In this introduction essay—extended version of the Conference Opening Address—we will explain the reasons for which the conference was organized, examine some of the cultural assumptions underlying the conference, and briefly introduce some of the topics dealt with by the speakers and the contributions. Full article

Object of reflection from different disciplines, from philosophy to psychology, to aesthetics, to semiotics, to the history of art, the image, both natural and artificial and artistic, is at the center of the experiences and daily experiences of a number more and more people. [...] Full article

There are assumptions about images and how these compare with words, in terms of what is afforded us in communicating with each other. These assumptions have been limited by religion and economic imperatives in the past, and by education systems that grew out of those vested interests. One way to push past these assumptions might be to imagine a world without writing. Some science fiction examples are examined for their feasibility. In addition, the reader is reminded of humanity’s pre-writing past, and that pictures that survived from then are viewed through our present contextual lenses as containing a child-like view of the universe. This view has not been helped in western history by hundreds of years of monotheism and its vested interest in framing earlier belief systems as perverse. The origins of writing however, were completely bound up with accounting for production, for tax collecting and distribution, with specialization into occupations: the beginnings of the organized state. Could a future of pictures-only give us the deliberate communication we’d need for these exchanges or is that also science fiction? The major assumption to overcome is that the dependability of words anchors the waywardness of pictures. This paper shows some quotidian examples of picture-only communications which do not invite ambiguous or vague interpretations, and examples are given where pictures can disambiguate words. The future is most likely to witness the further compression of writing, not its total eradication; it is likely that the co-presence of writing and pictures makes for clearest communication. How would communicators be trained to be productive members of such a world? Research into style, pattern recognition and comprehension are necessary to further break down the historical assumptions about what constitutes good depiction. We need to break the spell of visual realism; to see it as only one of many choices for capturing the image, and to see the schema that make pictures up as components that can be taken apart and reassembled. The paper concludes with some examples of science-fiction curricula given to design students to broaden their thinking about the future potential for visual communications. Full article

My talk consists of three parts. First, I present the urges and antecedents that are present in the current development of the concept of visuality and can affect education as a considerable development potential. Almost half a century ago something started in education, creating a new learning environment inside and outside the walls of schools by turning static images into dynamic ones. Putting the phenomenon into a conceptional frame, Multimedia Content Development has set new questions and new responses. Owing to the mobile communication tools, Comenius’ Orbis Pictus has become really visible everywhere and at all times in a physical as well as a theoretical-methodological sense, changing by this our learning environment. Recognizing these tendencies, in the second part of my talk, I will deal with what I call the new education dilemmas. The core of these is that e-learning, which shapes everyday learning environments by “ubiquitous computing”, more and more turns away from the traditional or dominant verbal communication, and searches for alternatives by means of which it can be more interesting and more effective for the users. Owing to this situation, serious challenges can be identified with respect to pedagogy. The spontaneous effects of the original human natural characteristics of visual thinking in learning can be considered as an important altering factor in the learning paradigm. The relevant philosophical framework has been there for almost half a century; by now, however, as a result of technological development, it is already generating innovation steps at the practical level. The third part of my talk points to the current search for ways and possibilities, offering not so many solutions, but rather specific examples of investigations and experiments. Instead of suggesting a rigid change of the paradigm I point to the perspective of simply the modalities becoming more complex. In teaching and learning, multimodality—as an attitude which is able to make learning more effective than ever before by means of applying images and signs and rendering the methods of communication significantly more complex—can probably be an important step made forward, leaving behind mechanical, and so rigid, didactical systems. In a modern pedagogical sense, it is highly interesting to examine the notion of modality in terms of teaching and learning in the new technological environment. In its everyday connotation, modality means manner; the speaker’s relation to the coverage of the scope of reality. Considering the special information and knowledge transmitting moments of education, modality means the imparter’s and the recipient’s relation to the content or its coverage of reality. With its earlier centuries-long dominance, the traditional linguistic modality hid the visual modality. Interestingly, the notion of multimodality first appeared in transportation, and so in communication as well, like a “specific method of transportation”, meaning a combined solution including several manners. In linguistic communication, multilingualism, too, means multimodality, and when we are referring to one of the great experiences of our era, i.e., the modality of sign language rich in visual and gestural elements, we are coming closer and closer to the realization that in today’s learning it is precisely multimodal communication that makes us able to transmit knowledge effectively, especially in the cases of disadvantaged groups. In the wake of the 20th century, “modern” learning materials have remained unchanged in terms of verbal and image communication, linear structure, written text dominance, and static image conveyance. Although electronic learning resources and multi-media e-learning representations include more dynamic (flash, podcast, video) transfers of content, the “logic” of building up learning materials has changed little—in fact, visual content is only a complement to verbal communication. But when it comes to community-based learning resource development, teacher training may offer outstandingly good conditions for visual learning. Full article

Recent developments in image-making techniques have resulted in a drastic blurring of the threshold between the world of the image and the real world. Immersive and interactive virtual environments have enabled the production of pictures that elicit in the perceiver a strong feeling of being incorporated in a new and autonomous world. In doing so, they negate themselves as “images-of-something”, as icons: they are veritable “an-icons”. This kind of picture undermines the mainstream representationalist paradigm of Western image theories: “presentification” rather than representation is at stake here. My paper will address this challenging iconoscape, arguing for the necessity of a specific methodological approach—namely, an-iconology. Full article

We often wonder if aesthetics cannot be considered to be a philosophy of representation since it concerns itself with reality splitting in the images of the imagination, and with the distinction between the contemplative gaze and the nature of aesthesis (perception with all the senses). For this reason, an attempt is made here to shed light upon the “neutral horizon” of beauty without excluding the living part of things and feelings. Our point of departure is the experience of art taking note of the creativity of the aesthetic response once we interpret the “death of art” in the modern world not as an actual end but as an opening up of a plethora of evocative, perceptual, and formative features. In light of the artworks of the last decades, non-narrative films, Environmental Art and Land Art, repetitive music, and deconstructionist architecture, we might well wonder what remains of art, beyond beauty, and what remains of beauty, beyond art. Only an image, perhaps? In addition, with respect to these epochal transformations, the concept of body has been transformed. It is no longer a container; it has become liquefied and has become an attitude. What emerges is either anguish or enthusiasm in the face of these changes, depending on one’s point of view. Full article

The contribution deals with the elaboration of a digital methodology to be applied on 20th century buildings in Brazil and India as toolkit for their conservation and enhancement. The research has gone through a careful planning and guided process able to integrate all information related to the geometry with details concerning materials, phases of realization, technical characteristics, and environmental. The undertaken research path has shown that the application of technologies used through appropriate methodologies can be an effective approach for the preservation and enhancement of 20th century architectures in “global south countries” and for the transmission of this heritage to future generations all over the world. Full article

The playful experience described by this contribution has been developed through a suvey/drawing path that emphasized the young students need for direct contact with shapes and materials. The activities carried out concerned two kinds of objects, chairs designed by Gerrit Rietveld (Berlin and Red-Blue) and toys of the company Sevi. The objects have been surveyed and studied through a playful act to reach its formal and conceptual metamorphosis that produced new inventive actions. The ludus experience enabled the development of analytical and experimental actions, taking advantage of the spirit of social adaptation and creative language of the students. Full article

The evolution of the descriptive codes (overlooking writing, as it is worth a dedicated dissertation, while paying particular attention to images) presents a very complex situation, which is essentially due to images’ productive hypertrophy, with all the consequences resulting from it, and first of all the need for proper reading codes. However, the return to a two-dimensional world ensures that the evocative power of images (together with its transcendence and the faith in that intrinsic artistic value) gives way to a descriptive and immanent continuum, which deprives image of its artistic potential, rather classifying it as mere technological product. Full article

Two hundred years after Tommaso Minardi (pupil of Antonio Canova) was appointed director, the Accademia di Belle Arti “Pietro Vannucci” of Perugia (Academy of Fine Arts), in synergy with the Università degli Studi of Perugia, once again had a fundamental role in the creation process of the Umbria brand concept. A concept that once again was the result of a true cultural project, whereby, just as the image of a “green and medieval” Umbria was reinforced by the evocative charge of painting, the image of a more “authentically contemporary” Umbria will be powered by the connotative charge of design. Full article

This paper collects a number of reflections on the use of illustrated books during the first months of life. Reading pictures is a unique experience for each individual, through which early opportunities for social and cultural development are created. It sheds light on a child’s level of development; on what a very small person can do on their own; on the correct tools to assess a child’s type of attention compared to an adult’s; about what happens when a newborn and an adult place a book which is new to both of them at the center of their relationship. The rush to find words in a book ignores its multidimensionality. Nascent readers, with their scrupulous and multifaceted method of living the reading experience, teach themselves and those who comprehend them how a concept emerges and takes form. Full article

The ever-increasing presence in Italian school of Italian L2 children is an established reality. Language learning is a priority: it is the gateway to all school subjects and “social life” in the new country. Unfortunately, language learning has its own times, which often collide with schooling. Consequently, while a child is learning a language, he/she is excluded from many other subjects, especially scientific, thus accumulating gaps. The mathematical operations visual dictionary takes traditional language access tools (visual dictionaries) and verge them for mathematical concepts, implementing traditional illustration with the interactive media declined through the principle of understanding by doing. Full article

