Simona Venditti | Politecnico di Milano (original) (raw)
Papers by Simona Venditti
Fare ricerca in design. Forum nazionale dei dottorati di ricerca in design
Nel complesso panorama della comunicazione contemporanea, l'esperienza della narrazione si config... more Nel complesso panorama della comunicazione contemporanea, l'esperienza della narrazione si configura come strumento privilegiato per problematizzare e generare nuove forme di conoscenza, favorire la costruzione di identità e dialogo, rafforzare il coinvolgimento degli attori sociali. Dalla prospettiva del design, le forme della narrazione impongono una progettualità che tenga conto dell'interconnessione tra formati e canali diversi, del ruolo pro-attivo delle audience e delle possibilità di partecipazione e generazione di contenuti.
A Matter of Design Making Society Through Science and Technology, Jun 6, 2014
Considering Design as a set of practices that impact on the environment in which we lead our ever... more Considering Design as a set of practices that impact on the environment in which we lead our everyday activities, we assume that enacted narratives grounded on transmedia practices (formats based on audiovisual contents about communities and keeping with their surroundings) are able to support innovations stemming from local communities, as they constitute the most basic form of social life (Czarniawska, 2004). By presenting the case study of Plug Social TV, through which we experienced audio-visual languages and products in a collaborative process, we wish to discuss participatory design practices and storytelling both as opportunities for identity building and community engagement, and tools that can lead, support and amplify active communities' initiatives. By analysing the preliminary outcomes of this project, there can be identified two critical poles: on one hand, the design issue of having a strong communicative narrative structure within a participatory process; on the o...
This full-day workshop presents a process for the design of fictional stories on social media, wh... more This full-day workshop presents a process for the design of fictional stories on social media, where the plot can guide the narrative and interactive experience. Activities and discussions build on the idea that the structure of the most renowned social media profiles - i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram - can be considered as a narrative structure based on storytelling and sense-making, in which forms of micro narratives can be elaborated. Working with both professionals and academics, the main goal of the workshop is the research for new expressive, narrative and interactive ways to engage with the audience, harnessing potentialities and limits of social media storytelling.
Interactive Storytelling 8th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2015, Copenhagen, Denmark, November 30 – December 4, 2015, Proceedings, 2015
The current widespread use of digital videos, pictures, audio and text, and their distribution ac... more The current widespread use of digital videos, pictures, audio and text, and their distribution across social media leads to the rise of new consumption behaviours and the spread of new interactive narrative forms. These issues are considered with the analysis of the results of the workshop “Micro Narratives for Community Engagement”, which is part of an ongoing research and educational programme about social media narratives and transmedia storytelling for community engagement. The aim of the workshop was to examine the structure of social media feeds as new ways of organising content based on storytelling and sense-making. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319270357
The Virtuous Circle - Cumulus Conference - Milan, june 2015, Nov 2015
In our contemporary political society, people are demanding not only to actively take part of the... more In our contemporary political society, people are demanding not only to actively take part of the social sphere as agents, but also they claim the right to express themselves in public (virtual) spaces. According to de Certeau (2010), since very early, a very specific part of society create some “tactics” by which they develop a different use of the products imposed by the dominant culture, i.e., mainstream. These tactics, as creative acts of expression, can be considered as activism acts (Giroux, 2014) and people who are practicing them can be identified as a new form of everyday activists. Nowadays, communication devices, tools and application, such as social media, websites, and more generally the Internet, are being re-appropriated by people who make use of them to disseminate their own contents. Even if people are not claiming them as activists, nor they identify themselves as connected to a particular political movement, by telling their own story and sharing it on the Internet, people are producing and sharing culture in an alternative way to the dominant mainstream communication system. This paper explores the way in which people are using social media and the Internet to disseminate their own stories as forms of everyday activism. The use of creativity for the recent phenomenon of “The Ice Bucket Challenge” is then analysed as a case study.
