Search Results (14)

This study examines how political public relations strategists perceive and manage the structural tension between the embodied ritual of in-person militancy and the demands of media spectacle in a digitized campaign environment. Although frequently dismissed as obsolete in the era of digital mediatization, the electoral rally embodies a productive paradox: its physical rituality generates precisely the emotional content demanded by television and algorithmic platforms. Guided by the COREQ reporting criteria, a qualitative interpretivist study was conducted based on 19 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Portuguese political consultants and campaign directors, analysed through NVivo-assisted thematic analysis. Three analytical axes were identified: (1) the Paradox of Fabricated Authenticity, whereby media scenography instrumentalizes physical co-presence to generate platform-ready emotion; (2) the Catharsis of the Tribe, whereby the rally functions as a secular liturgy reinforcing militant identity and cohesion; and (3) the Leader as Media Sorcerer, operating a rhetorical duplicity that fuses epideictic communion with deliberative soundbite logic. The findings reveal a broad spectrum of professional perceptions, demonstrating that contemporary PR strategists do not uniformly abandon physical rituals. Instead, they act as “paradox managers”, constantly navigating the structural tension between traditionalist demands for organic militant communion and pragmatic requirements for fabricated digital spectacle. Full article

Film scenography often suffers from a dual problem of invisibility in academic theory and hypervisibility as mere ‘spectacle’ in popular reception. This study addresses the lack of integrated theoretical frameworks that connect scenographic design to its emotional and narrative functions. Utilizing a reception-focused analytical approach, this research applies Peter Wuss’s model of film perception to Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Analyzing the broad range of the film’s scenographic methods, this article investigates how high degrees of scenographic visibility operate as affective mechanisms rather than just stylistic signatures. The analysis identifies specific epistemic qualities of film space that facilitate emotional engagement and narrative movement. By examining scenographic elements across multiple scales, this study reveals how these design choices operate simultaneously across concept-guided, perception-guided, and stereotype-guided cognitive structures. Ultimately, the research demonstrates that scenographic visibility is intrinsically motivated by affective function. This challenges conventional film theory dichotomies and repositions scenography as fundamental to understanding cinema’s epistemic operations. Full article

This practice-led research examines how virtual production represents a circular return to scenographic practice, reactivating integrated modes of spatial authorship that have long underpinned screen storytelling but were obscured by industrial fragmentation. Drawing on a single-day intensive workshop at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), the study analyses how spatial authorship emerged through embodied, collaborative engagement with an LED volume environment. Grounded in scenographic theory and concepts of distributed cognition and situated authorship, the article reframes virtual production as a condition that renders pre-digital, collaborative modes of making visible within contemporary screen production. The LED volume functions simultaneously as scenic environment, lighting instrument, and compositional partner, requiring participants to negotiate space, light, movement, and camera as a unified spatial event. Analysis identifies how scenographic understanding emerged through virtual scouting, world-responsive storytelling, physical-digital integration, and embodied realisation. The findings extend production design theory by challenging ocular-centric models of mise-en-scène and positioning scenographic integration as screen practice—an epistemic mode of enacting through collective, materially grounded spatial experimentation. While situated within an educational context, the study points to broader implications for how spatial authorship and collective practice are understood in contemporary screen production. Full article

On the 25 September 1987, CBS aired the first episode of Beauty and the Beast. This television fantasy romance centred on the chaste relationship between Catherine Chandler (Linda Hamilton), a New York socialite turned District Attorney investigator, and the beastly Vincent, a man with leonine features who lives in a secret commune of outcasts beneath the city, played by Ron Perlman, but designed by Rick Baker. This article examines Vincent as a core part of Beauty and the Beast’s appeal and as a sight for affective spectacle. It will argue that due to television’s ability to provide audiences with intimacy and proximity, as well as Alexia Smit’s theories of tele-affectivity, Vincent, as a character and as part of the scenography of the television show, allows for “a multisensory, situated experience”. Taking a historical materialist approach, this article will examine the initial reaction to Vincent as a character in the prerelease material and the critical reception upon the release of the first season. It will also explore ideas of responsibility in the creation of Vincent and the tension and collaboration that take place between Perlman and Baker. Full article