Today metaliterature encompasses the picture book but there are not specifics studies about it. This paper explores picture-book publishing in Italy and analyses the work by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston A Child of Books (2016), recipient of the 2017 Bologna Ragazzi Award. This picture book epitomises the aesthetic and literary features of the various types of picture book. Metaphorically speaking, the book’s multi-layering recalls the bildungsroman as well as the distinction between imagination and the creative power of invention. The iconic code accompanies readers on their journey into the imagination that is at the heart of the reading process. The use of the calligram is both an integral part of the picture and a metatext referring to a multiplicity of other literary works sometimes only touched upon. The paper explains that the best metaliterary pictures enable readers to access the polysemous world evoked by pictures and images while also nurturing the spirit and assisting in the formation of the self. Although their intended audience is children, who are shown how pictures and images are able to generate new thoughts, these books also address adult educators, inviting them to think critically about reading and develop new educational paths to help future readers to grow. Full article

In the very last years of the contemporary age, we are observing various processes that interest the field of design, particularly for what concerns product design, graphics and communication, and their development in relation to the historical matter. In such a situation, this impacts on the contemporary western society and on current trends in customs and tastes. However, it is actually not so incomprehensible, neither is a behaviour completely new. The meaning of a family air, the quid that adds a personal and significant value to an object and to a product is somehow indefinable but links the consumer, and maybe more the ‘prosumer’, strongly to itself, in a cross-process of personal and historical construction of narrative. In some artefacts history meets and talks to the stories: this is why we do love them. Full article

Today the teaching of drawing is required to following a framework in fast and continuing development that requires both speed and flexibility to adapt contents and organization. The new aesthetic values in the representation of the project come with the need to develop new techniques consistent with digital tools. This paper aims to present a recent experience that was conducted at Scuola del design of Politecnico di Milano with students of the first year of the course “Strumenti e Metodi del progetto” of the Degree program in Design degli Interni, developed from a short workshop with a group of Chinese students and focused on representing the image of the city. The workshop provides the opportunity to familiarize with editing-photo software. The students experimented with digital collage as a graphical technique consistent with the fragmentation, which in some cases is contradictory, of urban imagery, in order to develop three-dimensional expression forms, a booth, to be inserted into the real city (The work of the students was designed, coordinated and monitored by Sara Conte, teaching assistant and tutor of the course “Strumenti e metodi del progetto”). Full article

The present study aims to expand knowledge about emotions by studying their intensity and duration in young adults. We showed two different videos in two different days to a total of 103 first-year students from university of Catania. Through these videos, we tried to elicit medium intensity emotion to emulate everyday situations: watching television news or short internet video, seeing advertisement of humanitarian associations to sensitise people. The aim was to see if the videos could influence the emotional state of the students for two hours. Full article

Our paper presents the preliminary results of a study aimed at building a new creativity assessment tool, suitable also for younger children (3/4 years old), who do not master enough language and design to respond to the classical tests used to evaluate this competence. The first results are encouraging, both for the collaboration and interest of children for the test, and for correlations with a classical evaluation tool used too (a task of the Torrance’ TTCT). The discussion of results considers in particular the relationship between cognitive skills (representation) and individual response strategies. Full article

The essay explores some aspects of visual narration, an important topic in the human sciences and very used especially in some areas of work. At first, the paper explore some epistemological references related to visual narration and, particularly, to geographic maps and cartography finalized to reflect about personal e professional identity in care and education fields. Later, the essay delves into some practical applications about the construction of professional identities geographic map and the context of care and educational operators’ training. Full article

In my work montage takes on great importance because it is an operative tool, the medium, through which to interpret my personal archive, constructing the annotations that form an interpretative Atlas of the real. Montage is the ordering principle that helps me to construct annotations. These annotations have to be hospitable, they have to encourage viewing and establish a relationship with the observer. It is important to establish a visual dialogue between the space one wants to represent, the idea that attempts to give it form and the context one tries to construct as the background. An ability to recreate a measurable space, a precise geometric structure, must be demonstrated. Which does not shape but structures the space. I see montage as a principle of order, rather than just a technique of assembly. Montage is the perfect tool to produce architectural ideas. Full article

The article offers some reflections on the body-space relationship through images, graphic translations and visual studies that converge into a contemporary digital illuminated avant-garde of the fourth virtual dimension. Starting from the study of the Soviet coreutics of the 1920s and the biomechanics of multimedia performances, it moves on the cinesthetic suggestions and to the dance theorization integrated with the musical score. Finally, some contemporary forms of digital image production are taken into account by addressing a number of issues regarding the exploration of the object-image and its experiential re-elaboration through the production of new graphic knowledge. Full article

Over the twentieth century, visual anthropology and visual sociology defined a way of conducting research which placed the supremacy of the written text as the only scientifically recognised form for collecting and processing empirical data in crisis, affirming the legitimacy of research into visual repertories (photographs, films, videos) deemed as “significant data” in the socio-anthropological field. We must ask why “visual pedagogy” has not developed in the same way, taking on the importance of the “educational act” as a specific object of representations. In the field of pedagogy, the visual dimension has remained substantially linked to teaching devices, with only a subsidiary function aiming to improve teaching and learning processes. This essay aims to introduce and define Visual Pedagogy as a field of study and research with images and on images which represent educational events, demonstrating their specificity and scientific consistency. Full article

Utopia is a place that does not exist; utopia is a non-existent model society in a non-existent model space. Utopia is an image. According to the definition given by Michel Foucault, hétéropies, unlike utopias, are places that actually exist. Heterotopies are at the same time non-physical and real and physical spaces. In the modern Western world, characterised by multiculturalism and by an increasing number of coerced migrations, is it possible to create tangible utopias (that is heterotopies) places where the foreigner can be welcomed thanks to the reclamation of abandoned areas? One tool for facilitating such a process could be participatory planning based with a visual/image basis. Full article

Through the drawing’s disciplinary, the paper investigates the images attached in the Narrazione delle solenni Reali Feste ... held in Naples (1749) and returns, through ‘other’ images (here for the first time composed) a tour of real space, referring the architectural and urban spaces where took place the festivities to a synthesis table which shows the time program. Also; starting with the textual description and with the drawing in plant and section; and by a conversion in meters of the dimensions indicated in Neapolitan palms; the modeling and subsequent visualization of the pyrotechnic machine is returned. Then it was contextualized in Largo di Castello. Full article

The project “topography of Dante’s inferno” is an experiment on alternative mode of access to a complex text relying on an evident topographical structure. The artifact (a website) is designed with the aim of introducing young students (11–14 years old) to a text usually read and studied by older students (16–19 years old). The design of the artifact was based on the theories of Sinsemía applied to interaction design, and the testing focused on (1) usability and (2) on the understanding of the topography of the poem as a precondition for understanding the text. Full article

The present study investigates autobiographical memory through the use of imagery and a short narrative. A sample of 72 young adults, residing in Italy, were asked to draw a meaningful memory (and to choose a title for it) about their infancy, childhood, pre-adolescence and adolescence. Through the use of special markers, a qualitative-quantitative analysis of the drawings was carried out. The results made it possible to highlight the different elements that gave shape to the Self in a particular period, leaving traces in memory: specific social references, emotions and moods, places, actions, achievements and personal objects. Full article

Results from the study ‘nature’s significance for human well-being’, shows that “The Rug of Life” gives additional value to the narratives. The method is qualitative with in-depth interviews combined with visual methodology of sixteen respondents between ages 25–76, who are living close to nature. In the interview it was asked what kind of nature has a meaning for them and how they estimate their well-being and nature’s impact on it and how quality of life are experienced, as well as nature’s and the local rural environment’s significance as a health promoting factor. The study has a salutogenic approach. Full article

The contribution intends to examine the relationships between the image of the city and its spatial context, real or virtual, through the analysis of Pietro Chiesa’s artistic windows (1892–1948). In its production, the size of the inhabited space, emphasized by small architectural details or elaborate prospective games accentuated by profound chromaticities, is therefore a crucial factor. The windows then allowed the artist to work with the light and with the changing colour effects which it was able to create, depending on the transparency, the changing atmospheres, as well as new sensations and moods. The urban space and the constructions then become the subjects of a new narration portrayed by Pietro Chiesa in an ever-heterogeneous way without using an univocal interpretation, never in controversy with History, projected rather, towards the innovations of the artistic-literary avant-gardes. Full article

In the field of children’s literature, wordless picture books, or silent books, are visual narrations offering readers the chance to experiment new ways of reading images and using words. They represent precious contexts for negotiation and co-construction of meaning; not requiring translation, they travel beyond editorial borders, creating a collective discourse telling of the world through pictures: privileged poetic themes are wonder, the discovery of pictures of art and other languages, metamorphosis, the amazement triggered by the critical capacity of projects that draw attention, in silence, to both details and “big picture” as a whole. Full article

Images are a core element in the teaching of the history of graphic design, but the way they are used and often de-contextualized in publications and classroom presentations can alter the perception of graphic artefacts, which instead of being seen as examples from a specific historical context are transformed into undisputed icons from an ideal gallery of masterpieces. How is it possible to—at least partly—overcome these limits? An educational approach developed by the author since 2012 in her teaching at ISIA Urbino (Italy) proposes some viable solutions. Individual image analysis, comparisons and connections to other images, and the development of collective timelines are some of the tools used to help the students develop a critical attitude towards the contemporary and historical artefacts they observe. Full article

