bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction to the Volume
Authors: van de Vall Renée , van Saaze Vivian
Published: December 2023

For several decades, the conservation of contemporary art has constituted a dynamic field of research and reflection. At first, in the 1990s, this research field consisted primarily of conservation professionals working in or with museums and other heritage organizations. In those years, the condition of many experimental artworks dating from the 1960s and 1970s in museum collections became a concern, while conservators were often at a loss as to what to do with them. Organic materials used in sculptures or installations, like fat, chocolate or wax, were prone to decay; plastics became brittle or discoloured; media devices which grew technologically outdated would soon prove difficult to repair. Conservation of these works often meant intervening in the original materials to a degree that was difficult to justify in terms of prevalent conservation ethics. Conceptual, site specific and performance artworks complicated the focus of conservation efforts on the preservation of a material object in various ways. As a result, practical conservation problems called for technical and theoretical research and reflection, while, in turn, technical and theoretical research and reflection made it possible to frame practical problems of conservation in new ways.
The Increasing Role of Artists’ Estates in the Preservation of Contemporary Art
Authors: Schäffler Anna
Published: December 2023

Today’s challenges in dealing with the legacy of contemporary artists require new structural models for conservation and preservation and are leading to a radical shift of our western memory culture. The growing importance and discussion of artist estates in recent years is one of the results of this development. Based on my experience of working for the estate of German conceptual artist Anna Oppermann (1943–1992), I argue not only that artist estates become important sites of knowledge for the preservation and contextualization of contemporary art, but also that this major change and dissolution can be understood as a decentralized memory organization in which both private actors and civil society become significant stakeholders for contemporary art. In elevating preservation to a condition of contemporary art, the instituent potential of contemporary art preservation becomes apparent through these emerging so-called “networks of care.”
Sharing Knowledge in Art Conservation: From Repository Building to Research Publishing
Authors: Barok Dušan
Published: December 2023

As contemporary art makes its way into museum collections, knowledge sharing between organisations is important for developing a common frame of reference and identifying best practices in an evolving field, but is hampered by ethical, legal and technical complexities. In this article, I ask how constraints to knowledge and documentation sharing between institutions can be overcome. Over the past decades, there have been a number of initiatives for the inter-institutional exchange of documentation and research materials on the conservation of contemporary art. I focus on an online database project created by the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA) to share conservation documentation among practitioners in a semi-public setting. The main success of the INCCA database appears to have been to provide access to templates of forms and reports used in emerging practice, and to enable networking and increased exchange between members. I further identify the network as a research-based initiative and recognise its role in consolidating the conservation of contemporary art as a discipline. I conclude that this shift has precipitated the movement of knowledge exchange away from the circulation of data in the network to publicly oriented knowledge production.
Collections of (An)archives: Towards a New Perspective on Institutional Collecting of Contemporary Art and the Object of Conservation
Authors: Wielocha Aga
Published: December 2023

The immanent features of contemporary art, understood as a new paradigm of artistic practice, call for new approaches to the institutional collecting and all interrelated practices, including conservation. The identity of a contemporary artwork is distributed between physical objects and processes, and concepts and contexts, which shape an artwork throughout its career. These intangible agents often exist in, and thus might be transmitted only through, various kinds of documents. The resulting documentation does not only contain information about an artwork’s provenance, history, meanings and character but it hosts an important part of the artwork itself. As decisions about the future presentations of artworks, and hence their interpretations, are made on the basis of documentation, the latter not only shapes but also determines the future of contemporary artworks. Still, in today’s museum practice the documentation is often secondary when compared to physical objects and undervalued within the hierarchy of museum priorities. This essay traces emergent institutional attempts to link, both conceptually and practically, museum collections and collection-related documentation. Its aim is to demonstrate that these approaches, while initially developed to address needs differing from traditional conservation, can serve as sources of inspiration for the development of long-term preservation strategies for contemporary art.
The Living Process of Conserving Performance: Theory and Practice in the Conservation of Performance-Based Artworks at Tate
Authors: Lawson Louise , Harvey Duncan , Ribeiro Ana , Marçal Hélia
Published: December 2023