Changes in business and social environments have led society towards a complex landscape in which... more Changes in business and social environments have led society towards a complex landscape in which the relationship between mainstream media and participatory culture is completely changed, with a consequential blurring of boundaries between public and virtual space. As audience media habits are changing, a digital vision of reality is rising and engagement practices are evolving. As a consequence, there is the need for a new design methodology based on different skills working together. It is then necessary to adopt a disruptive approach to overcome the contemporary complexity, assuming storytelling activities, narrative practice and relationships among people as driving force for innovation. The paper describes the cases of Imagine Milan (2009-2012) and Plug Social TV (2013-ongoing), in which we tested listening and expressive tools, and communication strategies in order to activate a dialogue among communities. On the one hand, there is the aim of experiencing audiovisual languages through different narrative formats. On the other hand, we explored the use of stories in a collaborative process, spreading the narrative worlds across different channels. The aim of this paper is to describe our design approach, merging together tools and skills from different areas: communication design strategies as participative methods are linked to co-design actions; branding strategies, coming from the advertising field, as tools for identity development; audiovisual language considered as a cultural interface for listening to reality; transmedia practice as cultural paradigm able to involve audience into meaning-making processes; ultimately, social media advocacy is used to build relationships between virtual and real communities.
Considering Design as a set of practices that impact on the environment in which we lead our ever... more Considering Design as a set of practices that impact on the environment in which we lead our everyday activities, we assume that enacted narratives grounded on transmedia practices (formats based on audiovisual contents about communities and keeping with their surroundings) are able to support innovations stemming from local communities, as they constitute the most basic form of social life (Czarniawska, 2004). By presenting the case study of Plug Social TV, through which we experienced audio-visual languages and products in a collaborative process, we wish to discuss participatory design practices and storytelling both as opportunities for identity building and community engagement, and tools that can lead, support and amplify active communities' initiatives. By analysing the preliminary outcomes of this project, there can be identified two critical poles: on one hand, the design issue of having a strong communicative narrative structure within a participatory process; on the other hand, the lack of patterns recognition into a total fictional world, as a social issue. Our assumption is that the interdisciplinary work of designers, filmmakers and social scientists can build a setting enabling the inclusion of different kind of ‘usable knowledges’ (Fareri, 2009), facilitating interactions, enhancing reflexivity and generating feedback loops. Starting from the same case study, the paper presents a critical perspective on practices oriented to social innovation and on the use of storytelling in the design field and the of visual and narrative approach in social research.
The recent debate about Smart Cities has pointed out the need of a new vision of urban processes ... more The recent debate about Smart Cities has pointed out the need of a new vision of urban processes and phenomena: urbanists and designers must work together to visualize scenarios of the future cities in order to guide all the activities that will lead to more sustainable, collaborative and innovative cities. From a design point of view, it is necessary to keep in mind the symbols and the archetypes set in our collective imagination, in order to create alternative and comparable scenarios - i.e. visioning activity - (Piredda, 2008).
Aim of this research is to investigate how images and symbols from the past have contributed to create views of the future and how this repository can be used by designers and urban planners in order to activate cooperative strategies for a longterm renewal of our metropolis.
In this paper I propose a research about the different interpretations of the term Smart City and a reflection on how images coming from cinema, architecture and art have
contributed to build mental pictures of the cities of the future, based on some “city ideas” (Fratini, 2000) which can be considered as archetypes for modern cities. After
that, I focus on audiovisual scenarios and on the role of designer as mediator for the envisioning activity of the future city, proposing, in the conclusions, a short case
history of today's Smart City scenarios.
Le nostre città stanno cambiando profondamente in relazione ad alcuni fenomeni urbani: la crescit... more Le nostre città stanno cambiando profondamente in relazione ad alcuni fenomeni urbani: la crescita della popolazione, i cambiamenti climatici e la scarsità di risorse energetiche stanno modificando lo stile di vita e la forma delle città. E' necessario modificare alcuni preconcetti per concepire, costruire e vivere in un modo nuovo lo spazio urbano; questo processo prende il nome di Smart City. Per realizzare una Smart City è necessaria una visione olistica dei processi e dei fenomeni urbani; designer e urbanisti devono lavorare insieme per visualizzare gli scenari della città del futuro, tenendo conto delle possibilità offerte dalla tecnologia. Il design della comunicazione ha il compito di creare queste visioni, comunicando le idee di città del futuro e interpretando il ruolo di mediatore, per rendere comprensibili i linguaggi delle molteplici discipline. Questa ricerca ha l'obiettivo di realizzare uno strumento destinato ai designer che elaborano gli scenari del futuro, e agli attori del contesto urbano che interpretano quelle visioni, per pianificare efficaci strategie di miglioramento.