Among the leading immersive technologies, augmented reality is one of the most promising and empowering for supporting designers in production environments. This research investigates the application of mobile augmented reality, based on the Web, as a mediation tool focused on cognitive activities of reading and understanding of technical drawings in the production and assembly of tailor-made projects of the scenographic industry. In this context, the research presents a method to use WebAR to improve the reading of technical drawings, seeking efficiency in the visualization of models and the exchange of information between professionals involved in the processes of design, production, and assembly of products, in the scope of scenography. This mediation tool was developed using Web AR platforms, compatible with native libraries (ARCore and ARKit) to ensure, first, compatibility with commonly used devices that workers or businesses can access, and second, to leverage hybrid tracking techniques that combine vision and sensors to improve the reliability of augmented reality viewing. The proposed solution adopts multiple tracking and navigation techniques in order to expand Space Skills components to provide greater exploratory freedom to users. The research process took place in light of the Design Science Research Methodology and the DSR-Model, since it aimed to develop a solution to a practical problem, as well as to produce knowledge from this process. Field experiments were conducted in two real companies, with end users on their respective mobile devices, in order to evaluate usability and behavioral intent, through the Acceptance, Intent, and Use of Technology questionnaires and perceived mental workload, NASA-TLX. The experimental results show that the adoption of this tool reduces the cognitive load in the process of reading technical drawings and project understanding. In general, its usability and intent to use provided significant levels of satisfaction, being positively accepted by all participants involved in the study. Full article

This article examines contemporary artists’ appropriation of the city of Brasília to critique Brazil’s continued reliance on the “unfinished” project of modernity. Exploring the construction of the scenography of Brasília and its resonance with the architecture and organization of space in the colonial plantations, the works of contemporary artists Lais Myrrha (Estudo de Caso [Case Study], Estudo para um Futuro Construído [Study for a Constructed Future]), and Talles Lopes (Construção Brasileira [Brazil Builds]) allows us to reconnect Brasília with the backdrop that gave rise to this ideal. These works invoke the reconciliation of the colonial matrix of power in Lucio Costa’s discourse about modernist architecture in Brazil, of which Brasília is the culmination. Myrrha’s and Lopes’ works show that the history and legacy of Brasília, not only as an idea but also as form, are embedded in the Brazilian imaginary and built environment in the contemporary moment. Full article

Realism is indispensable in clinical simulation learning, and the objective of this work is to present to the scientific community the methodology behind a novel numerical and digital tool to objectively measure realism in clinical simulation. Indicators measuring accuracy and naturality constitute ProRealSim v.1.0 (Universidad Europea, Madrid, Spain) which allows the assessing of attained realism for three dimensions: simulated participant, scenography, and simulator. Twelve experts in simulation-based learning (SBL) analyzed the conceptual relevance of 73 initial qualitative indicators that were then reduced to 53 final indicators after a screening study evaluating eight medical clinical simulation scenarios. Inter- and intra-observer concordance, correlation, and internal consistency were calculated, and an exploratory factorial analysis was conducted. Realism units were weighted based on variability and its mathematical contribution to global and dimensional realism. A statistical significance of p < 0.05 was applied and internal consistency was significant in all cases (raw_alpha ≥ 0.9698094). ProRealSim v.1.0 is integrated into a bilingual, free, and open access digital platform, and the intention is to foster a culture of interpretation of realism for its better study and didactic use. Full article

The church of St Ignatius of Loyola in Rome, together with the Church of the Gesù, represents the most significant artistic contribution of the Jesuits in the Eternal City. Incorporated in the broader context of the Roman College, and built between 1626 and 1650 following a project by Padre (Father) Orazio Grassi S.J., it is the only one of the great Roman churches without a dome. The projects for the helioscopic dome by Orazio Grassi, the Cortonesque dome by Armando Brasini and the perspective dome by Andrea Pozzo represent the difficult attempt to create a perfectly rational layout for Rome, an ideal scientific and theological city. These projects tell the story of three different ways of conceiving architectural space affecting the city: political manifesto, imaginative introspection and colossal scenography. This paper describes the history of an “impossible” dome, analysing the historical evolution of the project and its three potential authors, three magnificent and idealist designers. Full article

Based on the interest aroused by royal funerals at the end of the Middle Ages, this paper analyses the obsequies held in the Eternal City on the occasion of the death of Isabella the Catholic (1474–1504)—Queen of Castile and Aragon—in a context of international tension and succession unrest. The papal diaries, diplomatic documentation and Ludovico Bruno’s sermo funebris allow us to reconstruct the liturgical, scenographic and rhetorical display of a ceremony that seduced with its solemnity and elegance, the fruit of a hybridism that combined Spanish and Italian funerary traditions in the Rome of Julius II. The creativity of the Spanish community is thus evident in its ability to convert the Isabelline funeral ceremony into an expression of dynastic power in the context of Spanish–French competition and incipient tensions between the Habsburg and Fernandine courts over the Castilian succession. Only by starting from this intertwining of the political and the liturgical will we be able to understand the transformations undergone by the funeral ceremonial in its passage—still little explored—from late medieval customs to modern scenographies. Full article