The development of the documentation and conservation of performance-based artworks has been a key priority for Tate’s Conservation department. The rise in complexity of the relationship between the institution and the artworks entering the collection prompted the development of current practices relating to the documentation and conservation of performance within the time-based media conservation team. This chapter explores the development of the current documentation strategies for the conservation of performance at Tate, by highlighting not only the impact of collecting practices in the development of knowledge, but also how the process results on the creation of both theoretical and practical forms of practice. The chapter will focus on the development of core documentation tools and theoretical models for understanding performance art and how it relates to the museum.
Integrating Front-of-House with Behind-the-Scenes Practice in Contemporary Art Conservation
Authors: Spangler-Bickell Caitlin
Published: December 2023

The “biographical approach to contemporary art conservation” has highlighted the efforts required by professionals to maintain the identity of complex artworks, given the changes that occur when they move between biographical stages such as creation, acquisition, installation and storage. Although this model indicates that every life phase should be a locus of professional attention, conservation practice is concentrated more on the transitional phases before and after exhibitions than on the exhibition period itself. Because conservators must turn their skills and energy to preparations for the next exhibition soon after an installation is complete, the exhibition period is an underrepresented biographical phase in conservation—an especially urgent deficiency for works that are only fully “activated” when on display. To remedy that, this chapter argues for expanding the collections care remit to integrate the “front-of-house” with behind-the-scenes conservation practice by making use of “ethnography for conservation” during the exhibition life phase. A participant observation study in the gallery space of the interactive exhibition Take Me (I’m Yours) at Pirelli HangarBicocca illustrates how this methodology, as well as an amplified role for invigilators, can help understand and assess risks, generate mitigation tactics and improve collections care.
Doing Ethics in Practice: SBMK Platform Meetings
Authors: van de Vall Renée
Published: December 2023

This chapter investigates a process of deliberation about the conservation of a contemporary artwork, organised in the form of two “Platform meetings” by the Dutch Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (SBMK). It argues that: 1. SBMK Platform meetings help to bridge gaps between conservation theory and practice by constituting “middle-ranging” practices of ethical deliberation; 2. this middle-ranging ethical work proceeds through a combination of various, theoretically contrasting deliberative techniques; 3. investigation of the values implicitly articulated in the deliberation process suggests that the kind of ethics at work in the practice of conservation of contemporary artworks may be fruitfully understood in terms of posthumanist care ethics. By articulating the role, dynamics and values of the Platform meetings, the chapter aims to clarify why and how such meetings can contribute to both professional conservation practice and the development of theoretical conservation ethics.
The Enfolding Object of Conservation: Artwork Identity, Authenticity, and Documentation
Authors: Castriota Brian
Published: December 2023

Conservation approaches for contemporary artworks have increasingly turned to a work’s identity as the object of conservation and perpetuation. Within the “performance paradigm” of conservation (van de Vall, Revista de História Da Arte 4, 7–17, 2015a) authenticity is often predicated on a manifestation’s compliance with an artist’s explicit directives. In practice, this paradigm is challenged by works of art that unfold in protracted states of creation and accrue new modes of presentation. This chapter reads notions of artwork identity, authenticity, and documentation for conservation purposes through poststructuralist, feminist, queer, and agential realist discourses. It troubles the assumption that conservators have access to a “view from above” (Haraway, Feminist Studies 14(3), 575–599, 1988) and that the boundaries or properties of an entity are determinate prior to and separate from our observation and description. Within Karen Barad’s agential realist framework, the documentation of artwork identity is reframed as a perspectival and partial representation of significances, which are made determinate through—and therefore entangled with—the specifics of our measurement or observation. This chapter shows how, through both our investigations and the documentation we create and leave behind, conservators and conservation researchers are enfolded with the entities we seek to know and care for, and how their boundaries and properties are continually enacted and reconfigured through these material-discursive practices. The objective referent of conservation documentation is therefore refocused as and around the phenomena produced through conservation research and practice.
When Old Was New: Rethinking Traditional and Contemporary Art and Their Paradigms of Care
Authors: Tom Cybele
Published: December 2023

