[SML] New open access book: Renaissance Fun: The machines behind the scenes (UCL Press)

[Jerry Durand]

Thanks, downloading now

On 6/1/21 7:15 AM, Fox, Alison via Stagecraft wrote:
> ***We apologise for any cross-posting***
>  
> UCL Press is pleased to announce a new open access book that is likely
> to be of interest to list subscribers: /Renaissance Fun/ by Philip
> Steadman.
>  
> *Download free: https://bit.ly/34zEee2 <https://bit.ly/34zEee2>*
>  
>  
> **********************************
> */Renaissance Fun/*
> The machines behind the scenes
> By Philip Steadman
>  
> *Download free: https://bit.ly/34zEee2 <https://bit.ly/34zEee2>*
>  
> **********************************
> /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.
>  
> *Download free: https://bit.ly/34zEee2 <https://bit.ly/34zEee2>***
>  
> **********************************
>
> www.uclpress.co.uk <http://www.uclpress.co.uk/>
>
> Follow us on Twitter @UCLpress
>
> uclpress-long
>
>  
>
>
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-- 
Jerry Durand, WhatsApp, Telegram, VK, Signal, Gab
www.DurandInterstellar.com & www.Durandinterstellar.ru

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