Arts Thread

(The Pigeon Paradox is an immersive animated music video exhibiting at Outernet, London and London Breeze Film Festival. Most animation are designed to be mapped onto the main screen at Outernet, and to be viewed in front of the eyes in a VR headset. So you might have to drag your mouse around on the computer screen to view the main scenes.) The Pigeon Paradox reframes the pigeon as a mirror to humanity—challenging audiences to see how perception, utility, and biodiversity collide in the stories we are writing in nature. The project exposes the paradox of a species we domesticated, discarded, and ultimately drove to genetic erosion. Once, wild rock doves thrived in coastal cliffs, we reshaped them into domesticated tools: food, messengers, companions, and crowned them with poetic symbols. But when their utility faded, we abandoned them, unleashing a genetic tidal wave as feral pigeons hybridized with wild populations. Today, the rock dove teeters on extinction, and how do we view the survivors? The very birds we engineered now scrounge our sidewalks, labeled ‘pests’ for thriving in the world we forced upon them. We celebrate ‘wildness’ only when it suits us, and vilify the creatures that adapt to our chaos. What does it mean that we’ve erased a species twice: first genetically, then through contempt? Each pigeon fits in a version of human perception of these birds. At the end of the music video, the final pigeon struggles to catch up due to its missing toes - bringing our attention back to the very real living beings. The goal is not to cultivate affection for pigeons, but to make audiences aware of how unconscious biases shape behavior. A huge digital pigeon is memorable, but the petite living creatures echo the influence in every corner of London - a recurring reflection on our collective perceptions and their real-world consequences.