The widespread belief that old and contemporary works of art are fundamentally different from each other, warranting distinct and separate conservation approaches, needs examination. Immateriality and mutability, two qualities considered to be unique to contemporary artworks of unconventional object ontology, are also features of old objects and artefacts, especially when considered in their original contexts. The chapter argues that the perceived differences between old and contemporary are neither inherent nor fundamental, but arise from an under-examined tendency to identify a traditional work with a more or less fixed material character, while ignoring its functionality and complex multivalency. Once we recognize that both old and new artworks have intangible and variable essential characteristics, the theories and paradigms of care that have hitherto been considered exclusive to each are at the disposal of all conservators no matter their field of specialty: a traditional paradigm that focuses on material preservation and, what will be called here, a contemporizing paradigm that allows the perpetuation of essential immaterial aspects. The chapter urges a reconsideration of old artworks when they were new, aimed at increased relevance of contemporary art conservation theory to the care of old, “traditional” artworks, and in turn, innovative research of old art that may contribute to theories of contemporary art conservation.
Languages of Conservation: A Comparison Between Internet-Based Art and Built Heritage
Authors: Roeck Claudia
Published: December 2023

As relational, social practices in a changing environment, internet-based art and built heritage require a substantial effort to maintain functionality. This chapter explores the hypothesis that architecture conservation and conservation of internet-based art encounter the same challenges and follow the same principles. The comparison allows one to articulate the materiality of internet-based art, which may not be obvious at first glance. Most important, it suggests that conservation approaches for built heritage may expand the conservation options for internet-based art. To substantiate the hypothesis, I analyse the significant properties of an internet-based artwork, TraceNoizer (2001–2004) by LAN, according to the same criteria used in built heritage conservation. After demonstrating that I can describe internet-based art using categories from built heritage, I apply conservation strategies for built heritage to internet-based art to discover new conservation approaches. The pursuit of a common language for the conservation of built heritage and software-based art is another goal of this comparison.
Conceptual Art and Conservation
Authors: Stigter Sanneke
Published: December 2023

This chapter addresses the function of a “conservation research approach” in the study of conceptual art in combination with the role of the curator’s expertise, advocating an autoethnographic approach in relation to contemporary art conservation as a function of museum practice. This approach is exemplified by means of the author’s personal testimonies of encounters with artworks by John Baldessari and Ger van Elk. These accounts help to provide a better understanding of the shaping of an artwork’s physical form in various contexts, while also laying bare the conservator’s personal bias as revealing traits of the profession. In addition, histories of works by Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and Sol LeWitt are used to develop the argument that although conceptual artists set out to dematerialize the object in art, they chose their materials and techniques carefully to underline their ideas.
Develop Liberal Statecraft
Authors: Karlson Nils
Published: December 2023

This chapter presents a fourth kind of counterstrategy against populism. I argue that a liberal statecraft should be developed that not only promote a liberal economy but also a civil and open society, and perhaps most importantly the liberal spirit. All the strategies presented in earlier chapters should be included. Its success requires the conquering of the idea arena, the promotion of liberal policy entrepreneurs, and the investment in power resources that can change institutions and policies. To embrace and promote the liberal spirit as a collective legitimizing identity is a central task for liberal statecraft.
A Classical Liberal Revival
Authors: Karlson Nils
Published: December 2023

The last chapter summarizes my conclusions by asking for a revival of liberalism itself. While populism for several reasons may be self-defeating in the longer run, the costs may be exceedingly high. Classical liberalism is a much richer tradition than the strawman of neoliberalism that many left-wing populists and social scientists have constructed. It is not only able to offer prosperity and security, but also a sense of belonging and community that is superior to what the right-wing populists and nationalists are asking for. It is a tradition that needs to be developed and revitalized.
Populism: Defining Characteristics
Authors: Karlson Nils
Published: December 2023