The problem of the “deferred” completion of the façade in the ancient architecture must be considered as a true reconstruction that establish a special relationship between pre-existence and the new addition. Several churches can be reinterpreted using some of the original drawings in order to evaluate language choices made by architects of the past. This is the case of the San Lorenzo church in Montedinove (Ascoli Piceno). The completion of its main front never started, so, through video-projection is possible realize a virtual fulfillment, in order to restore and amplify the cultural, historical and symbolic values of the ancient architecture. single paragraph of about 100 words to give a brief introduction to your work Full article

This essay wants to underline the importance of images as a tool to access traumatic memories of refugees. The authors propose a narrative technique (post-traumatic intervention model) using the power of images and their potentialities. Arrivals’ images facilitate the chance to recall, narrate, accept, understand and hold complex and painful stories: they have the extraordinary ability to organize difficult events by placing them in space and time, giving the opportunity to “speak the unspeakable”. Full article

Among the tools available to designers to illustrate their thoughts, the most meaningful is axonometry. As testified by its use throughout art history, axonometry was by far preferred for technical explanations, as a three-dimensional proof of functioning and buildability. The relation between axonometric drawings and design thinking is so strong that the former has become the epitome of the latter. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key factors underlying this relation and the reasons why axonometry embodies the project aesthetics. After a brief overview of its history, the practical, scientific and visionary features of axonometry will be outlined. Full article

From the early 1990s Parco dei Tigli, a psychiatric care home, has been running an art therapy atelier where hundreds of residents have been able to express themselves through drawing and dialogue, both with themselves and with others, occasionally for the very first time and using the image as a tool. Looking at the idea of an archive’s profanation rather than its institutionalization, the project we are proposing here is to re-classify a collection of over 25,000 images; to create a new collection which, in its rejection of a unique order and through a continual reorganization, will thus regain its reason for being. Full article

This paper is the premise to an activity of research that it’s no started yet; the research aims to investigate the production of the exiled by the nazi-fascism that attended one another, or have collaborated each other in the United States like they were used to do in Europe. The research aims to trace a cultural history of transits and weaves, such as telling the manner, content, and configuration, in the American society, of “bubbles” or “wrinkles”; in other words of intellectual spaces in which research projects, artistic experimentation and teaching were conducted; all activities that originated in the old Europe and which, after the forced exile, found the place and the ways to continue, through paths that were certainly influenced by the cultural and social context of the new world; a world composed by a multitude of different backgrounds, where the idea of unity and social justice, such as the fruitful and peaceful coexistence of diversity, remains an open discussion topic with uncertain solutions. Full article

This paper shows the most outstanding clues of the last iconic revolution on the Internet. The quantity and the quickness of image re-production on the digital net is amazing but the web is far more important as a communication arena and as an opportunity to show up authors’ and amateurs’ works. The web allows everybody to approach the world through its digital copy and to upload, download or modify iconic contents. So during a potential never-ending process the image can have multiple, sometimes unknown, authors. The web-people can find on the web opportunities to create a new digital citizenship and to gather around a parallel word of icons which can have a prospective endless life as traces on the net. Full article

For understanding some basis concepts of intercultural education, teachers and educators can use with good results the picturebooks on intercultural themes. They allow shared reading of the stories and vision and commentary of the images. The picturebooks with intercultural contents are a novelty in the last years in publishing; so they are an innovative possibility for intercultural education. In this paper some picturebooks will be examined in order to introduce themes of intercultural education in secondary and primary schools. Reading texts and the images suitable for students of different ages can initiate educational dialogues and inner reflections in the students. Full article

My contribution explores how design impacts visual communication. Building on my professional background as a photographic journalist, I contextualise my practice to assess the ontological shift from the photograph to the Meta-Image. I conclude by recommending for visual journalism a framework of theoretical research and digital multi-strand engagement, which is visually embedding, multimedia and multi-layered. Its digital format and media platform is what I call the Meta-Image. Full article

This paper describes a research-intervention path that aims to deal explicitly and consciously with the topic of disability in the classroom, providing children with honest images of disabilities in order to stimulate their awareness, understanding and acceptance. The project, realized by Primary Education Degree students in some Aosta Valley schools, was based on the use of picture books as an educational mediator in which images and text merge together to tell a story, thus becoming a tool used to deal with complex and delicate subjects that characterize the reality in which every child lives, including that of disability. Full article

What kind of images are data visualizations? Are they mere abstract transformations of numerical data? Should they reduce the phenomenal world into a set of pre-codified shapes? Or can they represent natural phenomena through figurative strategies? What is the boundary between useless decoration, narrative illustration and helpful visual metaphors? Through post-design reflections on a visual journalism project, the paper focuses on the context-dependent role of images in data visualization. Full article

The project VISOSMappING comes from a collaboration based on the sharing of different academic knowledges and is aimed at the development of an educational digital platform dedicated to sustainability, understood broadly: from the traditional meaning about the environmental notion to a transversal educational approach where “sustainability” becomes the imprint of all forms of men’s relationship with oneself, others, and with ideas, things, and events. For this aim, the educational app VISOSMappING, a working progress platform, has been conceived to allow virtually the memory and places of consumption that have taken place since the beginnings of the affluent society in Italy up to date. Full article

The allegorical-narrative dimension theorized in “Architecture” of Antonio Averlino contains a lot of research ideas to examine, from the point of view of representation, the way of communicating the configuration of an ideal city. In the work, philosophical dissertations and technical aspects intersect in a narrative path marked by images. The objective of the work is to retrace the work by analyzing it through the drawing with three-dimensional study models that allow to explore, in the digital dimension, the places and architectures imagined by the author, his narrative and design paths underlying utopian visions and presumable reality, thus orienting the inventive to other possible images communicated with interactive representations. Full article

In January 1943, Domus presented in its typical solutions series Carlo Mollino’s bedroom for a farmhouse in the rice fields (camera da letto per una cascina in risaia). This bedroom designed for publication in a magazine, was entirely imagined, and in part materialized, by and for its author. Published during World War II, this highly personal project, centered around the person in the bed, can be seen as an act of escapism. This paper identifies the project as a work of autobiography, and explores this notion through a close reading of its architectural representational media: text, photography and drawing. Full article

In the last few years, the growth of Social Media has changed significantly the way in which information and ideas of any kind are made, spent and reported. As a result, information has gradually shifted from “official” sources (online newspapers, institutional websites, etc.) to user-generated-content (UGG). This research arises from these premises: UGGs offer an interesting opportunity for a multidisciplinary analysis. The authors investigate Facebook conversations and status from the linguistic point of view, to know possible educational implications, starting from data visualization process. Our case study are seven years of conversations of the largest and longest running Italian Facebook group named “ROARS”. Full article

The knowledge about the Italian historical and architectural heritage is essential to appreciate it, especially in the small realities, where it is often seen without the due attention. The research in cultural heritage’s field is taking the first steps towards new codes of digital communication and heritage’s fruition. The experimentation has the aim of reconsider a jewel like building in La Spezia city and it is based on architectural and detail survey, digital modelling and representation for an application in the field of 3D printing and Augmented Reality for Cultural Heritage. Full article

The research is focused on the study of the photographic image of the survey applied to the theme of castles, in order to highlight the structural beauty of cave architecture. The image, in addition to representing a database that can be drawn at a later stage, is an interpolation tool between the static figurative data and the dynamic data elements. For the site’s knowledge activities, Ryobi laser instrumentation was used on portable computer support, which allows immediate visualization of the important figure on the photographic image, transforming the latter into a dynamic one. Full article

This essay takes a practical viewpoint—that of a graphic designer, a creator of visual messages that assembles text and images in a single product—and examines case studies in which the type becomes an image using different methods depending on the context in which it is employed. The historical considerations are an opportunity to highlight how every graphic designer is required to develop their own personal approach to the text/image relationship, which is necessarily influenced by the period and the technologies used but also defined by their own personal creativity and graphical style, by their specific skills and expertise, as well as by the goals of the message. Full article

Despite the widespread use of electronic devices for activities strictly connected to writing, several studies have proved the importance of developing handwriting, using paper and pen. One study conducted by Cutler and Graham demonstrated that the development of handwriting is so important that it may impact the academic success of a child. Moreover, different studies conducted by Graham have underlined that it is very important to give children clear and correct rules about handwriting from their early developmental stages. Effective handwriting instruction does not require a large amount of time. To see considerable returns, it is enough to spend just a few minutes every day teaching handwriting. To develop this skill, teachers need to feel prepared. The paper will propose a short excursus of suggestions dealing with how handwriting could be enhanced, underlining the importance of developing this skill from the first years of schooling as a tool aimed at preventing other possible future difficulties in the development of the person. Full article

The main objective of this research is to experiment; through methods of infographic representation, the informational complexity concerning the abandonment phenomenon of small centers in Abruzzo. For years, Abruzzo’s interior areas have been involved in a slow and unstoppable depopulation phenomenon that has undergone a violent acceleration since the earthquake of 2009. We feel the urgent need to document this important heritage since we recognize to it the fundamental task of defending local identity. The infographic representation of small centers allows us to highlight characteristics and stories of these places remained on the periphery of the transformations imposed by modernity. Full article

Mental imagery is a familiar aspect of most individuals’ mental lives, considered as an experience which occurs in the absence of actual stirrings for relevant perceptions. The primary importance of mental imagery has been demonstrated in several domains: learning and memory, reasoning and problem solving, inventive or creative thought and rehab. The project primarily refers to the analysis of infant visual impairment for a first scientific and social approach, with specific references to significant figures who have worked on these issues for years. Research is enriched by the contribution of educators working with children with these diseases. Thus, the proposal of a freehand illustrated tactile book, originally conceived for sighted and then reworked for blind and visually impaired, through the humanization of fantastic creatures designed to facilitate imaginative faculties, allowing the child to project his to an inanimate model. Full article

