human-dog hybrid race through genetical modifications than from the explicit visual presentation of human and dog newborns as equals through morphing.

For both ethic, philosophical and religious concerns human genetic manipulations such as cloning are forbidden and a touchy subject, or sometimes a taboo matter, in many countries in Europe and North America while not so in other parts of the globe.

In 1995 Mamoru Oshii invited viewers of Ghost in the Shell to open their mind and think about a new social and legal status for autonomous, evolved Artificial Intelligence creatures.

The pavilion included an Open Your Mind souvenir shop selling figures, books, keyholders, pamphlets, posters, soundtrack CD and the limited premium DVD "Special Edition".

[18] "I decided to take this offer because I wanted to work on something other than films.I am waiting to get the final products for display, the images to show on the monitors from the vendors....Everything should be completed no later than the end of this year....I created the concept of the entire project and I supervised all the designs.