I initially began in Second Life to see if I might want to start a music club. I found out that would cost upwards of $400 a month for the “land” (bandwidth), and that would mean raising money and then that would mean looking for advertisers and then … it would become a JOB!
So, other than playing in some dance clubs, I haven’t gotten too involved with Second Life, but one thing I’ve found which is pretty neat. Second Life is pretty good at advertising unusual “sims” (usually an island). I’ve checked out a couple of these sims and found them kind of interesting, but none really affected me until I came across “Imogen and the Pigeons.” The sim was created by Bryn Oh, and she is the author of the poems, as well.
Imogen and the Pigeons is an amazing multi-discipline art/poetry exhibit in Second Life. It’s also a fun little maze and game to find all the poems in the sim. The poems and images are both very powerful and sad. I came to realise of what kind of art could be possible in an interactive platform like Second Life.
When I first showed up at Imogen and the Pigeons, I wasn’t sure how it worked or was supposed to work. You arrive on a beach with a lot of old junk lying around — old mattresses, washing machines, etc. I wandered around and found a statue that played a sad little tune if you clicked on it. No clues about what Imogen and the Pigeons were about.
After a while, I found a flying chair. I kind of flew around in circles for a bit, but still didn’t come any closer to discovering the secret of Imogen and the Pigeons.
A very helpful person then told me to fly the chair up higher, as high as I could. So I took their advice and did it, and sure enough that’s when I saw, curling around a couple of cooling towers, some stairway up into the sky.
I thanked the person for their help, but I wanted to do the sim without cheating. So, I headed up the stairs. This was HARD. I must have fallen and gone “Splat!” a half dozen times. I felt like Lara Croft. (In Second Life, you can fall from a 1,000 feet and go “splat!” but then your avatar simply dusts herself off and is fine. Still, it sucked to keep falling. Also, in Second Life, you can usually “fly,” but in the Imogen and the Pigeons sim, flying had been disabled. No cheating allowed.)
I finally figured out the way up the stairs is by using the arrow keys on your keyboard, rather than the movements arrows within the Second Life screen. By using my keyboard arrows, I was finally to get up the monstrous stairs without falling. You finally come to a bright red platform high above the beach … hundreds of feet up.
You go through a portal at the red platform and enter a receptionist’s office. Here is your first poem, posted on a wall of the office:
The receptionist looked up
her eyes rezzed so blue,
do you have an appointment?
to which you replied yes I do
Simple enough poem. But, the poems quickly become darker and more sad. Sad, oftentimes broken characters inhabit each room. Always alone, always seemingly isolated from the rest of the world in their dark rooms.
In the next room, you find a man pinning insects to a board. A lot of Oh’s poems are about insects. On the wall is this poem:
Inside the room
lay a mind’s haute couture
with a butterfly board
and pins to cure
He was the type of man
who felt he saw much clearer
from the darkened side
of a one-way mirror
His patients were pieces
within a game
which when molded correctly
would bring him acclaim.
After this first room, you enter a creepy hallway with a series of doors . The next room was my favourite. A young boy is drawing a chalk drawing on the floor. As you step nearer, the chalk drawing suddenly comes to life. This poem:
Chalk fingers sat
for hours engrossed
his fingertips tracing
things he longed for most
he would stay with each
but for a day
then at night
wash them away
so they’d not fasten
to his heart
because so many things
do depart
and all his lies
were really dreams
come apart
at the seams
In the next room, a figure is huddled under her blankets. You never get to see her. There is nothing else in the room but a television playing static:
Under a blanket
with holes throughout
nobody sees in
but Juniper looks out
come under with me
and together we’ll hide
hold me in the darkness
there’ll be no outside
where people are cruel
and winters are cold
where I don’t fit in
and everything’s sold
climb inside
we’re two hands in a glove
fingers entwined
because you are my love
See? These are not happy poems. The next room is a sad little girl again lying on a bed (there are beds in all the rooms). In the middle of the room is a boat sailing on the floor:
a paper boat
far out to sea
I would float
To breathe the wind
and feel the spray
while my body
slowly decayed
absorbing the chaos
body asunder
closing my eyes
to descend down under
Into the dark
and swaying peace
my tears diffused
upon release
The next room has another poem about insects:
Elliot was shy
and very soft spoken
he loved moths
because they fly like they’re broken.