Books by Simona Venditti
Why design should care about narratives? A growing interest in to the role of storytelling and na... more Why design should care about narratives?
A growing interest in to the role of storytelling and narrative fiction in design can be witnessed at both the academic and professional levels. In recent years, digital technologies have reconfigured not only the modes of production and dissemination of narrative content, but also the cultural forms and conventions related to the roles of users, producers , authors, designers, and audiences. Narratives represent a way for human beings for organizing experiences and memories, understanding reality, and triggering creativity and imagination. Narratives play also a significant role in communication: they allow to evoke new meanings, making use of signs and symbols – which could be words, images, or objects – adding a layer of emotions, attractiveness, and engagement to the exchange of information and messages. The relationship between design and storytelling is based on the capacity of narratives to go beyond the functional solution-oriented dimension of design, and to generate knowledge activating new meanings in the continuous interaction between representation and interpretation. In this perspective, narratives are used in design as means for documenting reality, envisioning scenarios, and promoting new ideas (Bertolotti, Daam, Piredda & Tassinari, 2017).
The topic “Politics, Civil Society and Participation” is dedicated to the fundamental question: H... more The topic “Politics, Civil Society and Participation” is dedicated to the fundamental question: How do media and communications practices within European cultures change with their environment? This volume consists of the intellectual work of the 2015 European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School, organized in cooperation with the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and a consortium of 21 European partner universities at the ZeMKI, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research of the University of Bremen, Germany. The chapters cover relevant research topics, structured into four sections: “Policies and politics of communication”, “Civil participation in and through the media”, “Media representations and usages” and “On methods”.
In M. Matrone , D. Pinardi, Narrativa d'impresa. Per essere ed essere visti
"Per percorrere la strada verso la realizzazione di un nuovo modello urbano è necessaria una visi... more "Per percorrere la strada verso la realizzazione di un nuovo modello urbano è necessaria una visione olistica dei fenomeni urbani, che comprenda sia gli aspetti logistici e organizzativi, sia quelli estetici e formali: una visione di quello che sarà il futuro delle città, i modi di viverla e di abitarla, che sia in grado di guidare i processi e le intenzioni e che possa diventare l'immagine mentale di una realtà possibile."
Talks & others by Simona Venditti
Fare ricerca in design. Forum nazionale dei dottorati di ricerca in design
Nel complesso panorama della comunicazione contemporanea, l'esperienza della narrazione si config... more Nel complesso panorama della comunicazione contemporanea, l'esperienza della narrazione si configura come strumento privilegiato per problematizzare e generare nuove forme di conoscenza, favorire la costruzione di identità e dialogo, rafforzare il coinvolgimento degli attori sociali. Dalla prospettiva del design, le forme della narrazione impongono una progettualità che tenga conto dell'interconnessione tra formati e canali diversi, del ruolo pro-attivo delle audience e delle possibilità di partecipazione e generazione di contenuti.
A Matter of Design Making Society Through Science and Technology, Jun 6, 2014
Considering Design as a set of practices that impact on the environment in which we lead our ever... more Considering Design as a set of practices that impact on the environment in which we lead our everyday activities, we assume that enacted narratives grounded on transmedia practices (formats based on audiovisual contents about communities and keeping with their surroundings) are able to support innovations stemming from local communities, as they constitute the most basic form of social life (Czarniawska, 2004). By presenting the case study of Plug Social TV, through which we experienced audio-visual languages and products in a collaborative process, we wish to discuss participatory design practices and storytelling both as opportunities for identity building and community engagement, and tools that can lead, support and amplify active communities' initiatives. By analysing the preliminary outcomes of this project, there can be identified two critical poles: on one hand, the design issue of having a strong communicative narrative structure within a participatory process; on the o...
This full-day workshop presents a process for the design of fictional stories on social media, wh... more This full-day workshop presents a process for the design of fictional stories on social media, where the plot can guide the narrative and interactive experience. Activities and discussions build on the idea that the structure of the most renowned social media profiles - i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram - can be considered as a narrative structure based on storytelling and sense-making, in which forms of micro narratives can be elaborated. Working with both professionals and academics, the main goal of the workshop is the research for new expressive, narrative and interactive ways to engage with the audience, harnessing potentialities and limits of social media storytelling.
