FRIDA: A Multilevel Digital Atlas for the Ephemeral Renaissance, La Serenissima Venice 1450-1550

Digital humanities and design have recently partnered in developing robust methods and effective visual tools to make data accessible and usable to help understand the complexity of historical phenomena. But what happens when scholars want to restore the materiality of ephemeral historical practices, such as performative events, political celebrations, oral performances, and religious ceremonies, which present intangible, yet crucial, aspects of political, artistic, and social life? Organized by patrons and featuring a dynamic community of humanists, artists, and performers, these festive events embodied political and social tensions and transcultural exchanges across Europe and the Mediterranean and led to a flourishing of new forms of performing arts that became avant-garde in Renaissance culture. During these performing rituals, the whole city was transformed into a theater: the city gate became the architectural stage for triumphal entrances accompanied by solemn music; the piazza was the setting for tournaments and jousts; and the palace was the site of “private” shows, including mise-en-scènes of mythological fables, classical comedies, and new plays. The model for these festivals stems from antiquity, which humanists rediscovered through existing Greco-Roman artworks as well as through the study of classical poems, reviving them into the framework of festivals. Although the poetic, figurative, and musical materials involved were often short-lived, these multimedia events produced objects that held a collective memory of the festival. Yet, these materials are now scattered in historical archives. How can we overcome the fragmentation of the historical record? Moreover, if we consider the ephemeral nature of these events as an essential part of their materiality and value, how can we reconstruct these experiences and restore their cultural genesis together with their political, social, and artistic implications?