This chapter explores and synthesizes the defining characteristics of left- and right-wing populism in previous research. In conclusion, populism has three modes. A first that emphasizes the use of unserious and ill-founded policy solutions to complex social and economic problems, and a second that focuses on a specific set of political strategies which use a distinct rhetorical style and discursive frame to deliberately polarize society, and a third that stresses the autocratic institutional orientation that follows. The three modes often go together and form the political strategies that populists use.
Embrace and Promote the Liberal Spirit
Authors: Karlson Nils
Published: December 2023

In this chapter a third kind of counterstrategy against populism is presented and discussed, namely, to embrace and promote the liberal spirit. Building on the tradition from von Humboldt and Mill, I argue that it is possible to develop a liberal politics of recognition and identity that gives credit to the different lifestyles and conceptions of a good life that characterize a liberal society. Such politics could offer emancipation, meaning, and community, a sense of purpose and belonging, and human flourishing in a broad sense. In addition, the need for a liberal collective legitimizing identity and for liberal narratives are discussed.
Everyday Design: The Aesthetic Dimension of Alternative Use
Authors: Favara-Kurkowski Monika
Published: December 2023

The Functional Account of Design Aesthetic Appreciation (FADAA), a recent position on design in analytic aesthetics, attempts to establish a sui generis aesthetic theory of design that is somehow distinct from that of the fine arts. This account recognizes that, in evaluating the aesthetic dimension of design, not only form but also function and use are critical variables. However, FAADA has yet to question the status of being a user—usership—as well as the aesthetic strategies we use in our everyday interactions with designed objects.

I will look into the possibility of broadening the FADAA debate on design appreciation by (1) acknowledging the role of the perceiving subject in interacting with design objects and (2) including instances of alternative use as possible critical use practices without diminishing the aesthetic significance of function. To this end, I will introduce the concept of “everyday design,” which refers to an interpretative act by the user that generates an excess of function in relation to the context of use and the user itself.
The Value System of Objects Through the Interpretation of Photographic Language
Authors: Proverbio Paola
Published: December 2023

The design object finds in photographic representation a way - parallel to that of graphics - to the indispensable process of design reading. Photographic research has long been intertwined with the process of cultural qualification of the design object. The project that photography brings to bear on design is a visual narrative which, through an immediately comprehensible language, stands as a true parallel narrative, interrelated, yet not necessarily coinciding altogether with that of the written word. The object begins to circulate through the different channels of communication - from corporate catalogs to advertising pages and magazines - reaching distant people and places, sometimes even before the physical object enters the channels of distribution. This symbiotic relationship means that the object is very often accompanied by a valuable wealth of images, documenting and communicating its value system and its design, production and commercial processes, enriched over time by the shots taken by several ‘hands’, that is, by different authors who offer the opportunity for a multifaceted reading of the product. This text intends to give an example of the added value that photography represents for design through a series of paradigmatic cases (such as Gio Ponti’s Superleggera or Ettore Sottsass’s Valentine), which traverse the history of Italian industrial design from its early stage.
The Evolution of Yacht: From Status-Symbol to Values’ Source
Authors: Ansaloni Giuditta Margherita Maria , Bionda Arianna , Ratti Andrea
Published: December 2023

In addition to fulfilling their primary function, the so-called “status-symbol” objects also vehicles of deeper meaning. Among them, yacht have been often seen as a tool to convey messages of different content throughout the years. The aim of this study is twofold: to show the evolution of yacht design meaning during the last decades, and to outline the future one, according to the redefinition of the concept of luxury goods, category of which yacht belong. The study results confirm that the yachting sector is starting to adopt new perspectives toward sustainability and that, to succeeded in this, the multidisciplinary of design is an essential aid, if not the only possible way to tackle the challenge to convey new messages.
Environmental Re-design of the Top San No Touch 2.0 Portable Toilet: The Contribution of the Bio-inspired Approach
Authors: Balsamo Mariangela Francesca
Published: December 2023

This research is part of the scientific discipline of Design for Environmental Sustainability and Industrial Design, and deals with the topic of the relationship between bio-inspiration and ecodesign as a promising synergy for the design of industrial products.

