"Acquarella" Documentary Machinima now up on Youtube!

"Acquarella" is a machinima documentary about my Second Life (R) immersive art build by the same name. I did the filming, and Cobalt Zeplin/Alfred M. Ajami did the editing and sound remixing.

When I was a child, I kept an aquarium and I would stare into it for hours, mesmerized by it then as I am now by Second Life, a magical weightless world also populated by strange and beautiful creatures. These memories were the inspiration behind the creation of "Acquarella." An aquarium on a cosmic scale, "Acquarella" is filled with swaying, lacey aquatic plants, schools of neon tetras, animated angelfish and goldfish, drifts of diatoms, and huge green lily pads that bob up and down in the invisible current. The build echoes with the songs of whales. Pose balls invite people to swim to their music, and throughout, there are traces of an untold story. A fragment of a submarine that torpedoed itself hints at an apocalyptic destruction that could possibly be a metaphor. Who is hunting whom with those ghostly sonar pings? Why does color sometimes creep into a largely monochrome vision? How to explain the fact that the black and white tetras school, while their rainbow-hued counterparts are solitary? Who is Acquarella? Is she a giantess or are we liliputian?

"Acquarella" employs highly-detailed digital drawings done with Corel Painter software and a Wacom tablet. It uses scripts, animations, and sounds to provide an immersive art experience that is intended to create visual and psychic pleasure for the participant.

The music was remixed with SmartSounds SonicFire Pro software, which lets you map the mood and the tempo, pitch, chording, phrasing and instrumentation to events and other sounds in the video. Doing the sound track this way adds extra power to the visuals, more so than just a straight line remix.

Come visit Acquarella inworld here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lie/204/203/333
============================================
Links:
DIGITAL ART: Martha Jane Bradford
Web Site: http://www.marthavista.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
MJB Blog: http://marthajanebradford.blogspot.com/
VIRTUAL ART: Alizarin Goldflake (Metaverse avatar of Martha Jane Bradford)
Atelier Alizarin (Second Life studio): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lie/222/189/35
Blog: http://alizaringoldflake.blogspot.com/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alizaringoldflake/

YOUTUBE VIDEOS:
Acquarella: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-lo6JosN0M
Anza-Borrego Oak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s_KRMi55v8
Metempsyche's Garden: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfQGuNXWvLo
The Maze: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEa9rtEiINE
Atelier Alizarin Studio Tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDjrLmPpopA
The Mysterious Forest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Xv_pAf0Qc
Museum of Science Project Concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93YYMJANpZs