Private and public organizations are becoming increasingly involved in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This includes organizations within the cultural sector, with a central role in the progress of society. This study presents a state-of-the-art analysis of actions towards sustainability of the opera sector with a life cycle perspective and focusing on the impact of opera sets’ scenery. Our research is based on a review of literature and experiences, the results of interviews, a survey, and an experts’ forum to analyze the related systems, standards, and practices. The study contributes with novel research that provides an understanding of the factors that determine the environmental performance which are synthesized with a sustainability SWOT analysis. Findings are relevant for academic researchers analyzing the potential conflicts among organizational strategic goals and sustainability and for scenic arts’ practitioners and managers who aim to develop a roadmap towards improving the sustainability of their sector. Full article

This article explores the under-researched intertextual and intermedial connections between Leonora Carrington’s transdisciplinary practice and the medium of film. The analysis focuses on the artist’s cameo appearances in two 1960s Mexican productions—There Are No Thieves in This Village (Alberto Isaac 1964) and A Pure Soul (Juan Ibáñez 1965)—which mark her creative collaborations with Surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel and Magic Realists Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes. Carrington’s cameo roles are analyzed within a network of intertextual translations between her visual and literary works that often mix autobiographical and fictional motifs. Moreover, it is argued that Carrington’s cinematic mediations employ the recurring Surrealist tropes of anti-Catholic and anti-bourgeois satire. The article also investigates Carrington’s creative approach towards art directing and costume design, expressed in the Surrealist horror film The Mansion of Madness (Juan López Moctezuma 1973). The analysis examines the intermedial connections between Carrington’s practice of cinematic set design and her earlier experiments with theatrical scenography. Overall, this study aims to reveal undiscovered aspects of Leonora Carrington’s artistic identity and her transdisciplinary oeuvre. Full article

The basic idea of a hologram is an apparition of something that does not exist but appears as if it was just in front of our eyes. These illusion techniques were invented a long time ago. The philosopher and alchemist Giovanni Battista della Porta invented an effect that was later developed and brought to fame by Prof. J. H. Pepper (1821–1900) and applied in theatrical performances. The innovation nowadays consists in the adopted technology to produce them. Taking advantage of the available digital technologies, the challenge we are going to discuss is using holograms in the museum context, inside showcases, to realize a new form of scenography and dramaturgy around the exhibited objects. Case studies will be presented, with a detailed analysis of the EU project CEMEC (Connecting Early Medieval European Collections), where holographic showcases have been designed, built and experimented in EU museums. In this case, the coexistence in the same space of the real artifact and the virtual contents, and interior setup of the showcase, its dynamic lighting system, the script and the sound, converge to create an expressive unity. The reconstruction of sensory and symbolic dimensions that are ‘beyond’ any museum object can take the visitor in the middle of a lively and powerful experience with such technology, and represents an advancement in the museological sector. User experience results and a list of best practices will be presented in the second part of the paper, out of the tests and research activities conducted in these three years of the project. Full article

This study focuses on an analysis of perceiving the infinite “solid images” derived from the projective transformations of space in a relief perspective, with particular reference to Renaissance theatre scenery. Today it is possible to simulate the projective transformations of the scenic space in a parametric environment, dynamically. This parameterization allows to analyze the effects of visual perception of the scene, through the dynamic control of its projective transformations. The main objective of this study is the exploration of the places of the projective transformation straddling reality and illusion, where the metamorphosis of the space triggers changeable processes of perception. changeable processes of perception. Full article

This work investigates the acoustic characteristics of the double elliptical vault, which overlooks the Grand Staircase of the Royal Palace of Caserta (Italy). The Royal Palace was built by the architect Luigi Vanvitelli in the Seventeenth Century and it is the largest royal building in Italy. The double elliptical vault presents a great scenography effect. Inside the vault, on the planking level, musicians used to play for the king and his guests when the royal procession, going up the grand staircase, entered the royal apartments, creating astonishment among the guests who heard the music without understanding from where it was coming. Since the musicians were inside the vault, the long reverberation made the listeners perceive the vault to be enveloped by the music. To investigate this effect, the acoustic characteristics of the double vault were measured, putting the sound source on the planking level of the vault, while the microphones were put along the staircase and in the vestibule towards the royal apartments. Finally, the spatial distribution of several acoustic parameters is evaluated also using architectural acoustic simulations. Full article