This contribution describes the methodological process addressed to investigate, analyse and quantify the contribution offered by bio-inspiration, an approach considered to be a driver of innovation aimed at increasing the environmental sustainability of products.

In order to understand and verify the real advantages that the bio-inspired approach can offer, in terms of environmental sustainability, to the design of industrial products, a bio-inspired redesign of a sustainable product in possession of environmental quality certification was undertaken, in order to quantitatively assess the product’s life-cycle environmental impacts through the standardised LCA methodology.

In order to achieve the stated objective, the research was conducted with different methodological approaches and operational tools according to the research phases, interacting with experts from different fields and scientific disciplines which allowed the acquisition of complementary technical-scientific knowledge.
Toward Paris! 45 Years of Domus for a Design à la Français
Authors: Dellapiana Elena
Published: December 2023

Between 31 May and 23 September 1973, the exhibition Domus: 45 ans d’architecture design, art,1928–1873 was held in Paris. It occupied an entire floor of the Pavillon Marsan in the Louvre, involving the entire editorial staff of the magazine. The exhibition, subdivided by decades, used panels, a collection of objects, and original artworks to illustrate the history of Ponti’s magazine from its foundation to 1973.

It presents different levels of interpretation that are exemplary of the way of telling the Italian design in an international framework practised since the years of the first issues of “Domus”. On the one hand, the placement of the magazine’s interests in a temporal flow, in the form archive. On the other hand, the curatorial choice clearly privileges the cotè reserved for the visual arts, both in the reproduction of articles and reviews published over the years and thanks to the extraordinary contribution of exhibited artworks by Marino Marini, Max Bill, Renato Guttuso, Ben Sahan, Chillida, Tinguely, Armand among others.

The thesis of the paper is that this has been a mode of the Italian project that shapes its narrative code as a transformism calibrated to the culture and mood of the host countries with the aim of presenting a compact and coherent image (the Made in Italy, the Italian way or the Italian line depending on the situation) but also to adapt it to the foreign public, both the generalist -and possible buyer- and the specialist.
Working in Regress and Beyond, with Rural Material Culture [1]
Authors: Rattalino Elisabetta
Published: December 2023

This contribution brings together and compares selected works by artist Claudio Costa, architects collective Superstudio, and photographer and designer Mario Cresci. It discussed the way in which they engaged with rural material culture in 1970s, a time when Italy was rehabilitating its pre-industrial heritage. Despite their respective differences, these works adopted multiple media to make rural artefacts talk and provide existential, educational, socio-political, and cultural models.
Environmental Affordances: Some Meetings Between Artificial Aesthetics and Interior Design Theory
Authors: Gay Fabrizio , Cazzaro Irene
Published: December 2023

The contribution supports the following thesis: the use of semiotic methods of the structural school in applications of Artificial Intelligence allows to deal with aesthetic and historical-critical issues with greater documentation capability. In particular, the contribution concerns an actualisation of the axiology of spatial enhancement built by Jean Marie Floch assuming it as a fundamental semantic framework to construct an interior morphology valid in the various areas of interior design.

Floch’s semiotic analysis allows us to better specify the notion of “environmental affordance” developed in James Gibson’s phenomenology of ecological perception. Following Gibson, the authors indicate an ‘environmental’ specification of the “affordances” and pose the question of their objectification and measurement.

For the purpose of this objectification and measurement of environmental affordances, the contribution advances the hypothesis of using some Artificial Intelligence applications usually employed, nowadays, in the processing of large data sets of digital documents, to achieve creative, critical, historical-archival aims.