This paper examines the pedagogical legacy of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898–1944), an avant-garde artist and progressive art teacher of the interwar period. As a collaborative effort, it promotes an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis and interpretation of Friedl’s teaching method, combining art history with education (Reform Pedagogy) and study into resilience (social pedagogy and developmental psychology). While incarcerated in the Terezín ghetto (1942–1944), Friedl organized children’s art classes within which she used an experimental method based on her own schooling experience in Vienna and at the State Bauhaus in Weimar. Offering her students a perfect outlet for processing their traumatic experience by the means of creativity and self-expression, she became a perfect example of what would today be described as a resilience tutor. A group of collages and drawings will be shown and analyzed. Full article

In the Buy One Give One (B1G1) business model, social enterprise companies respond to humanitarian causes by linking consumers to recipients through the commodification of a shared product experience. Ponte and Richey deem these interfaces “new imaginaries”, with consumption elevated as the mechanism for humanitarian action. Using a case comparison of two B1G1 companies, I argue that the visual story-telling of B1G1 marketing materials constructs a “humanitarian imaginary” that shapes how consumers understand engagement. Using visual analysis, I consider the opportunities and ethical limits of building solidarity through social marketing. Full article

This paper is proposed to investigate procedures which can deal with graphic formalize of numeric data relating to climatic and environmental conditions. In a scientific domain characterised by prevalence of mathematical models and statistical surveys, the possibility of making images as such becomes an additional tool for morphological research of architectural solutions influenced by environmental conditions. This methodology, along with new augmented reality technology, actually, promotes new way of dealing with the project immediately highlighting defects and weaknesses: as architectural pre-visualization has always been the architect’s domain, today, pre-visualization of environmental data becomes a useful tool for design. Full article

Aim of the paper is the study of how architectural representation changed in the digital age, focusing the relationship between the two following opposing aspects: on one hand the idea of progressive loss of any referentiality with the real world—as suggested by the concept of “Hypereality” defined by Baudrillard at the end of the Seventies, i.e., a simulated reality more real of reality; on the other hand computer-based visualization as tool for measurement, interpretation and understanding of the world. Through a reading of “The measure of the World” by Daniel Kehlmann and—in parallel—the telling of the laboratory educational work made in the Architectural Drawing Couse at L’Aquila University, the paper presents an experience that puts together the lines of “New Realism” and “Digital Videocultures”, aiming at a revaluation of perception and architectural representation, as antidote to bulimic cannibalism of digital images, and as critical tool to analyze , interpret and undergo them to a validation/falsification process. Full article

The research explores some peculiar aspects of the study of the Abruzzo cartography from the middle of the sixteenth century up to the nineteenth century. In particular, it is analyzed the geographical language on one hand, and the illustrative apparatus with the graphic techniques that enclose apparently hidden but extraordinary meanings on the other. The study moves between a conscious territorial representation and a careful reading of the unconventional codes that, through Olao Magno’s Carta Marina, a 1539 emblematic illustration depicting the Nordic territories bathed by a imaginary creatures populated sea, that allow a double reading dense with objective meanings and a series of metaphors of fictional and surreal impact. Full article

The didactic design applications offer application hints that allow for new composite solutions. With the practice of drawing, we can analyze solutions and strategies that may have attractive end product application outcomes. In the case under analysis, such solutions have as their purpose the reinterpretation of the works (which we call “primary subject”) “Red and Blue” and “Berlin Chair” by Gerrit Rietveld. The “reinterpretation” is made with the intention to break down and understand the specific characteristics of the two subjects, allowing the reinterpretation (metamorphic). This reinterpretation is guided by the common comparison keys identified by the analysis of evocative subjects (which we will call subordinate subjects), chosen specifically for the purpose of renewing the primary subject. Full article

This essay reflects on the intersection between architecture and photography, or better, between the architecture project and the photography project. The representation of architecture and the urban landscape is investigated through selected methods and trends that in recent years have characterized both the work of some photographers/artists and the design attitudes of those architects that for the birth of the architectural project use the photographic image for mediation. The cornerstone of the critical analysis is the manipulation of the image, techniques for doing so, and the applications and facets of sense and meaning that the desire for perceptual estrangement produces for the two goals: doing art or doing architecture. Full article

This paper presents a case study that analyzes how university apprenticeship experience—that Italian students of Education Sciences are asked to do during their Bachelor’s Degree program—can be conceived as learning path to help them become aware and (begin to) question taken-for-granted and culturally assimilated assumptions about professional practice, identity and the role of the educator. A particular attention is given to the methodological implications related to the adoption of the technique of metaphor analysis to support learners in recognizing the beliefs about their own profession and, eventually, changing them. Metaphor analysis was used both as a learning activity and a heuristic to guide processes of professional development. Metaphors were used to: (a) uncover tacit ways of making meaning, (b) name experiences, and (c) imagine new possibilities. We address, finally, the main images of role emerged from groups work to describe the representations of what the educator should do, who she/he is and which are the aims of her/his work. The savior, the scientist, the farmer, the sculptor, the good Samaritan, the militant, the transgressor are some of the delineated images that our participants analyzed to understand reasons and issues behind their own practices. Full article

For centuries, Neapolitan tailors—as many others—have been verbally transmitting their technical know-how to their younger apprentices, who were later to become masters themselves in an arguably uninterrupted cycle. My prime focus is to provide contemporary tailors with a method to pursue this goal, which is one compatible with modern tailoring production processes. Is it possible for an illustrated tailoring handbook to take care of the lack of time, that was once a necessary ingredient to the successful transmission of traditional Neapolitan tailoring rules? Manuale di Sartoria Kiton is the result of my thesis project, discussed at the end of my MA in Visual and Communication Design at IUAV University of Venice, in 2015. The thesis project is focused on Kiton tailoring company, based in Naples. During my internship at Kiton, I had the opportunity to document the company’s tailoring methods. According to my thesis, the images contained in a tailoring manual can be used as ideal mediums to turn intangible slow-training phases into tangible objects, virtually always available for future reference. The proposed handbook therefore carefully illustrates the Neapolitan bespoke jacket sewing process, with both technical and descriptive drawings. Thus, images serve as a communication tool and a visual aid for the masters and their apprentices, allowing to overcome even occasional language barriers. Full article

To grasp the elements that make up the museum today it is necessary to have a study approach that identifies the functions of the real museum and its major transformations in relation to the development of technology, with particular reference to digital environments. Starting from these assumptions, this elaboration intends to present the results of observatory research that has taken into consideration a sample of real museums in relation to digital technology. Defined in the common lexicon of museums on the web, those museums that have recently renewed their websites with the aim of getting closer to the their public on digital media are analyzed in the national and International context. Full article

In the context of the media, in which industrial means of communication (cinema, TV, telephony, informatics) converge and integrate various visual languages and stimulate the interconnection of different communicational models, audiovisual technical factors that seem marginal are actually capable of conditioning the perception and sense of the image. In particular, those that characterize it as artificial are combined to heighten the quality of the image, just as those that denote it as authentic and real contain the imperfections of an “amateur” image. In this framework, the article aims to investigate how these technical formats, in various communicational devices, perceptual qualities, paradigms, and forms of visual design, are transformed to guide the perception of fiction and reality. Full article

The research in question proposes analyzing cross-methodologies related to the phenomenon of the current adherence and dissemination of the new VR tools in architectural design through an in-depth study on topics such as the rather fluid learning curve of software, the level of emotional narrative adherence on an optimal calibration of digital media, but above all regarding issues related to the intensive use of such tools such as lack of collective testing or possible isolation from the real world. In the case study are confronted the multilevel fruitions of a VR environment on Uneral Engine with Oculus Rift Viewer and on an experimental EyeCad VR platform, a specific solution for architects, documenting how the reconfigured space combines multiple stages of investigation until a vision of objective synthesis, representing, with all its limitations and paradoxes, a powerful and versatile media of constantly evolving expression. Full article

The reflections set out in the following pages offer a possible answer to the question “what do images do?” in relation to the remit of architecture and the field of restoring architectural heritage. We shall consider the ways in which the perception of images for certain installations, as also their contents, created for exhibitions in two Austro-Hungarian fortresses, may influence the actions of the observer at several levels. We shall set out to describe how such results can depend on various factors: the material props and mapping techniques, the greater or lesser recognisability of the object represented, the type of transposition for 3D reality to 2D representation and the relations between transmission techniques and degrees of comprehension. Full article

The paper concerns a study developed on the largest enclosed park in Europe, in the town of Monza, perceived and returned in a series of icon-maps through the use of social twitter and instagram in a specific time frame. The aim is to investigate the contribution provided by social data through mobile phone network considered as a tool to describe a temporary event, and to describe the shape of a town that does not physically exist but can be drowned always in a different way depending on several variable data. Full article

Research is related to the complex field of the social communication to childhood, deepening some theoretical aspects related to the theme of verb-visual language. In particular, it is aimed to point out the importance of “narrative” expression, to be developed also through a rhetoric of text and image, and the need for an explicit finalization of the message thus its motivations. The essay synthesizes part of the results of a wider research that addresses the subject of childhood communication in terms of content, visual language, and textual language. The aim is to help outline a methodological disciplinary proposal for transferring accessible, unambiguous, non-deceptive, informative and educational messages to children around social, cultural, health issues, etc. With respect to these issues, the essay summarizes some reflections and exemplifications from projects led by me in collaboration with some health facilities of the Ligurian Territory and with National Institutions of Social Promotion on issues of health information. Full article

