The theatre as a model of space
Prerequisites:
  • Background knowledge in the history of the theatre.
  • Basic web browsing.
Objectives:
  • Enabling the students to relate architectural forms (e.g. stage-sets) to conceptual models of space (e.g. perspective grids)
  •   Relating early-modern visual illusions (e.g. the theatre) to present-day digital simulations.
Description:
  • A study of seventeenth-century stage sets and their use of perspective. A study of website animations on this topic.  

Questions
THE RENAISSANCE STAGE
The type of space created by stage sets in the Renaissance theatre served as a model of the process of vision generally speaking; this is why the theatre is important

 
  • The Italian Renaissance theatre

In the Renaissance, stage designers created a box-like unified space in front of the spectators, aiming at illusionistic perspective

  • Inigo Jones and the "masque"

Inigo Jones (1573-1652) was an architect and stage designer who introduced Italianate perspective stage sets into England .

See his biography in the Dictionary of National Biography (our University has a subscription which you may use either in the university computer rooms or through distant access with a password) - his architecture and stage sets

PRESENT-DAY INTERNET SIMULATIONS OF THE 17th CENTURY THEATRE
Internet type of animations can now be used to reproduce the theatrical effects of Renaissance scene-shifting.
  • Animations and stage sets

some websites are dedicated to computer modelling of Renaissance theatrical effects

  • Projects

some websites describe ongoing projects

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