In conclusion, the contribution outlines some fundamental conditions of possibility of such an objective measurement by describing some initial characteristics of an artificial system of recognition of morphological categories of interior spaces starting from huge data sets of documents.
The Critical Forms of Design Futures Scenarios: Introducing Unconventional Ways of Scenarios Making
Authors: Harb Ammer
Published: December 2023

This paper discusses the critical forms of design futures scenarios; these forms aim at debating, interrogating, and questioning future visions rather than extrapolating on the status quo. They aim to problematize future issues in order to enact social change and mitigate the consequences and implications of today’s actions and decisions.
How Do Design Narratives Play a Role in Cognitive and Social Processes? An Explorative-Systematizing Expert Interview
Authors: Hayama Yasuyuki , Zurlo Francesco
Published: December 2023

Narratives have increasingly come to the forefront of both design and innovation management. As a fundamental scheme of the human cognitive process and mode of communication, the role of narratives has been emphasized in relation to design and innovation processes. Although recent contributions have explored some characteristics of narratives and storytelling in both design and innovation, the literature remains lacking in understanding how narratives by design can affect innovation processes. Drawing from the creative process literature and narratives in design and innovation studies, this study analyzes how design experts employ design narratives at both the personal-cognitive and social-collaborative levels of creative process. The study aimed at building a basic analytical construction of the roles of design narratives in creative processes. Through an explorative and qualitative study, the authors explore the roles of design narratives through the lens of the collective knowledge of 17 design experts. Data collection was conducted using an explorative-systematizing expert interview, supplemented by secondary data, such as existing interview data and archival data, in the three design foundations in Italy. As a result, three aggregated personal-cognitive themes were identified: taking original perspectives as frame tales, weaving problem and solution pairs, and making storyworlds and senses. On the social-collaborative level, three themes emerged: orchestrating idea recombination, an imaginary and aesthetic manner of tension and conflict management, and contextualizing and generating narrativity. This study contributes to the design and innovation literature in terms of narratives by exploring and constructing basic themes regarding the role of design narratives in creative processes.
Human-AI System Co-creativity to Build Interactive Digital Narratives
Authors: Serbanescu Anca
Published: December 2023

The interactive digital narrative (IDN) is an interdisciplinary field connected to narrative studies, design, human-computer interaction, and gaming. In this contribution, IDN is investigated from the designer’s perspective; it deals with the use of prolific artificial intelligence (AI) support systems in this area, highlighting the need to examine their potential. However, the features and essential components of the AI support system are not systematically categorised. This paper fills the aforementioned gap by providing a literature review of twenty academic contributions that make it possible to identify the types and categories of AI support systems, narrative elements, and types of creativity. The study is conducted keeping at the centre the relationship of collaboration between the human and the AI system concerning the production of narratives. As the main contribution to knowledge, the literature review identifies the problems and the gaps and underlines future research directions.
Fashion Education: Cultivating Fashion Designers-Plants
Authors: Moradei Clizia
Published: December 2023

In the context of the contemporary social and ecological crisis, this contribution proposes a reinterpretation of current fashion design educational programs through a bio-inspired perspective, with the intent of guiding next generation fashion designers to successfully face such issues. The investigation delineates the theoretical subsoil to frame the topic by illustrating some key concepts connected to ‘fashion futuring’, ‘making kin’, plant neurobiology, collective authorship and co-design, translated within fashion studies. Specific plant neurobiology and botanical definitions are then applied to the qualitative analysis of two peculiar didactical case studies: the Master in Co-diseño de Moda y Sostenibilidad at the Escola d’Art i Superior de Disseny de Valencia (Spain); the course in Biomoda at the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). Proven the evidence that nowadays the needs of the planet and those of the fashion labour market must be realigned, the ultimate goal in education must be to train professionals capable of pursuing principles of sustainability. This is possible implementing redirection practices in a ‘futuring’ perspective, by operating as a collective parental-like organism establishing multidisciplinary dialogues. The vegetal metaphor allows weaving analogies between specific plant attitudes and today’s essential design requirements. Such aspects are not only useful to visualize and guide the creation of collective paths and sharing dynamics, but also to enhance the structuring of emerging experimental academic fashion curricula on the model of the fashion designer-plant hybridization.
Misleading Design Implications of Adopting Embodied Interface in Everyday Objects
Authors: Tolino Umberto , Mariani Ilaria
Published: December 2023