The challenge of contemporary museums is to make content accessible to a wider audience; in this way information related to the good becomes more communicative and usable in order to enhance its uniqueness. Accessibility goes through an innovative communication of content: the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that are increasingly part of people’s daily lives. Communication in most cases occurs visually, so ICTs are increasingly focusing on a rethinking of this expressive form; images become a better support for high-quality data transfer. Full article

In the world of images it is interesting to examine the relationship existing between the visual dimension of a thought and its material transposition. The efficacy with which images are used in various fields of knowledge is an incentive to investigate the theoretical-practical and operational processes for the construction of visual models as also the organising mechanisms and the methods for the visual communication of images and a means of understanding their make-up and causal valence. Therefore, here we wish to set out to identify and outline an operational set of indications useful for such a constructive approach and as a first step towards this objective we shall address the image’s figurative aspect. Full article

The Fiera del Mediterraneo Exhibition Centre of Palermo, in its original layout realized in 1946, is an interesting laboratory of visually striking ephemeral architecture and apparatuses. The whole fairgrounds lends itself to an analysis focusing on its dual image: one, “external”, because urban, territorial, Mediterranean, and another, “internal”, unfolding amidst the boulevards, the pavilions and the exhibits on display. For both images, there is a communicative project rightfully belonging to the period of the “Italian Metamorphosis” (1945/1968), the years in which Italian culture was invested by a renewed renaissance, even in the so-called minor arts such as graphics and visual communication. Full article

This paper is part of the disciplinary framework of drawing. The forms of symbolic representation of Naples are explored, with particular attention being given to the construction of the visual image on an urban scale. The theme of the image represented here lies in the risks of the uncritical use of the image and, above all, of technological innovation when it only affects visual communication operations through the vacant mediatic use of the architectural envelope. The consideration between the aim of the image content and the risk of its (as well as the structure’s) spectacularization is the ethical goal of this paper. Firstly, the experiences of street art recently carried out in cities, which, renewed in the aesthetic language, have produced significant images aimed at the recovery of abandoned buildings and/or the socio-cultural renewal of degraded suburbs) are discussed. Secondly, the two project proposals in the field of graphic design, aimed at regenerating the historical and/or social roles of specific urban contexts and building visual images capable of building identity and belonging to the community are also described. Full article

“Dynamic projection mapping” is a variation of the best-known “projection mapping”. It considers the perceptual analysis of the urban landscape in which the video projection and the observer’s displacement speed are hypothesized. This latter, in particular, is variable and may depend on factors not directly controllable by the driver (slowdowns due to accidents, rallies, etc.). This speed can be supported and controlled by a number of traffic flow measurement systems. These data are available on the internet, like Google Maps APIs and/or speed sensors located close to the point of interest. The content of projection becomes dynamic and varies according to how the observer perceives the vehicle: slow, medium, fast. Full article

The European cultural context, where the series Le Cento Città d’Italia—Supplemento mensile illustrato del Secolo (Milan, Sonzogno 1887–1902) can be situated, has been characterized by a great diffusion of publications based on illustrated issues. This series, which led readers to ‘literary’ and ‘visually’ “visit the most important (for history, art and architecture) Italian cities”, provides interesting views and sketches of the post-unification Italy. Relying on this amount of unstudied information offered by Le Cento Città, and taking in account other similar project, this paper aims to describe the issues and the very first outcomes of our work of designing an Territorial Information System (SIT) that will allow a textual, graphical and crossed ‘navigation’ through these sources. Open to new contributions, the SIT will level up the experience of interconnecting texts and images with georeferenced maps and database. Full article

This paper describes how advanced computational technologies and strategies are changing the way in which architecture and interior design are conceived and realized by designers. The classical drawing-based approach that relies on the connection between the human brain and the hand, through the use of analog devices as a pencil is called into question by new ways based on algorithms and evolutive systems that shift the complexity of both processes and outcomes. Further, those new methods have also an impact in terms of architectural representation and imagine-making: design processes that are affected by physical variables such as time or gravity cannot be properly represented by standard techniques. The final consequence is the birth of a design and representation language that is based on a new alphabet that deny the use of the hand as primary tool to shape unique ideas. Full article

The international scientific literature increasingly highlights the theoretical and applicative differences between research with/on adults and research with/on children and videos, photographs and drawings are highly recommended. When a researcher chooses to use images during his/her research process, there are several ontological and epistemological problems. This paper presents some critical reflections about the use of photographs in a pedagogical and intercultural research with children, trying to focus on the potentials and limitations of this technique. A methodological instrument could also become a facilitator of intercultural education when, observing the same images, children could express different and similar perspectives. Full article

This contribution is part of a borderline field between different disciplines, such as: pedagogy, psychology and arts. From the identification of the quality of the educational relationship and of the emotional-relational competence of teachers as variables determining the quality of the teaching-learning processes, the characteristic dimensions and the needs for specific training are highlighted. These dimensions, which concern the sphere of the “being” rather than that of skills and knowledge, are still underestimated and not properly valued within “traditional” training paths. The article seeks to offer a reflection in this direction and some information about the development of an “original” training device, based on reflexive and narrative modes but integrated with methodologies that can also enhance personal and implicit personal dimensions, aimed at change of dysfunctional attitudes. Full article

This paper analyses the choices of English learners describing the opening scene of Mayer’s (1969) Frog, where are you? which depicts a frog escaping from a jar. A number of results were later tested using drawings that portray a person climbing. Speaking multiple languages might allow adjustment to ways of thinking, when formulating utterances and pointing to different details when describing pictures (Thinking for Speaking Hypothesis, Slobin 1996). The present paper contends that fewer contexts evoke mental images of climbing for speakers of Italian and Ladin who are learning English than for German-speaking English-learners, due to different cross-linguistic influences. Full article

The old concept of eidos summed up those of “form” and “image” of an object; this is the subject covered here, supporting a realistic theory of conception and design, as opposed to the anti-realism of the postmodern age and its media conception of “image”. Nowadays it is believed that some ways of conceiving the form and image of the artefacts—according to the current tendency towards naturalisation in social science, which has followed the converging technological and scientific progress of the third industrial revolution—derive from particular morphogenetic (ontogenetic and phylogenetic) models developed in natural science. From this point of view, the subject of “natural images” has become a central issue, which can be interpreted in two considerably different meanings: (1) as perceptual characteristics of natural environments; (2) as a format of visions. The issue of “natural images” (by incorporating the meanings 1–2) is a morphological matter, which is highly relevant to both the natural (cognitive) and cultural (anthropologic) points of view in visual studies and theory of images. In other words, the topic allows some remarks on the ways the concepts of “form” and “image” equally concern Naturalia and Artificialia. This difference measures the complexity of the issue that we exemplify only in the case of cellular automata, but with a particular focus on the simultaneous new emerging meanings of the term “image”. The different specific meanings of “image” articulate the themes of the essay: from the image interpreted as shape, eidos and Bild—i.e., as objective geometry (the shape of things)—to its definition in terms of Gestalt, i.e., as subjective geometry (format of perception). Full article

The aim of this contribution is to illustrate a methodology for the protection and management of the building heritage, adding to the historical documentary investigations, a careful phase of survey and a conscious geometric and informational modeling of the pre-existence. The focus of this work was the Tower of Vietri sul Mare: a significant example of the architectural defense strategies adopted in Salerno in the 16th century. In fact, through the creation of digital models, it would be facilitated the management of the volumetric evolution that this tower has undergone over time, ensuring a greater accessibility and an easier understanding of the transformations it has suffered. Full article

The paper discusses the importance and role of visual story telling skills in the field of non-designers education as an effective ideation and expressive medium. It presents the process and results of an experimental design workshop held as a warm up activity inside the Visual Design and Visual Communication and Interface Design classes at University of Milano-Bicocca since 2002. The Exercises de Style written by Queneau are the field of exploration of the intertextual translation from text to graphical representation using principles and rules of the visual language. Full article

The virtual experience of Geguti Palace will be presented in this paper in order to demonstrate how it’s possible to offer a deep understanding of a space from abroad by absorbing reality into a virtual environment. Starting from the digital documentation and 3D survey of this medieval royal palace, developed by the Department of Architecture of the University of Ferrara and the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, in collaboration with the National Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation of Georgia, the paper will stress the VR issue focusing on several hardware devices and software platforms for digital content management. This case study will contribute to the analysis of further exploitations of Virtual Experiences for the Cultural Heritage field. Full article

The importance of design aimed to the enhancement of the urban landscape, it is accredited by the eye-established preeminence in today’s culture. Image and form are essential elements of the perceptual process and they are closely linked to sight, the sense responsible for the reproduction and organization of the built. The education to vision, the interpretation of the transformations and awareness of the design process are the issues that schematize the purpose of the research, geared to restore the value of perceptual space. The processed data analysis parametrically becomes project ideas focused on the relation between the flows that characterize the relation with places and influenced by the dynamic exploration of the subject. Full article

Landscape is born when a place is felt, lived, suffered, owned, when it is perceived, in the etymological sense, for which it is taken what is conveyed by the vision with an aim (per-ceive). The underlying theory is related to its etymological link with vision (theoreo), in the eye investigative value that “measures and recognizes” the link between images and memory. In this article is analyzed the complex link between image and landscape experimenting innovative tools and analysis methodologies. Full article

