Theatre and Performance Design: A Reader in Scenography is an essential resource for those interested in the visual composition of performance and related scenographic practices. Theatre and performance studies, cultural theory, fine art, philosophy and the social sciences are brought together in one volume to examine the principle forces that inform understanding of theatre and performance design. The volume is organised thematically in five sections: looking, the experience of seeing space and place the designer: the scenographic bodies in space making meaning This major collection of key writings provides a much needed critical and contextual framework for the analysis of theatre and performance design. By locating this study within the broader field of scenography – the term increasingly used to describe a more integrated reading of performance – this unique anthology recognises the role played by all the elements of production in the creation of meaning. Contributors include Josef Svoboda, Richard Foreman, Roland Barthes, Oscar Schlemmer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Richard Schechner, Jonathan Crary, Elizabeth Wilson, Henri Lefebvre, Adolph Appia and Herbert Blau.

Focussing on structural reliability methods, reliability-based optimization, structural system reliability and risk analysis, lifetime performance and various applications in civil engineering. Invaluable to all concerned with structural system reliability and optimization, especially students, engineers, and workers in research and development.

This book investigates the performance analysis and optimization design of parallel manipulators in detail. It discusses performance evaluation indices for workspace, kinematic, stiffness, and dynamic performance, single- and multi-objective optimization design methods, and ways to improve optimization design efficiency of parallel manipulators. This book collects the authors’ research results previously scattered in many journals and conference proceedings and presents them in a unified form after the methodical edition. As a result, numerous performance analyses and optimization of parallel manipulators are presented, in which the readers in the robotics community may be greatly interested. More importantly, readers can use the methods and tools introduced in this book to carry out performance evaluation and optimization of parallel manipulators by themselves. The book can provide important reference and guideline for undergraduate and graduate students, engineers, and researchers who are interested in design and application of parallel manipulators.

These proceedings, arising from an international workshop, present research results and ideas on issues of importance to seismic risk reduction and the development of future seismic codes.