What happens when an object is consciously designed not to suggest how to interact with it explicitly? This research theme is controversial and peculiar. It is rooted in the concepts of agency and affordance of objects and their interfaces, proposing a change of perspective. Rather than conceiving functions clearly expressing themselves, embedded technology allows an extension of the possible levels of manipulation on seemingly silent objects. This implies a semantic reconfiguration that begins with aesthetics and impacts interaction. Operating at the level of attribution of meaning, these objects challenge the ecological approach, resulting in a misleading design. The topic is tackled from the point of view of the communication designer and design researcher who look at the design of interaction and interface. The study relies on the lessons learnt and knowledge from a five-year-long research-through-design experimentation, triangulated with evidence emerging from the analysis on five relevant cases.
Communication Design for Welfare, the Challenge of Preserving Human Interactions in Remote Participation. Rethinking and Redefining Collaborative Activities for a Virtual Environment
Authors: Bucchetti Valeria , Rossi Michela , Tolino Umberto , Verrotti di Pianella Benedetta , Visconti Pamela
Published: December 2023

The unprecedented situation of the COVID-19 emergency has challenged traditional in-person interaction, forcing researchers to rethink participatory experiences, designing new tools, and readjusting the existing ones in order to adapt them to a virtual environment.

This paper delves into tools and methods of remote inclusion and participation to foster the exchange of opinions among people and the construction of a shared imagery that represents the viewpoints of the community involved. In particular, it examines the dynamics implemented within the European initiative UIA-Urban Innovative Actions for the project WISH MI-Wellbeing Integrated System of Milan that deals specifically with actions to contrast juvenile poverty in Milan, and it involves the DCXW research group (Communication Design for Welfare) of the Politecnico di Milano Design Department and the Municipality of Milan as the lead partner. Through the case study, a series of tools and communication design techniques for remote participation are presented, highlighting the approaches taken to preserve humanity and closeness in online interactions, and especially emphasizing the new opportunities that the virtual environment can offer.
Designing Employee Experience to Experiment with Novel Working Modes. Action Research Project to Support Organizations in Engaging Employees in a Post-pandemic Scenario
Authors: Melazzini Michele , Carella Gianluca
Published: December 2023

In a post-pandemic context, the application of user experience design to employees’ perspectives represents one of the stimulating challenges both among design practitioners and researchers. The paper discusses novel approaches that Design may implement to support organizational transformation. How can Employee Experience Design be applied to support organizations in redefining working scenarios? A qualitative analysis has been run to address this question, with a Participatory Action Research method through observations and tests developed with the support of the HR department of the Corporate Investment Banking division in Intesa Sanpaolo.

Findings show how identifying key trends in employee perceptions and critical touchpoints, designing a set of experiential options and experience models to be tested, and engaging employees in the process of reflection in a collaborative design context can enhance the gradual redefinition of a qualitative employee experience. Moreover, the paper proposes a framework for design intervention in an organizational context, aiming to stimulate future opportunities for design practitioners and researchers to intervene in how people experience working routines.
The Robotic Service Objects. Design Approach for the Multidimensional Evaluation of Robotic Aesthetics
Authors: Germak Claudio , Abbate Lorenza
Published: December 2023

With the growing popularity of service/social robots in different contexts and for many users, it becomes one of the future challenges for research to achieve a higher level of acceptability through the characterisation of the interaction with the machine, both from an expressive and functional point of view. A characterisation will depend on the type of user, work context and tasks to be performed by the machine. In this scenario, telepresence robots require an in-depth characterisation study, as they are machines intended to represent the extension, and therefore the personality, of remote subjects, mediating their communication. Through an analysis of case studies, this paper aims to provide an overview of approaches to telepresence robotics’s physical and/or cognitive characterisation. The use and application contexts dynamics will be explored to build support for experimentation.
Designing a New User Experience for the Travel Sector: A Research Project Reimagining the Role of Travel Stakeholders in the Digital Post-pandemic Age
Authors: Arquilla Venanzio , Caruso Federica , Genco Davide , Parise Chiara
Published: December 2023