In its archives, “Pietro Vannucci” Academy of Fine Arts has an imaginary Perugia consisting of drawings. The educational material, mostly unpublished, drawn up in the centuries by the students of the Schools of Architecture and Perspective regarding the Umbrian capital, depict views of a Calvinian city that does not exist. But at the same time they reveal an imaginary city that could have existed. Because they represent a series of interventions that radically transform their aspect from time to time, according to the cultural temperament of the execution period. These graphic exercises testify to the deep attention to the drawing experience intended as a tool of knowledge and prefiguration which took shape within the institution; their subject is a Perugia which serves as a scenario for a series of experiments aimed at determining its urban image. Full article

This paper investigates the potential of the creation of filmic travelogues in architectural design studio education. It looks at student works from a studio conducted at RWTH Aachen University in the summer term of 2017 and explores how the works construct meaning from and reflect on architectural reference in an active creative process. The assignment of the studio was to create a travelogue of a 4-day excursion to Belgium and the South of England in the form of a short film. Inspired by Patrick Keiller’s film Robinson in Space, the students were invited to explore the Situationist techniques of Drifting and Psychogeography, and to use them in their visual storytelling. The studio´s title A Survey of Utopia makes reference to the architectural and urbanistic projects that were visited: visionary residential projects from the 1960s to 1980s, built by well-known architects of this period, such as Lucien Kroll, Walter Segal and Leon Krier. The term utopia hints at the projects shared interest in radical change and bold new architectural approaches, even though each pursues its own distinct kind of utopia. Full article

“As soon as perspective ceased to be a technical and mathematical problem, it was bound to become all that much more of an artistic problem” (Panowsky, 1927). The solid perspectives of Bramante, Palladio-Scamozzi, Borromini and Bernini built a true architectural space, emphasizing its perceptual nature in relation to the ideal spectator. The research presents an application of “altimetric and planimetric restitution” of pictorial images to reconstruct spatiality through the realization of physical and digital models. From the perspective analysis of Arduino Cantafora's works, plans and elevation were drawn in order to build the physical model and visualize its formal qualities. Full article

Today architecture offers forms that once appeared utopian works by visionary artists and architects. At the same time, multidimensional and fluid architectures develop through cyberspace and allow impalpable but concrete architecture. There is a need to train the imagination to perceive the semantic universe of these new visions, using the fantastic design as a gym to represent, even before the architectural design, signs, choices, energies. The contribution aims to explore the grammatical mechanisms that govern fantasy inventiveness in architecture, using as a matter of analysis and experimentation, fantastic cartoon architectures. The hypothesis is that by decoding the inventive mechanisms of these fantasy architectures, starting with real elements and reassembling them in a fantastic way, it is possible to train the imagination to experience the potential of drawing to see beyond the existing and predetermined rules, entrusting the phase of rationalization later on. Full article

This paper proposes a summary of the results of an ongoing research on the Adriatic city of Pescara, specifically referring to its university district. The study seeks to investigate urban spaces, taking advantage of the representation made possible through mobile-photography, a mode of observation that is increasingly present in current orientations of the culture of the urban project. A way that reflects the will to adhere to the recent guidelines of the MiBACT that has recently decreed the States General for Photography, in order to “protect, enhance and promote” Italian photography as historical heritage and a contemporary language. Full article

As urbanites continue to experience a broadening emotional detachment with the evolving character and identity of the urban spaces in which they live, the time has come to stop and consider our emotional connection with the built environment. By re-evaluating the subjective methods once applied in the topographic surveys of photographers such as Eugine Atget we can gain a clearer understanding of our relationship with cities. The work of such artists involves us in the imaginary and invites us to assemble our own narrative context of the landscapes which they explore. This unutilised approach reveals the perceived narrative fabric of urban space and it provokes the viewer to place their own psychological and cultural associations onto images of urbanity. I will ascertain whether such methods can be used to express the emotional connection we have to our cities, and identify how these insights can inclusively impact upon design education and the development of new urban spaces. Full article

This article discusses how the shared reading of wordless picture books can contribute to the promotion of parental educational engagement by fostering shared visual reading practices. Prior research shows that wordless picture books contribute to making the reader feel in the story, and facilitate the process of empathy and participation. The content analysis of data collected during a reading project, which involves shared reading with children and their parents, reveals that child-parent shared reading of a visual narrative establishes intense interaction and collaboration, a deep emotional relationship and promotes and enhances the role of the family in an expanded learning community. Full article

One really extraordinary ability of the mind is its capacity to match objects and form plausible hypotheses from just a few elements that we see through our eyes. We recognize a feather even if it is mostly covered by a book sitting on top of it. Even if we cannot see the whole shape, we recognize it as pertaining to a category, a set of objects called “feathers”. If by imagination we mean the ability to represent things for ourselves that are not present in the act of sensing, we should realize that the hypothesis of the feather is an imaginative construction of the mind, a mental representation, a model referred to by the sensory input. Full article

This study focuses on an analysis of perceiving the infinite “solid images” derived from the projective transformations of space in a relief perspective, with particular reference to Renaissance theatre scenery. Today it is possible to simulate the projective transformations of the scenic space in a parametric environment, dynamically. This parameterization allows to analyze the effects of visual perception of the scene, through the dynamic control of its projective transformations. The main objective of this study is the exploration of the places of the projective transformation straddling reality and illusion, where the metamorphosis of the space triggers changeable processes of perception. changeable processes of perception. Full article

Literature for childhood, in its various expressions, is undoubtedly an important source of spatial and architectural education: children books indeed are rich in spatial references and frequently intercept the theme of dwelling. In 1970, Tison and Taylor, an architect and a professor of mathematics, created the popular Barbapapapa series, which is an extraordinary example of architectural pedagogy. This study aims to investigate the way architecture is explained and communicated through text and illustrations, considering in particular the following aspects: the role of pictures, the representation of space, the use of technical drawing and the transmission of a geometric content. Full article

The unusual edition of Elements of Euclid released for publishing in 1847 by Oliver Byrne offers the occasion to suggest a few elements for discussion on the uniqueness of the ‘representation’ of geometric-mathematical thinking—and more in general of the abstract thinking—enshrined in its ‘nature of a pure imaginative vision able to connect the intelligible with the tangible’. The purpose is, thus, a reasoning on images and communicative artefacts, that, when articulated, provide different variations of the idea of ‘transcription’ of complex theoretical structures from one language (that of abstract logic) to another (that of sensory experience), with a view to facilitate, ease and make more accurate the noetic process. Images able over time to facilitate the understanding of complex and abstract theoretical principles—since able to show them in an extremely concrete way, ad oculos,—and which at some points could reveal the horizons of art interpretation to inscrutable and figurative meaningless formulas. Full article

Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola played a significant role in the development of the theory and practice of prospective. The study presented here intends to highlight the theoretical contribution that the architect and painter has given to the history of perspective, through digital models that illustrate, clarify and allow to relate to each other—with the synthesis and effectiveness of the image—the main notions present in the treaty in order to trace, by comparing figures and texts, the scientific path that led to the formulation of the Two rules of practical perspective. Full article

This study extends a previous Goffmann’s work. He categorized gender stereotypes in advertising pictures in USA in the 1970s, in six main groups: relative size, feminine touch, function ranking, family, ritualization of subordination, licensed withdraw. This work is a tentative of a statistical measure of the prevalence of gender’s patterns in print advertisements, in Italy, in 2006. The Hypotheses: strongest gender’s stereotypes survive, some changed, others disappeared. The results show that main gender’s stereotypes are hard to die even though the society has significantly changed, creating “modern” stereotypes. The line between masculinity and femininity seems to be thinner today. Full article

Current generations have to keep up with the ever faster changing society, learning to be more flexible and adaptable, so that they can deal with its complexity. Children are a clear demonstration of the division between internal timings and methods and those originating from the environment in which they are immersed. Within this paradigm, the educational environment represents the ultimate ground in which to promote creative adaptation as a result of a complex interaction at the contact boundary between the interior and exterior world. Through the use of imaginative activity as learning tool, children may develop the awareness of their abilities, skills and qualities. It enables them to express all their fears and fantasies, thus decreasing stress levels. Full article

The following text is part of a doctoral research project entitled “Embodied Education through Art and Theatre. Experimentation of a multimodal interface”. Embodied Education includes the contributions of Embodied Cognition, that is, that area of psychological research that represents a “new paradigm” for psychology, shifting from the abstractness of classic cognitive psychology to physicality. “Art” and “Theatre”, visual and kinesic channels, are the aspects of physicality that Embodied Cognition addresses, based on the discovery of the so-called MNS, Mirror Neuron System. The case study is aimed at reconsidering methodology and on a theoretical-epistemological rethink regarding images. Full article

The paper demonstrate that “educating and telling” can be reinterpreted as “educating to telling”. With an inusual storyteller’s point of view, that of children of the Gualdo school we’ll discover the importance of the memory-drawing and of the photography to think about the sense of loss after a catastrophic event as an earthquake and to tell the meaning of places—that we name “genius loci”—throughout perceptions, memories, emotions that only children have. They were engaged in an assisted laboratory aim to identifying surrounding and community values, according to the European Landscape Convention. Encouraging the understanding of “genius loci” guarantees a responsible projection towards the future, starting from your own context, where historical memories are protect. Full article