Interactive Storytelling 8th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2015, Copenhagen, Denmark, November 30 – December 4, 2015, Proceedings, 2015
The current widespread use of digital videos, pictures, audio and text, and their distribution ac... more The current widespread use of digital videos, pictures, audio and text, and their distribution across social media leads to the rise of new consumption behaviours and the spread of new interactive narrative forms. These issues are considered with the analysis of the results of the workshop “Micro Narratives for Community Engagement”, which is part of an ongoing research and educational programme about social media narratives and transmedia storytelling for community engagement. The aim of the workshop was to examine the structure of social media feeds as new ways of organising content based on storytelling and sense-making. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319270357
The Virtuous Circle - Cumulus Conference - Milan, june 2015, Nov 2015
In our contemporary political society, people are demanding not only to actively take part of the... more In our contemporary political society, people are demanding not only to actively take part of the social sphere as agents, but also they claim the right to express themselves in public (virtual) spaces. According to de Certeau (2010), since very early, a very specific part of society create some “tactics” by which they develop a different use of the products imposed by the dominant culture, i.e., mainstream. These tactics, as creative acts of expression, can be considered as activism acts (Giroux, 2014) and people who are practicing them can be identified as a new form of everyday activists. Nowadays, communication devices, tools and application, such as social media, websites, and more generally the Internet, are being re-appropriated by people who make use of them to disseminate their own contents. Even if people are not claiming them as activists, nor they identify themselves as connected to a particular political movement, by telling their own story and sharing it on the Internet, people are producing and sharing culture in an alternative way to the dominant mainstream communication system. This paper explores the way in which people are using social media and the Internet to disseminate their own stories as forms of everyday activism. The use of creativity for the recent phenomenon of “The Ice Bucket Challenge” is then analysed as a case study.
Changes in business and social environments have led society towards a complex landscape in which... more Changes in business and social environments have led society towards a complex landscape in which the relationship between mainstream media and participatory culture is completely changed, with a consequential blurring of boundaries between public and virtual space. As audience media habits are changing, a digital vision of reality is rising and engagement practices are evolving. As a consequence, there is the need for a new design methodology based on different skills working together. It is then necessary to adopt a disruptive approach to overcome the contemporary complexity, assuming storytelling activities, narrative practice and relationships among people as driving force for innovation. The paper describes the cases of Imagine Milan (2009-2012) and Plug Social TV (2013-ongoing), in which we tested listening and expressive tools, and communication strategies in order to activate a dialogue among communities. On the one hand, there is the aim of experiencing audiovisual languages through different narrative formats. On the other hand, we explored the use of stories in a collaborative process, spreading the narrative worlds across different channels. The aim of this paper is to describe our design approach, merging together tools and skills from different areas: communication design strategies as participative methods are linked to co-design actions; branding strategies, coming from the advertising field, as tools for identity development; audiovisual language considered as a cultural interface for listening to reality; transmedia practice as cultural paradigm able to involve audience into meaning-making processes; ultimately, social media advocacy is used to build relationships between virtual and real communities.
Considering Design as a set of practices that impact on the environment in which we lead our ever... more Considering Design as a set of practices that impact on the environment in which we lead our everyday activities, we assume that enacted narratives grounded on transmedia practices (formats based on audiovisual contents about communities and keeping with their surroundings) are able to support innovations stemming from local communities, as they constitute the most basic form of social life (Czarniawska, 2004). By presenting the case study of Plug Social TV, through which we experienced audio-visual languages and products in a collaborative process, we wish to discuss participatory design practices and storytelling both as opportunities for identity building and community engagement, and tools that can lead, support and amplify active communities' initiatives. By analysing the preliminary outcomes of this project, there can be identified two critical poles: on one hand, the design issue of having a strong communicative narrative structure within a participatory process; on the other hand, the lack of patterns recognition into a total fictional world, as a social issue. Our assumption is that the interdisciplinary work of designers, filmmakers and social scientists can build a setting enabling the inclusion of different kind of ‘usable knowledges’ (Fareri, 2009), facilitating interactions, enhancing reflexivity and generating feedback loops. Starting from the same case study, the paper presents a critical perspective on practices oriented to social innovation and on the use of storytelling in the design field and the of visual and narrative approach in social research.