He dreamed of amber
housing ants suspended
in sienna coffins
tarsus extended.
He would sit on a step
in the middle of the stair
where none would stop
a place neither here nor there.
The next room is another person lying on a bed. This time it’s Imogen, and she is hooked up to IVs. She is ill. Is she dying, I wondered? You can hear pigeons cooing outside a window. This begins a series of poems about Imogen and the maze gets a little tougher.
Imogen sat
quiet on her bed
the books on her mattress
one hundred times read.
Eyes to her friends
huddled out on the wire
cooing softly
it was her one desire
to join with them
out past her bars
where no one could test her
with Monarchs in jars.
She rose from her bed
tube fallen aside
and determined to join
her pigeons outside.
But will they fly
off to the skies
unless I wear
a clever disguise?
I must approach
like a whisper in moonlight
so they’ll not startle
so they’ll not fright.
And we’ll make a family
warm shoulder to wing
they’ll coo softly
and I’ll learn to sing.
Here, the sim gets tricky. There’s a couple of little clues about needing to pick up a pigeon’s feather to continue on. I picked one up and discovered that while holding a feather, you can walk up the walls. I walked up the wall to a window high above the floor, then I had to walk sideways along a curled path (sort of like a roller coaster). The first time I tried this, I dropped the feather and then I plunged 1,000 feet and went “Splat!” on the beach down below and was forced to start over from the beginning back up the stairs to the sky (Grrrr…!). I figured out not to drop the feather until I was sure I no longer needed it.
Eventually, you enter a room full of mannequins and Imogen sitting in a corner sewing.
Imogen arrived
upon a scene
of mannequins
and sewing machine
the lights revealed
fabric pigeon grey
dusty and torn
its edges frayed
and from there she sewed
her pigeon dress
that enveloped her body
in a gentle caress.
Here, you enter a tough part of the maze. You have to walk along a ledge and you find Imogen down at the end of the ledge.
She stepped through a window
and onto the ledge
the wind in her hair
and pigeons on edge.
She found on the stones
a loose feather
then gathered up more
and sewed them together
to fashion some wings
for her disguise
to join her flock
within the skies.
After you find Imogen, you can drop down to a lower ledge. There is a rope to another ledge on the other side of an alley. I tiptoed across the rope (it looked hard, but you actually have an inch or so of leeway on each side of the rope.). And if you are successful, you are rewarded with a little Bryn Oh doll. I carried the doll with me through the rest of the sim.
The next room is a creepy hair salon with a curved roof.
Imogen mused
that she was more pigeon than swan
as she climbed down the walls
to the Beauty Salon
She entered a room
surrounded by chairs
lowered the curlers
and singed feather to hair
Her disguise now complete
she walked to the ceiling
and saw a vision emerge
in her dream revealing
a future suppressed
like fading notes to a song
that we desperately grasp
yet can not prolong.
You have to pick up another feather and walk up the curved wall to the ceiling, through a hole in a ceiling and into another room.
She climbed up the pole
that rose like a spire
and attempted to join
her pigeons on wire
but startled they flew
so Imogen leapt
spreading her wings
and silently wept
missing her dreams
by seconds and feet
she soared for a moment
then fell to the street
Through a blindingly white room you find another poem.
Static emerged
like cracks in a road
and her minds construct collapsed
which housed her binary code
that was preserved for the day
when it could be rewired
into our human cells
once we were expired
but her memories were a virus
that corrupted the core
of her archived life
preserved at the Rebirth Store
Sure enough, here the maze gets bloody impossible. I think you are supposed to hop down a series of ledges, but I was never able to do it and plunged, “Splat!” 1,000 feet back down to the beach (I felt like Imogen failing to join the pigeons). Here, on the beach where you started your journey through Imogen’s world, there is one final poem:
Zeroes and ones
created a two
in the form of a child
from memories accrued
through her books and dreams
realities and fever
reborn for Imogen
never again to leave her
and the computer slowed
as the sand did rise
but eternity waited
within her child’s eyes.
Just past this poem is an image of Imogen reaching up to a giant blue whale hovering in midair. That is the end of Imogen and the Pigeons.