The construction of digital images and the role of the CG Artist in communicating architectural projects establishes its origin in pictorial tradition and visual arts. The text focuses on some aspects of this cultural legacy and makes a comparison using biometric instruments, now able to validate and compare the sensibility of the “creator” artist with the perception of sublime of the observer. Understanding the foundations that guide vision and perception of space, whether it is bidimensional or real, is relevant to all disciplines, primarily the architectural one, for the production of computer images. Full article

Considering the relevance of images in the teaching and learning process, through four case studies we aimed to explore the actual use of photography in Primary School. Starting from the pedagogical reflections about the cases, the research intends to increase the educational research’s awareness about the use of photographic images in the classroom. Full article

Colour, imagination, inspiration, amazement. These four words very fittingly describe the work of the Viennese artist/architect Friedrich Stowasser, better known as Hundertwasser (meaning hundred water), a master of organic thinking who between 1928 and 2000 worked and lived in Vienna, Venice and New Zealand. He uses eye-catching images to convey his ideas, forcefully expressive chromatic forms and patterns that betray a strong link with a re-interpreted geometric structure. This contribution, inspired by Hundertwasser’s works, intends to study the unique relationship between creativity, imagination and architecture based on sociological, cultural and psychological principles. Full article

The proposed research moves from the concept of collaborative imagination—deconstructed on the basis of the theorization by M.L. Bianca, trying to intersect the way in which processes of space production have changed their paradigms in the last 25 years. This change of paradigm produces the needing for a broader look on tools and instruments for architects and policy planners. In the paper are presented two case-studies used to underline this mutations that is strongly related both to professional practice and educational praxis. Full article

During the Renaissance, low-relief sculpture addressed the concept of organizing pictures and scenes in narrative sequences, creating real visual objects that aim to transmit a message by constructing an illusory physical space that embraces and accompanies the emblematic episode being narrated. The article presents a procedure and the results of research centred on the work of the Annunciation by Andrea Sansovino placed on the west face of the Holy House in Loreto. The ultimate goal is to identify a means of visual communication capable of rendering geometrical/proportional systems, the underlying perspective structure, and the relationship between the time when the work is viewed and the time represented in the work by reconstructing the depicted space in three dimensions. Full article

How to help children (not) to hate books is a title inspired by an article written in the 1970’s by Pinin Carpi who sought to describe the state of publications for children in Italy back then. This paper aims at investigating the role played by Rosellina Archinto and Emme Edizioniin launching a whole new approach to picture books for children and the promotion of preschool reading in this country. Full article

The process of touristic exploitation of the Alps is strictly correlated to the collective imagination that have been constructed in the last two centuries. In this process images have been and are used for deconstructing the complexity of the Alpine environment (e.g., the orography) and for constructing the collective imagination. The article propose a selected overview of graphic modes developed specifically for the deconstruction of the complex alpine morphology, modes that led to some stereotyped images which are useful to understand the material transformation of the Alpine territory. Full article

The article aims to demonstrate the importance of the diagrammatic image as an essential element of the inferential process: a necessary tool for us to interpret and to communicate the intelligible. Accordingly, it will be discussed how diagrams privilege and display pertinences of the object they stand for, consequently affecting our interpretation and what we can fathom. As a fundamental graphic-sign for reasoning and discovery, the diagram will be described in accordance with a theoretical model, to provide the visual designer with a useful instrument to monitor and probe their designs. In this view it will also emerge how the designer’s work resembles that of the scientist, both with the intention to innovate models to describe an object. Full article

This paper intends to propose some reflections on an ongoing research-starting some years ago- at the Architecture and Design Department at the University of Genoa, by some professors of representation. The focus is identifiable in the concept of overriding the meaning of writing and representation: to interpret writing as a visual sign, and thus as an image, and, on the contrary, the image as a narration, without the help of words. The opportunity arose when the Graphics lab of the ‘degree in Design’ has been the subject of sharing for students of the Master of Science in Information and Publishing; this has led to the development of activities aimed at the training of those who mainly deal with texts, to direct and involve them in the acquisition of critical reading skill tools, without losing sight of the primary purpose of the original course. Full article

This paper provides a brief discussion of ideas taken from the history of Western thought on the topic of inventing the new. The aims of the Design Methods Movement of the 1960s are contraposed to an in-depth reading of concrete processes conducted in the context of practice-led iconic research. The distinction of imagination versus configuration leads to the second part of the paper, in which experimental arrangements are analyzed and their connection to a collective archive of images is established. In a third section, an artistic process of developing painterly collages is evaluated in respect to its methodology of developing unseen images. Full article

This paper presents a reflection on themes related to the virtual image. In addition, it tries to define a grammar of the digital virtual image, desuming it from other languages such as those related to photography, cinema or video games. After analyzing in detail the set of information and organizational and strategic activities that govern the shaping of the virtual image, the paper outlines the history of innovations that have technically supported the possibilities of the virtual image over the last decade. Full article

Since the late Nineties, digital architectural animation emerged as one of the main methods for representing design ideas. The ‘spectacle of architecture’ created by digital representation of space and time, arose as one of the most effective media for the prefiguration of architectural design. The great complexity of architectural video’s production quickly led to the birth of new professionals and creative companies specialized in modelling, rendering, animation, graphics, montage, editing and post production. The author investigates on the methods, techniques and languages of the fourth-dimensional representation of architecture, almost unexplored area of research thus far, by relating them with the architects’ personal poetics. To support observations, discoveries and theses, this paper provides analysis and critics of several case studies and traces an ideal interpretative path, considering both to the changing technologies and the emerging specific languages. Full article

The theme of the conference regards images. Since the theme is so vast, I have handled it by dedicating to it some basic general reflections. Therefore, I maintain that the best choice is to evoke the aphorism in the epigraph: I propose a series of fragmented memories or annotations taken while reading and looking at images, or even citations. Full article

This contribution arises from the interest (on the themes of semiotics and communication of architecture, even in its deep meanings) derived from studies and comparisons with Renato De Fusco, Maria Luisa Scalvini, Pio Luigi Brusasco, Pier Tosoni, Alberto Borghini. A question has been confirmed: what can be the meanings of architecture, especially in the visual field? What are its own contents, and what are “other” contents? Around this subject a research team with scholars of the Politecnico di Torino (called “Alpha Group”) was constituted; which has now resumed in a convergent manner to investigate and experiment semiotic in architecture; paying attention to languages of vision. The approach of the chosen method is inspired (in a comparative experiment) to the Nouvelle Rhétorique, the Groupe μ of Liège (with Greimas, Hielmslev, Perelman) internationally known for the definition of an applied rhetoric model—a classic of the human sciences—dedicated to interdisciplinary research, which crosses the aesthetic approach with semiotics, theory of linguistics and visual communication. The first conclusion tends to reinforce the in-depth analysis of the method, and the enhancement of interdisciplinary comparisons, first of all the one with semiotic. Full article

This paper focuses on the initial “spark” of the design process, in which Drawing, Image, Language intertwine and/or prevail over each other. The possible and ideal meeting point of these three concepts has been identified and recreated within the International Competition IBA 84; which represents a suitable model for comparing different strategies; personalities; and design methods. The designers, carrying out a series of rational and poetic researches in areas often apparently detached from architecture such as philosophy, art, music and literature, need a medium that gives shape to their concept. This medium can be recognized in the representation. Aim of the research is to highlight the relationships between project concept and representation techniques. Full article

From a sociological point of view, what is the relevance of the early twentieth-century avant-garde artistic act in modern society? What theories and empirical realities could be used to argue this importance? This essay will proceed by developing three basic targeted points: (1) The importance of art as a social phenomenon in the theories of Duvignaud and Simmel, and in the critical theory of Horkheimer and Adorno, together with Baudrillard’s extreme criticism; (2) The specific role of the avant-garde as artistic social action; (3) the specific case of the artistic adventure of Fortunato Depero. Full article

Almost always when it comes to the end of a trip, to rethink and remember the places visited, the first memo to emerge is that chromatic. Certainly many other factors populate memories, such as climate, mood, company, health, etc., but light and color are the elements that most strongly identify spaces and selects them according to “favorable” or “unfavorable” perceptions, unconsciously privileging a “chromatic territory” over others, characterized by the effects it produces or by the simple aesthetic value, where shapes, light and colors have nicely marked the journey. The author also wants to propose; through a series of sketches and drawings; a sequence of color images made by the author on a journey of more than 6000 km; between the major North American metropolises in New York; Washington; Chicago; Boston; Philadelphia; Buffalo; Cleveland; etc.; and the small centers that together represent a genuine universe of colors whose properties manifest themselves physically; perceptively; and physiologically. Full article

The contribution presents an interdisciplinary approach to education developed by the authors, who belong to the field of study of urban design and environmental psychology. The presented study is part of a wider research aiming at developing a methodology for assessing, before construction, the impact on people’s well-being generated by urban design projects. The method is based on the combined use of immersive visualization and psychological survey, administered to inhabitants along the design process, for testing—and potentially re-tuning—the architectural solutions. In particular, the paper presents a case study application with a university class of architects and planners of the last year of the Master of Science. The paper outlines the general contents of the ongoing experimental research, it provides a brief theoretical framework, it describes the tools used and developed ad hoc, and it finally illustrates the case study application. Full article

