PAD. Pages on Arts and Design

6-19

Authors: Letizia Bollini, Francesco E. Guida

For this first PAD journal issue dedicated to the theme of Digital Memories, we have chosen, as the opening image, a quipu (or khipu). The image represents the artistic interpretation made by Cecilia Vicuña on the occasion of her exhibition, still in progress now, at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Vicuña has been exploring and transforming the quipu in her work for over five decades, getting inspiration from this ancient recording and communication system used by the Quechua people of the Andes from 2500 BCE through to the 16th century at the time of the Spanish conquest. Literally, quipu means ‘knot’ in the Quechua language and consisted of a long textile cord from which hung multiple strands knotted into different formations and in different colors that were able to encode as much complex information as the alphabet. It is thought that they were used to record statistics, poems, and stories, thereby creating a tactile relationship between memory and the imaginary. This reference seemed perfect to introduce the present issue’s central theme: an ancient, alternative, and complex system of recording memories.

41-63

Authors: Sabrina Melis, Daniele Murgia

The paper explores the design interstices within consolidated media structures. These are spaces occupied for unprecedented use in case of emergency or dramatic events. The authors analyze some significant experiences developed on different levels, from initiatives by individual citizens to organizations such as the collective Bellingcat. These alternative uses of media contribute to the creation of what Michel Foucault called counter-memory: discourses parallel to the official ones that arise as forms of resistance from people who are marginalized by power. Overall, the paper provides a detailed and insightful look at the possibilities offered by digital design interstices in the creation and preservation of collective memories.

86-105

Authors: Matteo Moretti

In his book Digital Methods, Richard Rogers enshrines the end of the “virtual” by pointing out how the online and physical worlds are intrinsically linked (2015). Indeed, 4.5 billion people tap into and pour their data into the Web daily, giving rise to a recursive system in which online and offline mutually reverberate and influence each other; the boundary between the two worlds has never been so blurred. After more than 30 years, the Web may also be likened to an extensive database, a memory that keeps track of the users’ actions and behaviour, a hyperobject to which we contribute and whose effects we experience (Morton, 2013). In this light, the Web evolved from a communication tool to a potential social research tool (Rogers, 2015). In this context, the present paper introduces and analyses the case study Mapping Diversity (n.d.), a project that questions the gender gap in the toponymy of Italian cities. Toponymic issues are intrinsically linked to the values and memory celebrated by dedicating a street to a specific person. Mapping Diversity questions the memory that goes into celebrating toponymy, drawing on the memory made available by the Web in open data. It is, in turn, a digital commons that also contributes to the debate on the role of design in the social and digital spheres. It can support greater civic awareness and a better-informed discussion on complex and multifaceted issues toward a more inclusive and diverse society.

133-161

Authors: Elettra Scotucci, Andrea Vendetti

The contribution aims to highlight the relationship between typographic ephemera and new movable type making. Ephemera are a fundamental component in the constitution of a more conscious history of graphic design oriented towards the actual impact of design in society. Moreover, type specimens and catalogs represent essential primary sources for the study of the history of typography. In parallel, the phenomenon of the letterpress resurgence is being witnessed worldwide, with the necessity to protect, integrate and replace historical material as a direct consequence. This has led to the need to make new type sets through the combination of traditional and new technologies. Although few academic researchers have already addressed the subject, there is a need for systematization of the autonomous tests carried out by various letterpress-related individuals and entities, some of which are presented as case studies. In this regard, it has been possible to divide contemporary type production into three categories: compensation, remaking and materialization. In order to take place, what has been defined as the remaking of type sets needs to start with the design of the printed letter and thus from the availability of printed ephemera. Consequently, the study of primary sources pertaining to the history of typography becomes basic to make new movable type, while the need for new type sets stimulates the search for reliable and historically accurate primary sources.

186-215

Authors: Ilaria Ruggeri, Gianni Sinni

In 1998, the year Macromedia Flash went mainstream and in which internet users were about 3.6% of the world population, the web presence of the Italian Government began. In the evolution of the Government website, a first period from 1998 to 2014 can be identified, which sees the site as an integral part of that spoils system that has often accompanied the numerous changes of the political majority in Italy and the related Governments in office. We can then identify a second period, from 2015 to today, which begins with the publication of the Design Guidelines for PA Websites that sees instead the establishment of some general principles of interface design based on the usability and accessibility of the contents. These principles have allowed the Government website to become a super partes communication structure, independent from the political expression of the Government in office and part of a digital transformation strategy that sees the introduction, for the first time in Italy, of a centralized governance based on technical skills. Thanks to documentary material and direct testimonies, the contribution intends to highlight both the evolution of the Government website from a political communication tool to an institutional communication site and the very idea of institutional communication in Italy in relation to the growing digitization and the need for an active online presence.

238-263

Authors: Daria Casciani, Angelica Vandi

Craft objects represent material culture, artisans’ heterogeneous know-how shaped into tangible artefacts as results of creative acts, evidence of an “intimate connection between hand and head”. Craftspeople are alive custodians of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), conceived as embodied knowledge about practices, representations, living expressions, and skills inherited from the past and belonging to specific, situated communities. Due to sociocultural, economic, and technological barriers, the Fashion sector counts few attempts to preserve and transmit ICH to posterity. Digital technologies could preserve, revive, transmit and valorize ICH’s creative acts through their data, information, and knowledge encoding. Digital tools for data mining coupled with design ethnography could be powerful means to analyse, record, and archive analogue creative and productive processes. Through literature review, the paper aims to reflect on the relationship between craftsmanship, digital technologies, and ICH, firstly by identifying their applicative crafts sectors and secondly highlighting limits and opportunities of digital tools and procedures for crafts ICH representation (encode, document, analyse, preserve, and archive embodied knowledge) and presentation (translate data into engaging narratives toward ICH’s dissemination and spreading). Resulting guidelines highlight the role of design toward sustainable development in preserving cultural diversity and identity against the fashion industry’s mass production and growing globalisation.

286-310

Authors: Agnieszka Dutkowska-Zuk

Forgetting is often described as an undesirable sin of our memory, depicted as a completely uncontrollable action. If one desires to forget, it is to erase unimportant or unpleasant information. Moreover, the general mental model of memory suggests that we first remember and lastly forget. Thus, the linear memory model suggests a one-way dynamic from remembering to forgetting. This mental model of memory has been projected into the digital space design, where one remembers by acquiring data and forgets by deleting it. However, the advent of infinite data storage scenarios provides new opportunities to re-establish how we forget and remember using data repositories. I discuss a possible paradigm shift: how forgetting a memory can help remembering in longer terms by presenting a speculative design artefact, the Horcrux Ear. It was created using Research through Design approach that develops a new understanding of these processes’ temporality and spatial dimension of memory. This paper aims to contribute to the debate over the relationship between forgetting and remembering, its role in the infinite data scenario, and the relationship between human and computer memory. Further, it illustrates the circumstances in which: 1. Forgetting important memories is a desirable action; 2. Forgetting is a controllable action; 3. Forgetting is data creation rather than data deletion; 4. Forgetting is a means to remembering rather than the last step in the linear memory model.