ABSTRACT
Festivals are synaesthetic artworks designed to appeal to all the senses. Baroque scholars of Ceremonial Science, such as Julius Bernhard von Rohr, have pointed out that on festive occasions public open spaces served not only as musical venues1 but in addition could be illuminated and even perfumed. However, the principal focus of festivals remained visual performance, as the most effective medium for conveying meaning. Effectiveness in this sense takes in both a comprehension of what is seen by the onlookers – that is the decoding of images and gestures – and the sustainability of what is perceived, that is to say a continuing existence for the performed images in the public memory.
