A sad but true story

I was looking for one of the installations by Rose Borchovski about her character Susa Bubble, when I ran into The inevitability of fate on Two Fish. According to this blogpost the installation has been around for almost a year, but I had not seen it yet.

At first I was reluctant to explore this immersive story landscape: it was not the one that I'd been looking for and from the description in the destination guide and the notecard at the landing point I figured that it wouldn't be a cheerful experience. Curiousity won, I clicked the teleport button and I don't regret it at all. When I logged off at the end of the evening The inevitability of fate had left a deep impression.



The inevitability of fate lets you walk through an interactive landscape where you experience the story of Angry Beth and Lot. It's not a happy story:

Lot turned eight, the sun did shine and all were happy.
But then the war came and all did change.
A harsh hand ruled the world of Beth and Lot.

They were forced to leave.
They were separated from each other.
They were made the enemy.

The war was bitter and long.

After the war Beth returned.
The child Lot had disappeared; no one knows where she went.

Beth keeps searching for Lot.
On good days, Beth is able to imagine that
Lot is flying like a bird, with her face towards the sky,
searching for the stars.
On bad days, Beth can only be angry about her loss.
Beth’s wounds will never heal.

Lot had no chance to become who she meant to be..

Scene by scene you are lead through the story. It starts with Lot's birthday and ends with her flying like a bird.




The figures of Beth and Lot are made with skill: the emotions speak from their faces. But that's not the most impressive part of the installation.  Along the way  you receive many of the objects that Lot and Beth encounter  in their live and you become part of the story. There's a yellow ribbon that you have to wear, a letter that summons you to leave home, etcetera. You are encouraged to use the items and to interact with the story by sitting on the poses in the different scenes.
What touched me most though, were the sounds. The voice of Lot who misses her family, a man telling that you have to work for them, a child's voice listing all the names of people who died. The despair of Lot and Beth is tangible and it is impossible to catch this feeling in a picture: you have to experience it yourself.



Obviously the story of Lot and Beth is about a Jewish family in the second world war. Rose Borchovski managed to depict this heavy theme in a light and imaginative way that fits the world of Second Life, yet does justice to reality.

But it's more than that. It's not only a story about the Holocaust, but also the general story of a mother being separated from her child in wartime. Unfortunately this still happens until today. That's why this story should be told again and again.

In two weeks my country (the Netherlands) will remember the end of the second world war and celebrate its freedom. Many will visit a  memorial to commemorate, which is good. But after my visit to this installation, I wonder if the world would still be the same if real life memorials would have the same impact as 'The inevitability of fate'.

Here's your landmark to visit Lot and Beth.

Little Red Riding Hood

It was about time that I visited the LRRH exhibition curated by Mimesis Monday, as it opened back in February and will close within a few weeks. Mimesis is a RL storyteller - Heidi Dahlsveen from Norway - and in the past years created several storytelling related installations in Second Life, often with cross over activities in the atomic world.

This time she invited SL artists to share their view on the well known fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. In the course of centuries Red Riding Hood has evolved to the cute little girl as we know her, but originally it was a story with much more (sexual) symbolism and violence. The installations in LRRH - The other Side of the Story refer to that raw version of Red Riding Hood.

Alpha Auer's interpretation goes back to her childhood memories: she always felt pity for the wolf, who was dearly punished for his natural behaviour, i.e. hunting for fresh meat. Her installation expresses the brutal murder of the wolf. It is quite gruesome and dark, but has beautiful details, like the moving trees and an android Riding Hood trying to flee away in the depths of the sky.





Personally, I enjoyed the second installation more. It's a collaboration by Cherry Manga and Sorror Nishi and they created a surreal landscape in red and grey.



My own outfit fitted in fairly well:



I loved the wolf trees near the landing point:



A path leads you to subsequent scenes of the story, that are definitely not suitable for small children in this version. But I got totally sidetracked by the awesome plants of Sorror Nishi, of which the vibrant colours are in huge contrast with the sober shades in the rest of the place.






But believe me, the (NSFW) scenes from the story are certainly worth a visit too. The sim will be open until April 15th, so you still have a couple of weeks to go.

Teleport to the main landing point.
Teleport to Alpha Auer's installation.
Teleport to Cherry Manga and Sorror Nishi's installation.

Imogen and the Pigeons

The names of the Immersiva sim and artist Bryn Oh don't need an introduction. When I used to be more active on Flickr a couple of years ago,  I saw a lot of beautiful images of Immersiva, but I never visited the sim inworld *blush*.

So when I noticed the other day that a new installation by Bryn Oh was announced in the Destination Guide, I didn't hesitate: go! It was the title in particular that triggered me: 'Imogen and the Pigeons'. Sounds like a story!

On arrival you find yourself in a desolate landscape.





The landscape seems to be illustrative for Imogen's state of mind. You'll find her after a challenging climb, in a room of a psychiatric hospital.
Through short poems in every room the story eventually unfolds. Imogen dreams of escaping and wishes she could fly away with her friends, the pigeons.





While proceeding through the building, you follow Imogen on her quest for freedom. Sometimes you'll find the world turned upside down - literally - and you'll visit strange rooms, like this Beauty Salon:



I won't give away the details here, but at the end Imogen finds the freedom that she's searching for.



During my first visit I didn't click the butterfly from the picture above and  thus missed an amusing end scene. Further I managed to get through the complex building of 'Imogen and the Pigeons' without any problems. On her blog, Bryn Oh gives some tips for controlling your movements.

'Imogen and the Pigeons' was good enough to keep me occupied for a whole evening. Bryn Oh knows how to combine words, sounds, image and interactive elements to immerse you into a different world. That's SecondLife on its best.

Not able to visit Immersiva right now? Then enjoy the trailer at least: