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Cinematographic System | Scenario, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

Observing the map we can individualize that Italian funded-by-Government cinema system is affected by a lack of information. In our opinion this failure isn’t to impute exclusively to the audience’s predilection or to the distribution’s profit choices, mainly oriented in giving greater space to “commercial” films. The problem belongs to the system itself because of the absence of information and communication regards not even single film, but also the whole government funds mechanism. In fact the State, through Cultural Ministry (MiBAC), actually supports films just by funds, without any kind of monitoring. Going deeply, we discover that in the present situation, since the Cultural-Ministry-ad-hoc-committee assigns the public funding to a director and a producer, who previously presented the script and an advanced business plan, the producers are the only ones charged with the developing of the movie and the Ministry doesn’t keep track of its processing. In this way, a gap is created between the movie and its future release (mostly, wished in vain). The movie, in which typically doesn’t star many famous actors who could easily bring on some attention, doesn’t receive the right care by cinemas owners, distributors companies and informations media, typical items between the authors and their recipients: for this reason, the movie comes to life with spare possibilities to be seen, which is very conflicting with the wording “cultural good” assigned by the Ministry.
So we hypothesize a scenario, an evolution of the system based on the introducing of a new subject that would make more transparent the funds activity. Our scenario doesn’t propose to include the Ministry in the production of the movie, because our goal doesn’t consist in letting someone else (except the artistic cast) to affect the contents or the artistic choices of the film, even if it’s a ministerial committee. The main idea is rather a “place” (a website) in which the Cultural Ministry could provide suitable informations about the processing of the movie, from funding approval to shooting-start, from post-production to release date, in order to create a sort of beneficent expectation to whom the website users are called to participate as upcoming movie-goer, uploading many types of contents (photos, videos, news, interviews, opinions, biography and careers editing…).
In this way the awareness about funds activity and the creation of expectation, produced by detailed informations, would guaranteed new visibility and popularity to these film.

(Download a full PDF)

The current model of distribution is centered to the movie as a product rather then as cultural good.
Distribution issues
Distribution’s aim is to get the movie seen by people and to get back the money spent for that.

Main expenses:
* logistics (physical distribution)
* promotion (media buying)
* tv
* press
* billboards
* etc.
Most movie can’t get into the theatres just because they are inadeguate to the theatres. They need a diffent model of distribution.
An alternative model must not have the theatre’s restrictions, limiting to zero these costs.

Design Principles:
* Do not force anyone
* Do NOT prevent movies’ returns to the traditional model
* ‘Everybody is happy’ (to comply all the subjects involved)
* distribution model as a lifebuoy
* auto-selective
* agevolation to public-funded movies
* the system constantly expands on new an different medias
* it is the long tail of cinema.
* technology-agnostic: everywhere, regardless of platforms and formats, and everywhen, on demand.

Comparison
Traditional model:
* movie as a product
* linear and diachronic
* stiff
* slow
New model:
* movie as an artistic work
* timeless and synchronic
* chaotic by design
* open

Opportunities:
* new movies’ genres
* new patterns of use

Contemporary Art System | Scenario, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

The Contemporary Art System is ruled by logics that make hard the admittance for new players.
Critics, galleries and curators, through their choices, confer on someone the artist status, without which it is impossible to be admitted to the spaces that the system gives.
The normal affirmation way of an aspiring artist plans lots of time, capacity for public relations and much luck.
Therefore they will use specific actions which will reduce the time of this phase.
Aspiring young artists create a shared purposes manifesto and a growing collective that will promote the use of a temporary non-conventional spaces to realize their actions.
So temporary visibility opportunities will be created, opportunities in which they will take part individually or in group, exploiting public or private places and promoting their artistic activity with different kinds

(Download full PDF)

ContemporarArt System | Scenario, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

The system of Contemporary Art shows that is possible to enter only when the system itself makes it possible: only when the “men at work” decide that a certain person is an artist. Only in this way an aspirant artist can be seen and heard, but it is not sure that this is enought to be successful and recognized at higher levels.
The main character of our video is a young who have just taken his diploma at Accademia Brera of Milan and who would be recognized as artist. To make that he decides to take part in some competitions, to turn to gallerists or critics asking them if he can exhibit his works, but he receives only negative responses.
When he sees that every doors are closed he is desperate, but he meets some friends, who have had his same problems to enter in the world of Arts. Then they decide to join together in order to speak up for themselves.
They think also to who may listen and finance them in their project.

The hypotesis are three:

• ask a financing to magazine Domus;
• ask a financing to Diesel;
• ask a financing to state.

When the financings are obteined their project can take life: a magazine in which they can speek about themselves and their works and that will be distributed both to public in general and the persons of the sector who had refused them before.

(Download full PDF)

density live on stage 07-08, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

(see all the other photos here!)

Christian Nold thinks we should pay more attention to how our environment shapes our emotional and physiological states. His work with Bio Mapping—which measures people’s responses to their environment and connects those feelings to their physical location—suggests that a map of emotional landscapes represents a powerful tool for analyzing the relationship between place and broader social issues.

(live at Pop!Tech 2007)

Icona, Indice e Simbolo non sono solo “tre tipi di segni”. Sono innanzitutto tre modalità semiosiche. La semiosi, il passaggio dall’Oggetto Dinamico alla Rappresentazione segnica, e da qui all’Interpretante, è un processo (ad esempio di trasformazione, di traduzione, di correlazione e di stabilizzazione delle correlazioni, ecc.) e tale processo è appunto caratterizzato da tre modalità:
* la modalità iconica, atto di percezione e di ricezione;
* la modalità indicale, atto di relazione e di azione;
* la modalità simbolica, atto di cognizione e di generalizzazione.
(per approfondire visita il blog del Prof. Salvatore Zingale)

Modalità semiosiche, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

La semiosi è un processo, il passaggio dall’Oggetto Dinamico alla Rappresentazione segnica, e da qui all’Interpretante. Il Segno nel triangolo di Peirce, quindi, è uno strumento di traduzione e per questo icona, indice e simbolo (le 3 tipologie di segno) vanno considerati soprattutto come 3 modalità semiosiche, intendendo con modalità la specifica azione di traduzione impiegata: la misura o maniera cognitivamente adottata nella rappresentazione dell’oggetto.

A set of graphic visualizzation about the movie Memento by Christopher Nolan (2000).
The film’s events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives—one in color, and the other in black and white. Leonard’s investigation is depicted in five-minute color sequences that are in reverse chronological order. As each scene begins, Leonard has just lost his recent memories, leaving him unaware of where he is or what he was doing. The scene ends just after its events fade from his memory. The black and white sections are told in chronological order, showing Leonard conversing with an anonymous phone caller in a motel room. By the film’s end, the two narratives converge into a single color sequence.

Memento, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

From Memento’s structure analysis we can deduct that the director has given a strong characterization to the relation between the story and the plot. Although the story is sequential and linear, the plot is representing the protagonist’s memory, Lenny, which has imposed to the movie a hyper textual structure. The forty-four sequences of the movie become therefore as many boxes in a game board, a memory path to recover the events of the story from the facts, the encounters and the clues. The boxes are numbered according to the chronological order of the story, but to understand the real plot it’s essential to move on the board following the text recalls contained in each of them.

Glassbooth helps American citizens in choosing the presidential candidate that best fit their ideas, carefully documenting them by their votes on laws and emendaments about topics of interest, quotes and video. Users can compare candidates, too, using the same data.
Although the website doesn’t use any graphical representation (other than simple text), it works as a communication tool that allow people to really know their politicians, through documented facts. It is a brilliant example about how communication design can improve democracy.