Christen Mandracchia, Paul Deziel, Qmars Haeri, “‘Triumph of Isabella’ Immersive Experience at the 2019 V&A Performance Festival” (United Kingdom)

We aimed to present and highlight components of the IPCCR digital humanities project “The Triumph of Isabella: An Immersive Experience” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This includes the animation of the original painting, a documentary of the making of the animation, a documentary on the making of the ship model, and the augmented reality app. The goals were to foster the University’s relationship with the V&A, and provide us, the students, an opportunity to showcase our work at a high-profile institution.

Through this project and experience the three students involved were able to grow the
international relationships that Dr. Hildy had made with the V&A on this Triumph of Isabella collaboration. The project allowed us to show the kind of high-quality work that University of Maryland graduate students do, and there was talk of possible collaborations with us in the near future.

We learned how to use international connections to their fullest and how to produce and curate a digital humanities project which blends theatre history, technology, and tourism. We learned about the accessibility of the visual arts for an audience that spoke many different languages –something that gives us historical insight into the power of the Ommegang in 1615 for a multi- national, multi-cultural audience. Christen wrote extensively of her findings in a paper titled“’The Triumph of Isabella:’ Digital Immersion into a Renaissance Mass-Spectacle”, which she presented at ASTR in Fall 2019.

-Christen Mandracchia, Paul Deziel and Qmars Haeri