An Exploration of Performance through Art and Art through Performance
The Artwork and the History
On May 31, 1615, the annual “Parade of the Craft Guilds” in Brussels, called the Ommegang, was dedicated to the Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566-1633), co-sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands and one of the most remarkable women of seventeenth century. The event was memorialized by the studio of the court painter, Denys Van Alsloot (c. 1568-c.1626) in eight exquisitely detailed panels painted under the title “The Triumph of Isabella.”
Recreating a Pageant Wagon
The Immersive Experience
Immersive experiences of art are becoming increasingly common in the world and have inspired the creation of the new Digital Art Museum in Paris, L’Atelier des Lumières. Our contribution to this trend features multiple synchronized projectors displaying images at large scale in a “surround” environment with sound- scape score recreating the aural environment of the original festival and animations simulating movement and showing close-up details. The audience will enter into a street in Brussels or 1615. Each performance begins with displays of the artworks at their full 8 feet by 4 feet sizes which will them expand to 3 times full size followed by a series of details showing performances in the paintings. They will then be welcomed by “Isabella as Queen of the Omegang” a character right out of one of the paintings who will introduce the audience to the original Ommegang.
The live performer leads the parade onto the street followed by the digitally animated figures from the paintings.
Creating the Immersive Experience
The Exhibition
This exhibition focuses on high resolution scans of seven of Alsloot’s paintings (one is lost) which are among the most important illustrations in existence for the study of festive culture and the history of street performance in Early Modern Europe. These images have only been seen together once since the 17th century and never in the United States. The core exhibition will feature a wide variety of supplemental items including explanatory plaques, a 9 minute documentary, “Staging the Street for Isabella. Ommegang 1615-2015,” produced for the Victoria & Albert museum and interactive digital humanities projects explaining the artistic, cultural, political and religious context for this festival. A 3D printed model of the most complex of the ten pageant wagons illustrated in the artworks (a wagon with no obvious means of locomotion); reproductions of a mask seen in the artworks is all be provided by students, faculty and visiting international scholars form across the University of Maryland campus.
The Augmented Reality Project
This project proposes an augmented reality experience to enhance the “Triumph of Isabella” exhibition and immersive experience at the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland beginning in June 2018. This project creates animated augmented reality “pop-outs” consisting of animation and theatrical monologues (See below) triggered by scanning select parts of the “Triumph of Isabella” panels with the HP Reveal app on a mobile device.
The V&A
The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, is one of the premier museums in the world and one of the few to house a Theatre and Performance Collection. They have provided us with high resolution scans of five of the artworks along with the documentary Staging the street for Isabella. Ommegang 1615-2015. (The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, has provided three more.)
The V&A exhibits the 12 foot by 4 foot panel 5 “The Triumph of the Archduchess” in room 7 of its “Europe 1600-1815” collection, along with an interactive touch panel display “Explore the Ommegang” which can be viewed on-line at http://www.vam.ac.uk/ommegang/. (They do not exhibit panel 2, which is in two pieces.)
The V&A Theatre and Performance Collections organized the 2015 exhibition on this artwork. (See the previous exhibition at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/creating-new-europe-1600-1800-galleries/last-few-days-to-see-the-reunited-ommegang . It now has a reduced scale version of that exhibition in room 104. Their exhibition consists of:
- A ¾ reproduction of panel 5 “The Triumph of the Archduchess” direct printed on dibond (an aluminum composite sheet specially optimized for display) from a high density scan of the original.
- An explanatory panel of the 1615 Ommegang.
- A full scale reproduction of panel 1 “Parade of the Crafts Guilds” direct printed on dibond from a high density scan of the original.
- An explanatory panel on the commissioning of the art, small reproductions of each panel with a blank space for panel 3, and painting identification plaques containing the usual title, artist, record number, museum location etc for each of the five existing panels.
- A large flat screen TV continuously playing Staging the street for Isabella. Ommegang 1615-2015, a 9 minute video with a script by Sophie Reynolds, animation and film by Paul Barrritt, LtD; sound by Laurence Owen, and voice by Suzanne Andrade. This video has Ms. Andrade reading a letter (fictional) from Isabella to her step brother, the King of Spain, explaining highlights of what the paintings are showing. The video picks out detail from the panels, animates some parts, and includes footage of the 2015 Ommegang which is still being performed in Brussels every July.