Aquila relates her beginnings in SL®: “I started in Second Life in 2009 mainly as a visitor, because I was interested in exploring interaction with virtual reality. During that first year, spent exploring the world, I started to think about the relations between the real and virtual dimensions of life. I’ve seen that in our “real” first lives as well as in our virtual Second Lives we have the need to establish limits that we’ll try to overcome. I started to capture these reflections in drawings, and the natural next step was 3D modeling.” Her first exhibit in SL was in 2010. There she showed “AERO”, a group of 4 independent scenes that investigate the double theme of being suspended above and anchorage and that represent the birth and the infancy of a new virtual identity. The ties to “real” identity progressively open to delineate a new dimension, a new role, new temporal and spatial coordinates. Lightness and suspension in some of their different meanings and properties have been the central theme of her artistic works in SL. The lightness of hanging above, suspended, while pulled by the weight of gravity, but also the sense of absence of void space and the weight of new possibilities. Aquila says: “I like to make my works in-world, using SL’s modeling tools and finding the
shape of my builds combining basic prims. I like to think that is Simotron (my “Second” me) who works at “our” creations. I’ll experiment with mesh for some parts of my installation when I feel that will be the better way to express my idea. I always try to use very simple, clean shapes. I use as few textures and colors as possible, to get almost a stark effect. I want the whole attention on the underlying message, so shapes, textures, colors and movements…and the name of the piece, of course…work together to evoke the meaning, but leave space for imagination.” As do all artists in Second Life she began with small pieces. She finds working on her big pieces today a bit difficult, because she’s very attentive to fine detail, and on a larger scale that means proportionally more work. The actors in her stories are always the visitors. She creates her environments in a way that makes one want to live in them. Aquila often builds the main scene with smaller scenes nested within, yet each with its own independent identity. She chooses for her titles the language that seems to fit better in terms of euphony of sound or nuance of meaning with her works. When AVENUE asked her about her artistic influences she said that she is not influenced by particular artists, but that she appreciates the camaraderie of