GRAND OPENING for "Acquarella: After the Apocalypse

My first full-sim immersive art creation, "Acquarella: After the Apocalypse," opens on Saturday, October 29, 12 -3 PDT, on Jeri Rahja's Nexus Central sim in InWorldz. Enjoy music by Chandra Deed noon to 1:30 pm PDT and Declan G 1:30 - 3 pm PDT. Feast on sushi, ride a pink seahorse, come see a story as told by a sim!

http://places.inworldz.com/Nexus%20Central/211/49/25

The installation is based on "Acquarella: The Fable," a machinima written and staged by Alizarin and filmed by Chantal Harvey. The machinima was shown at the World's Fair in Shanghai in September and October 2010 under the auspices of Aino Barr/Christina Garcia Lasuen.
links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1eFMtjV6U (English narration)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhO2Rf88uM (Chinese narration)

The sim has been terraformed into four containers, and this InWorldz version of the story is told in four parts, one for each of the quadrants.

The first quadrant depicts a time when The Age of Man has ended in a blaze of fire, famine, and warfare.

In the second, the Age of Acquarella dawns. The mighty goddess begins to repopulate the seas with outposts of aquariums filled with creatures that survived in the cool depths of the oceans. Hoping to avoid the violent excesses of her forebears, she plans for these mini-oceans to be peaceful and pure, hence colored only with the purest of colors, black and white.

Alas, as they say, if you want to make the Devil laugh, make plans. The third quadrant shows one of our aquariums as a dead zone, all the life squeezed out of it by the goddess's rigid reliance on purity.

At last the goddess softens her ideas, and the fourth quadrant blooms in a burst of color and fecundity. There are fanciful plants, brilliant fish, pink seahorses, showers of multicolored diatoms, masses of ikura eggs, and dance balls everywhere. It seems like paradise, but there is a hint of the sinister in the sushi pavilion, where it appears that the aquarium has succumbed to cannibalism. Even more sinister is the black spy monster lurking out of sight overhead and manipulating destiny to travel full circle like the merry go round that marks the passage back to the disaster quadrant. In the end the story of the sim asks whether moral progress is possible.

I am a digital artist in Real Life and I used the following RL software in the creation of the work: Corel Painter (digital drawing/textures), Photoshop (textures), Blender (sculpties), and Audacity (sound). I also relied heavily on my experience with virtual tools, including prim editing, texturing, and script modification. The sim was begun in February 2011 and finished eight months later. Although bits and pieces may make it to other grids, "Acquarella: After the Apocalypse" in its entirety is unique and always will be to Nexus Central in InWorldz.

Many thanks to Jeri Rahja for granting me the use of the sim, to Elenia LLewellyn for technical support, and to Zauber Paracelsus for help with scripting and lag.

Prior to opening, Acquarella has received some most welcome publicity.
**The first quadrant was featured on on Treet.tv, Episode 120.
** An interview by treasured friend Nazz Lane appeared on August 1, 2011: http://laneslist.blogspot.com/2011/08/preview-of-alizarin-goldflakes.html.
**And another by the incomparable Thirza Ember on October 19, 2011 : http://pingsfromtheafterlife.blogspot.com/

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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: http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake
Anza Borrego Oak:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/1/5s_KRMi55v8
Acquarella:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/a/u/0/u-lo6JosN0M
Acquarella:the Fable ( a Chantal Harvey machinima)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX1eFMtjV6U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hhO2Rf88uM (Chinese narration)
Metemspyche's Garden:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/2/GfQGuNXWvLo
Requiem for Fukushima Daiichi:
http://youtu.be/2H_ne2XbcNs
Studio Tour:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/3/XDjrLmPpopA
The Maze:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/4/OEa9rtEiINE
The Mysterious Forest:
http://www.youtube.com/user/AlizarinGoldflake#p/u/5/c6Xv_pAf0Qc
The Winter Bear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMYSYJNkm1E&list=QL&playnext=1