So what's going on here...?

The general consensus seems to be "I think I won, but I'm not sure," which I think is okay--the best mysteries are the ones you're never sure you've solved.

Anyway, for the curious, I'll go ahead and spoil it. There are two big things going on here.

First: the "items" are meaningless. Pick them up or don't, it doesn't matter. The sage gives you a hint about that, but he's pretty obtuse. Well, so, what then? Escaping must simply be a matter of finding the exit. This can be done by stumbling around, through trial and error, or...

Second: the information about the way out can be found by studying the "scenery." The animated creatures around the edges, your "friends," are not just wiggling around because they can. They're communicating in a sign language. 

Now, there is not a lot of information you can encode into 8x8 pixels x 2 frames, but I did my best. The sign glossed as YES is like nodding; NO is shaking the head, and COME-HERE is like crooking a finger.  They are saying NO if they can see a vortex in the row/column in front of them (they can't see through walls). They are saying YES if the way is clear. And they are saying COME-HERE if they can see an exit.

Oh, and "ku"... the shape is the letter ku in the Inuktitut alphabet; it's also kind of a reference to the movie Kin-Dza-Dza; mostly, though, it's nothing, because the items are meaningless.