Abstract:

In the current scenario, where communication and information sharing are a prominent part of our life, both in the public and private dimensions, media certainly have a central role as instruments for communicating.
Since twentieth-century they have been not only the emblem of the enormous progress in new technologies but also of cultural and social transformations. Mass media and the subsequently emerging of advanced technologies involved an evident change both in modalities of contents production and in their transmission. That led to the creation of new media, enabling an instant, decentralized, personalized and collaborative communication.
However, the metamorphosis of media is also characterized by hybrid forms where elements of continuity with traditional forms coexist with elements of strong innovation. It is necessary to combine the process of transformation of devices with the one of languages.
New devices and new languages bring the experimentation from the more technological areas to the artistic field, involving different disciplines including Communication Design.
Among the interest of research's areas there is the analysis of how communicative devices mediate the relationship between us and the territory. Territory is considered as the expression of multiple levels of information that cohabit and stratify. It is often difficult to communicate those aspects due to the superficial attention of territorial peculiarity preservation. This leads to a loss of the qualities that mark the identity of a territory.
Therefore comes the need to communicate the territory and the dwelling places, showing their different characteristics and dynamics, by systematizing techniques, languages and all available devices in order to develop innovative communication models.
This brings a research of new approaches and project practices that come up to the creation of communicative systems for territorial interface, fit to the new characteristic of fruition and to the needs of the user.
The adoption of digital technology and new media in which contents, devices and languages are interbred, is changing the models of territorial communication.
Thus the fusion of different languages inside digital media and the necessity to use the same contents on different communicative devices, introduced a new project practice, based on the possibility of administrating integrated systems of dialog (mobile, web, traditional publishing) that allow a more immediate and direct integration of different information and languages.

Keywords:

Design research, Territory, Communication models, New media, Project Practice.