The recent debate about Smart Cities has pointed out the need of a new vision of urban processes ... more The recent debate about Smart Cities has pointed out the need of a new vision of urban processes and phenomena: urbanists and designers must work together to visualize scenarios of the future cities in order to guide all the activities that will lead to more sustainable, collaborative and innovative cities. From a design point of view, it is necessary to keep in mind the symbols and the archetypes set in our collective imagination, in order to create alternative and comparable scenarios - i.e. visioning activity - (Piredda, 2008).
Aim of this research is to investigate how images and symbols from the past have contributed to create views of the future and how this repository can be used by designers and urban planners in order to activate cooperative strategies for a longterm renewal of our metropolis.
In this paper I propose a research about the different interpretations of the term Smart City and a reflection on how images coming from cinema, architecture and art have
contributed to build mental pictures of the cities of the future, based on some “city ideas” (Fratini, 2000) which can be considered as archetypes for modern cities. After
that, I focus on audiovisual scenarios and on the role of designer as mediator for the envisioning activity of the future city, proposing, in the conclusions, a short case
history of today's Smart City scenarios.
Le nostre città stanno cambiando profondamente in relazione ad alcuni fenomeni urbani: la crescit... more Le nostre città stanno cambiando profondamente in relazione ad alcuni fenomeni urbani: la crescita della popolazione, i cambiamenti climatici e la scarsità di risorse energetiche stanno modificando lo stile di vita e la forma delle città. E' necessario modificare alcuni preconcetti per concepire, costruire e vivere in un modo nuovo lo spazio urbano; questo processo prende il nome di Smart City. Per realizzare una Smart City è necessaria una visione olistica dei processi e dei fenomeni urbani; designer e urbanisti devono lavorare insieme per visualizzare gli scenari della città del futuro, tenendo conto delle possibilità offerte dalla tecnologia. Il design della comunicazione ha il compito di creare queste visioni, comunicando le idee di città del futuro e interpretando il ruolo di mediatore, per rendere comprensibili i linguaggi delle molteplici discipline. Questa ricerca ha l'obiettivo di realizzare uno strumento destinato ai designer che elaborano gli scenari del futuro, e agli attori del contesto urbano che interpretano quelle visioni, per pianificare efficaci strategie di miglioramento.
Why design should care about narratives? A growing interest in to the role of storytelling and na... more Why design should care about narratives?
A growing interest in to the role of storytelling and narrative fiction in design can be witnessed at both the academic and professional levels. In recent years, digital technologies have reconfigured not only the modes of production and dissemination of narrative content, but also the cultural forms and conventions related to the roles of users, producers , authors, designers, and audiences. Narratives represent a way for human beings for organizing experiences and memories, understanding reality, and triggering creativity and imagination. Narratives play also a significant role in communication: they allow to evoke new meanings, making use of signs and symbols – which could be words, images, or objects – adding a layer of emotions, attractiveness, and engagement to the exchange of information and messages. The relationship between design and storytelling is based on the capacity of narratives to go beyond the functional solution-oriented dimension of design, and to generate knowledge activating new meanings in the continuous interaction between representation and interpretation. In this perspective, narratives are used in design as means for documenting reality, envisioning scenarios, and promoting new ideas (Bertolotti, Daam, Piredda & Tassinari, 2017).
The topic “Politics, Civil Society and Participation” is dedicated to the fundamental question: H... more The topic “Politics, Civil Society and Participation” is dedicated to the fundamental question: How do media and communications practices within European cultures change with their environment? This volume consists of the intellectual work of the 2015 European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School, organized in cooperation with the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and a consortium of 21 European partner universities at the ZeMKI, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research of the University of Bremen, Germany. The chapters cover relevant research topics, structured into four sections: “Policies and politics of communication”, “Civil participation in and through the media”, “Media representations and usages” and “On methods”.
In M. Matrone , D. Pinardi, Narrativa d'impresa. Per essere ed essere visti
"Per percorrere la strada verso la realizzazione di un nuovo modello urbano è necessaria una visi... more "Per percorrere la strada verso la realizzazione di un nuovo modello urbano è necessaria una visione olistica dei fenomeni urbani, che comprenda sia gli aspetti logistici e organizzativi, sia quelli estetici e formali: una visione di quello che sarà il futuro delle città, i modi di viverla e di abitarla, che sia in grado di guidare i processi e le intenzioni e che possa diventare l'immagine mentale di una realtà possibile."