Intellect

Authors:  Birgit Wiens 
DOI: 10.1386/padm.6.1.25_1

Keywords
scenic experience,perception; shifts of visual perception,scenic modules,modularity,material movability,light; electric light, light as an artistic element,iconoclasm,media archaeology,digital performance, digital images,

Abstract
Adolphe Appia is one of the main protagonists whose work at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century mark the beginning of modern scenography. This article discusses the main features and artistic strategies of his innovations, in particular: (a) modularity, i.e. the replacement of the co-ordinations of linear perspective by a modular concept of space (the use of practicables, staircases, screens and other moveable elements that became active parts of the performance) and (b) an innovative use of light, based on a new electrical lighting system. The principle of modular composition and for the first time in theatre history the use of light as a co-player and active agent in Appia's scenography seem to precede what we today explore as characteristics of the digital. Contemporary scenographers still refer to Appia's heritage. My example here is Operation: Orfeo by the Danish artist group Hotel Pro Forma. This production, as the article suggests, can be analysed as an artistic re-interpretation and re-envisioning of what Appia in his time had developed as a modular, pre-digital aesthetics.