Technology and Performance during the Renaissance


Book Description

This book opens a new window to understanding the important role music played in the Renaissance. It was a means of popular and court entertainment and a tool for displaying the magnificence and power achieved by the lords of the time. Leonardo da Vinci, despite not being very well known for this skill, was one of the most famous improvisers and performers of the lira da braccio. However, his multifaceted scientific and technological knowledge pushed him far beyond the limit of being a good performer; his codices contain reflections on music, studies on the origin of the sound, and an extraordinary catalogue of new musical instruments. The book highlights the fact that Leonardo's profound knowledge of the workings of machines and natural phenomena was the starting point in foreshadowing many of the innovations that would be introduced after his death. This book will be of interest to academics and students in fields such as music, engineering and the arts.




Technology and Performance During the Renaissance


Book Description

This book opens a new window to understanding the important role music played in the Renaissance. It was a means of popular and court entertainment and a tool for displaying the magnificence and power achieved by the lords of the time. Leonardo da Vinci, despite not being very well known for this skill, was one of the most famous improvisers and performers of the lira da braccio. However, his multifaceted scientific and technological knowledge pushed him far beyond the limit of being a good performer; his codices contain reflections on music, studies on the origin of the sound, and an extraordinary catalogue of new musical instruments. The book highlights the fact that Leonardo's profound knowledge of the workings of machines and natural phenomena was the starting point in foreshadowing many of the innovations that would be introduced after his death. This book will be of interest to academics and students in fields such as music, engineering and the arts.




Renaissance Fun


Book Description

Renaissance Fun is about the technology of Renaissance entertainments in stage machinery and theatrical special effects; in gardens and fountains; and in the automata and self-playing musical instruments that were installed in garden grottoes. How did the machines behind these shows work? How exactly were chariots filled with singers let down onto the stage? How were flaming dragons made to fly across the sky? How were seas created on stage? How did mechanical birds imitate real birdsong? What was ‘artificial music’, three centuries before Edison and the phonograph? How could pipe organs be driven and made to play themselves by waterpower alone? And who were the architects, engineers, and craftsmen who created these wonders? All these questions are answered. At the end of the book we visit the lost ‘garden of marvels’ at Pratolino with its many grottoes, automata and water jokes; and we attend the performance of Mercury and Mars in Parma in 1628, with its spectacular stage effects and its music by Claudio Monteverdi – one of the places where opera was born. Renaissance Fun is offered as an entertainment in itself. But behind the show is a more serious scholarly argument, centred on the enormous influence of two ancient writers on these subjects, Vitruvius and Hero. Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture were widely studied by Renaissance theatre designers. Hero of Alexandria wrote the Pneumatics, a collection of designs for surprising and entertaining devices that were the models for sixteenth and seventeenth century automata. A second book by Hero On Automata-Making – much less well known, then and now – describes two miniature theatres that presented plays without human intervention. One of these, it is argued, provided the model for the type of proscenium theatre introduced from the mid-sixteenth century, the generic design which is still built today. As the influence of Vitruvius waned, the influence of Hero grew.




The Renaissance Computer


Book Description

Some of today's foremost Renaissance scholars look afresh at the remarkable products of the first age of print and explore how these anticipated many of the conditions of the present digital age.




Renaissance Drama 34


Book Description

Renaissance Drama, an annual and interdisciplinary publication, is devoted to drama and performance as a central feature of Renaissance culture. The essays in each volume explore traditional canons of drama, the significance of performance (broadly construed) to early modern culture, and the impact of new forms of interpretation on the study of Renaissance plays, theatre, and performance. This issue of Renaissance Drama, devoted to the topic of "Media, Technology, and Performance" is co-edited by W.B. Worthen, Wendy Wall, and Jeffrey Masten. The various articles displayed here address the interface between drama and its various modes of production over the past four centuries. This volume explores the relationship of drama to other forms of early modern spectacle (pageantry, masques), to the specificities of typography and the economics of the book industry, to the intersection of drama with film and DVD production, and to the way that stage technologies and theatrical economies of the 16th, 17th and 20th centuries define plays and playing. Rather than thinking of the early modern text as something simply reconstituted in its different incarnations, these essays make clear that different media force a rethinking of the terms that we use to envision, conceptualize, and even to see the work of drama.




Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance


Book Description

Examining how technological developments in performance practices affect spectator experience of Shakespeare and early modern drama.




The Italian Renaissance of Machines


Book Description

The Renaissance was not just a rebirth of the mind. It was also a new dawn for the machine. When we celebrate the achievements of the Renaissance, we instinctively refer, above all, to its artistic and literary masterpieces. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the Italian peninsula was the stage of a no-less-impressive revival of technical knowledge and practice. In this rich and lavishly illustrated volume, Paolo Galluzzi guides readers through a singularly inventive period, capturing the fusion of artistry and engineering that spurred some of the Renaissance’s greatest technological breakthroughs. Galluzzi traces the emergence of a new and important historical figure: the artist-engineer. In the medieval world, innovators remained anonymous. By the height of the fifteenth century, artist-engineers like Leonardo da Vinci were sought after by powerful patrons, generously remunerated, and exhibited in royal and noble courts. In an age that witnessed continuous wars, the robust expansion of trade and industry, and intense urbanization, these practitioners—with their multiple skills refined in the laboratory that was the Renaissance workshop—became catalysts for change. Renaissance masters were not only astoundingly creative but also championed a new concept of learning, characterized by observation, technical know-how, growing mathematical competence, and prowess at the draftsman’s table. The Italian Renaissance of Machines enriches our appreciation for Taccola, Giovanni Fontana, and other masters of the quattrocento and reveals how da Vinci’s ambitious achievements paved the way for Galileo’s revolutionary mathematical science of mechanics.




Handbook of Human Performance Technology


Book Description

The first two editions of the Handbook of Human Performance Technology helped define the rapidly growing and vibrant field of human performance technology - a systematic approach to improving individual and organizational performance. Exhaustively researched, this comprehensive sourcebook not only updates key foundational chapters on organizational change, evaluation, instructional design, and motivation, but it also features breakthrough chapters on "performance technology in action" and addresses many new topics in the field, such as certification, Six Sigma, and communities of practice. Boasting fifty-five new chapters, contributors to this new edition comprise a veritable "who's who" in the field of performance improvement, including Geary Rummler, Roger Kaufman, Ruth Clark, Allison Rossett, Margo Murray, Judith Hale, Dana and James Robinson, and many others. Praise for the third edition of the Handbook of Human Performance Technology "If you are in the business of trying to improve organizational performance, this Handbook should be the first place you look for answers to questions about human performance technology." - Joseph J. Durzo, CPT, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief learning officer, Archstone-Smith "This newest edition of the Handbook provides an unparalleled, all-encompassing survey of the latest theory and its practical application in this emergent field. This book is a must-have reference for any professional wishing to systematically improve performance within their organization." - Weston McMillan, CPT, manager, training and development, eBay Inc. "An invaluable, engaging resource for anyone charged with improving workplace performance. It not only provides the background and foundations of our profession, but more importantly, it also provides the most up-to-date descriptions of how to apply HPT to drive results." - Rodger Stotz, CPT, vice president and managing consultant, Maritz Inc. "This book is filled with insights--both for those who are new to the field and also for those who are experienced. It offers concrete advice and examples on how to use HPT to impact business results and how to work successfully within organizations." - Anne Marie Laures, CPT, director, learning services, Walgreen Co. "The Handbook contains many of the secrets for improving the performance of individuals, groups, and organizations." - Robert F. Mager, author, Analyzing Performance Problems and How to Turn Learners On...Without Turning Them Off




Renaissance Fun


Book Description

Renaissance Fun explores the technology of Renaissance entertainments in stage machinery and theatrical special effects; in gardens and fountains; and in the automata and self-playing musical instruments that were installed in garden grottoes.




Performance Spaces and Stage Technologies


Book Description

The history of theatre has often been written as a history of great writers, actors, or directors. This book takes a different approach: The contributors examine the history of performance from the perspective of theatre spaces and stage technologies. Art, literature, religion, law, urbanism, architecture, technology - this interdisciplinary book discusses how these fields relate to theatre and performance. Geographically, it covers a significant portion of the globe; chronologically, it ranges from ancient times to the present. This book provides a timely attempt to combine cultural and global history.