Sonic emblems & magic squares: Atalanta fugiens and Ludic humanism in the 21st century
Atalanta fugiens is a musical alchemical emblem book that has fascinated readers since its publication 400 years ago. A virtuoso work that fuses music, art, and natural philosophy into a paean to wisdom achieved through alchemical practice, it playfully engages our senses of sound and sight in unpacking the book’s complex, enigmatic alchemical program. Its experience is reimagined in Furnace & Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary (Nummedal & Bilak, eds. UVAP, 2020) through, for example, manipulable vocal recordings of Atalanta’s “fugues,” and a multi-functional space that allows readers to curate and share image collections. The Oxford HSMT presentation by Donna Bilak and Loren Ludwig (Furnace & Fugue Music Director and contributor) discusses the ludic qualities of Maier’s book and ways that Furnace & Fugue extends sensory interactivity with Maier’s ideas through digital technology. Atalanta’s “alchemical fugues” are cleverly conceived as musical games whose solutions work across multiple registers (musical, alchemical, and Classical); also, Maier seems to have designed Atalanta’s emblems around a concealed a mathematical puzzle that is revealed to the reader upon decoding clues that are scattered throughout the work. These aspects of Atalanta fugiens challenge our notion of “reading.” As a digital artefact, Furnace & Fugue playfully expands the ludic possibilities suggested in Maier’s book for engaging with musica, alchemy, and history.
Date: 30 November 2020, 16:00 (Monday, 8th week, Michaelmas 2020)
Venue: Online with Zoom
Speakers: Donna Bilak (Independent Scholar), Loren Ludwig (Scholar Performer)
Organising department: Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology
Organiser contact email address: hsmt@history.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Centre for the History of Science Medicine and Technology (OCHSMT) Seminars and Events
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwlcuuprD4pH9UXCpqG-Nqy8KG1lbwTHKuU
Audience: Public
Editor: Laura Spence