This paper explores a series of practical and enquiry-based projects conducted by the Ettore Guatelli Museum in collaboration with local community actors and partner institutions including the University of Milano Bicocca: a training programme for teachers at a local group of schools, the Istituto Comprensivo of Collecchio; the creation of a new museum—an ongoing project with the schools of the Istituto Comprensivo of Lesignano; a reinterpretation of the Guatelli museum itself by young artists participating in the “Contemporary Guatelli” project. The chosen strategy of those directing the Ettore Guatelli Museum is to foster participation, allowing the many images suggested by its cultural patrimony to freely emerge, based on a shared belief in multiple interpretive possibilities. Full article

This article offers a critical interpretation of the historical and contemporary context underlying the purposes and the methods associated with the organisation of data and information in the various fields of knowledge by means of graphical classification. Essentially, the act of listing and enumeration allows the simultaneous exploration of different possibilities; it offers a privileged view of the world and facilitates effective problem solving. Graphical classification enhances the organisation of knowledge in a systematic and scientific manner, suggesting the logical inferences from which conjectures and theories may be formulated. It therefore constitutes an irreplaceable aid in the exercise of thought. Full article

This article considers the results of a survey that the University of Naples Federico II conducted with a group of teachers attending the PAS—Percorsi di abilitazione speciale (training programmes for the achievement of the professional teaching qualification) (The PAS, as provided by DDG n. 58 of 25 July 2013, published in the Official Gazette of 30 July, instituted by Afam Athenaeums and Institutions yearly, are training programmes for obtaining qualification as a teacher for pre-primary, primary and secondary schools in Italy)—through the experimental use of Digital Storytelling. The methodology used for the workshop, adopted within the course of Pedagogy of Learning Processes, involved a group of nearly 80 teachers of different subjects, so that perceptions and reflections could be explored in relation to possible disciplinary applications of the digital narration method. Full article

The practice of music represents an irreplaceable experience of the human being. Gratifying in many aspects, it carries out a diversified web of experiences: sensorial, perceptive, cognitive, dynamic, social, cultural. In this, each individual comes to the progressive realization of music as an integrated and integrating experience, which is the deep meaning of culture and the ability to establish relationships. The education to artistic languages encountered in pre-school and primary school, even when it is of less relevance in the curriculum, should represent a crucial base to the learning pathway, while promoting interdisciplinarity and warranting a new plurifocal access to knowledge and to individual growth, which is capable of reinforcing also other knowledge necessary in questioning and comprehending the essential, structural, communicative, creative, imaginative and psychological aspects linked to the use of every genre of art. Full article

This article discusses the relationships between drawing and cognition starting from the concept of graphic intelligence, and going beyond the classic approach, widely deepened in the literature from the field of clinical neuropsychology, linked to a concept of drawing as tool for the evaluation of the cerebral connections functionalities in cases of particular disabilities. Instead, this article analyses the relationships between drawing and cognition focusing to learning processes. Therefore, drawing is considered not only as a product with which to interpret the psychological, bodily-kinesthetic and cognitive spheres of the individual, but also as a tool for stimulating the development of such spheres. Full article

Between 22 July and 15 August 1947 Josef Frank wrote thirteen letters to Dagmar Grill, cousin of his wife, met in 1914 in Stockholm. The letters contain several hypothesis for an ideal house to be built in Skargarden, an archipelago to the east of Stockholm, where Dagmar Grill lived. Every letter contains sketches and schemes for an imaginary house. The thirteen projects refer to identical functional needs, but differ each other in shape and size. Although they are “fantasy” houses, the sketches refer to a real imaginative exercise rather than to a simple figurative/compositional exercise. Full article

Architecture communication tools have been implemented in recent history by strategies and narrative artifices imported from cinema, comic, photo-journalism and infographic. The architect has integrated the traditional encoded drawing with more extensive narrative artifacts to expand the basin of its interlocutors and to describe underestimated aspects of architecture and design process. Through the illustration of recent significant experiences, this paper intends to highlight the great variety of images that can be attributed today to architecture and the lack of proper attention on this production by Visual Studies. Full article

The urban landscape of the city of L’Aquila has undergone profound changes because of the 2009 earthquake. In particular, there has been a gap between the tangible immanence of places, outcome of history that brought them to the present, and the dimension of the intangible as the intersection between memory and everyday life. In this context, applications of augmented reality offer themselves as an instrument of intersection between history and memory. Augmented reality becomes a complex storytelling tool, where the balance between the authoritative aspect of history and the participative re-meaning of urban sites can be summarized. Full article

This article is situated in the framework of the editorial products through which Touring reinvented tourism and travel in the early part of the 1900s. It concentrates on the magazine Le Vie d’Italia, proposing a rereading starting from the covers, which, up through 1935, exhibited a product, or rather, an Italian product brand each month in place of the traditional beauty of the landscape. These covers/manifestos suggest a new visual of the landscape and build the new view for Italians, relying on the rhetorical mechanism—amply tested historically—of figures of the landscape operating as a topic. Full article

The Cathedral of Palermo is one of the monuments belonging to the Arab-Norman Itinerary, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015. This text uses geometric analysis to describe some of the inlaid circular designs from the eastern façade, the corner towers and the apses. The cataloguing of the two-tone geometric motifs also reveals aspects that can be linked back to the laws of visual perception. Hence, the text investigates these aspects based on a new reading. In fact, decomposing these elements based on the experience of their perception also facilitates the recognition of elementary figures. The attempt made in this brief text intends to induce a new perceptive awareness resulting from a more attentive and prolonged period of observation. Full article

Graphic representation is one of the main systems of signs designed by man with the aim of preserving, understanding, and communicating information deemed essential. As a language for eyes, graphic representation benefits from the properties of visual perception. The effectiveness of graphic language has been recognized and studied by many theorists and communication professionals. The contribution represents in the form of notes some initial explorations in the field of infographic and graphic visualization as knowledge processing tools for analyzing and present data as information. There are some remarkable references, definitions and examples, of researchers and information professionals, from which there are extensive considerations that attempt to bring the principles of visual communication to the science of representation and to the drawing discipline for engineers and architects. Full article

The novels of Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) have no well-constructed plot, but rather a series of situations that emerge directly from images, in a sort of concrete visual thought that overshadows the storyline. Yukiguni [Snow Country], his masterpiece, is known for its elliptical style. It consists of a series of impressions. The writer chose to omit all specific points of reference in order to maintain an evocative, rather than an assertive, register. Some images create a very expressive atmosphere. Snow Country comprises a series of visions generated poetically that communicate certain impressions, and it illustrates a quasi-cinematic mode of writing with images or painting with written words. Full article

In the Recueil èlémentaire d’Architecture, J.F. de Neufforge writes a syllabus about all the building styles, analysed according to the formal idea of a classic architecture that can create the identity of the growing middle class of the Eighteen century. Though employing complex geometries which, for their centre,define the position of the archetype elements, such as the base, the peristyle, walled cell and the pediment, Neufforge creates generative processes of the figurative architectures based on the ratio given by the module. In this paper, the possible metric inconsistency between the use of the system of the order—as building algorithm of the architecture in the vertical elements—and the role of the construction of the plan—as a representative and constitutive matrix of the entire building—are investigated. The author questions the value of the order in its practical and aesthetical use. Full article

A wide photographic documentation, consisting in 12 listed albums, is collected in the historical archive of the primary school Padre Gemelli in Turin. The most surprising element is represented by the fact that it is a collection of photos of “School for abnormal psychic” of the City of Turin, furthermore it is grouped in thematic albums that are characterized even for their temporal wholeness starting from 1930 to 1960. This intervention aims to study the pictures itselves within a special school, finding out the possible narrative lines that intend to suggest. The purpose in this case is not to reconstruct through the images the teaching history in a special school but the purpose is about questioning the images in all perspectives, in order to to make the historical object itself be able to speak. This paper will focus on some of the narrative phenomena identified: the Padre Gemelli school images compared to the “Great History”, to the micro-history, to the school history (labs, educational supports, …). Full article

Despite the obvious differences between the work of Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher and that of Romanian draftsman S. Steinberg, with a closer look is possible to trace strong affinities between some of their works and many of the themes they handled, such as the drawing of metamorphoses, the figure-background relationship, and the intercourse between reality and representation space. In spite of a general mood difference between their respective graphic narrations, the work of the two authors appears to be based on the same kind of anxieties that have crossed the twentieth century, involving different fields of knowledge. Full article

The ‘Myth of the cave’ is one of the topic of philosophical knowledge and a most debated object of study among philosophical scholars and authors. It is also a core-content knowledge of the philosophical school curriculum in high schools. The ‘Myth of the cave’ is also a useful object of didactic analysis that allows to deep the processes of teaching mediation. Based on the theoretical approach of ‘visual thinking’, the contribution presents the first findings of an exploratory study, realized in a High School, that have analyzed the mediation function of the ‘Myth of cave’ images in supporting the student learnings. Full article

The close relationship between gender stereotypes, representations of masculine and feminine roles and the images of women and men produced by art, mass media and the collective consciousness is as self-evident as it is—all too frequently—underestimated and misunderstood. This evidence is closely related to the persistence of damaging stereotypes of gender roles still common accepted in the Italian culture (as well as in other UE Member States), nevertheless gender stereotypes reduce the life opportunities for women and girls, for men and boys. In fact, inequality between women and men, and the prevailing gender roles are deeply rooted in obsolete social structures and anachronistic mental attitudes. Thus, equal opportunities education beginning in early childhood plays a crucial role, both in creating a new language to underpin the relationship between the genders and in enhancing children’s critical understanding of the plurality and complexity of the life contexts, narratives, representations of gender and social roles and, also, symbolic universes surrounding them. Full article