The paper analyses a user research process combining educational and professional dimensions, through a collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and a renowned Italian travel experiences B2B intermediary looking for new ideas to face the next challenges of the market. The design process widened the initial scope and revaluated the client's brief, enhancing the re- search and creating new scenarios for future implementation. The design brief was to reframe the role of the travel agency in a digital dimension, in- tercepting needs and opportunities in a changing and complex context such as travel sales.

The final output made it possible to identify six scenarios and project areas that summarise evolutive models for the future of travel, which confirm the trends that emerged from the research and intercept new stakeholders, high- lighting limitations and opportunities to design a new user experience for the travel sector in a post pandemic age.
Worldbuilding Practice as a Collaborative and Inclusive Design Process. The Case of ACTS-A Chance Through Sport
Authors: Ciancia Mariana , Piredda Francesca
Published: December 2023

This paper aims to address the power of worldbuilding practice in promoting shared and collective imagination, activating a process of cultural and narrative change.

Specifically, the work presents a collaborative, social project entitled ACTS—A Chance Through Sport, whose main aim is to promote sports in prison as a tool for social reintegration, according to a multidisciplinary approach combining architecture, engineering, and design competencies. The focus is the work conducted by the Imagis Lab research group (Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano) regarding the role of narrative-based strategy in enhancing the transmission of values and messages through worldbuilding practice. Far from being a narrative gimmick for selling stories, it can allow people to participate in and interpret culturally situated narratives providing ownership.

As such, the first part of the paper will describe how the project ACTS—A Chance Through Sport has addressed the role of narrative-based processes in promoting inclusion. Then the second part is devoted to presenting the narrative-based design framework: practical strategies for rethinking stories in practice that we have developed in our research since 2013.
The Open Logo and the Closed History Notes of a Social History of Visual Identities
Authors: Galluzzo Michele
Published: December 2023

The golden age of corporate identity and logo design has always found wide space in visual communication histories as a crucial moment in the evolution of the graphic design profession in a modern direction. This focus in the last ten years has been confirmed by the publication of monographs, magazines and reprints, the launch of digital archives and publishing houses dedicated to the story of ‘logo-modernism’. If, on the one hand, this interest in the narrative of the modernist corporate identity season has made it possible to access images, information and biographies that were hitherto known little or nothing, on the other hand, they have perpetuated the presentation of this season according to a ‘heroic’ reading fuelled by the ‘formal lens’ and ‘visual satisfaction’. In doing so, historical narratives have often ended up showing graphic artefacts as decontextualized objects. Presented as ‘works of art’, logos were detached from the social context in which they lived, from the meanings they took on in the real world, and from the economic and political messages they conveyed.

Starting from the reconstruction of the historiographical debate that has run through the discipline since the 1990s, this contribution proposes to extend the historical narrative of logo design and the season of corporate identity manuals, trying to also include the dialogue between the end users and these canonical artefacts of graphic design history. Analyzing the way in which public opinion during history has related to logos by loving them, contesting them, modifying them, rejecting them, memeifying them, allows us to look at the trademarks of modernism as cultural objects, as mediators of social relations. Finally, this contribution proposes the social history approach as a lens to open up history to a more inclusive narrative and to look at logos as ‘open works’.
An Advanced Design Tool for Archiving, Mapping, and Narrating a Complex System: The ADU Packaging Innovation Observatory
Authors: Giardina Clara
Published: December 2023

Packaging sector is a complex system: it is a phenomenon with a high degree of economic and cultural cross-sectoriality, a multi-dimensional object that involves a plurality of specific players in an interconnected value chain. Packaging is also a driver and an accelerator of the social, economic and environmental phenomena in which it is immersed. In a context consisting of several crises, the paper explores how research in Advanced Design - an articulated system of practices used to design processes, products or services in complex scenarios to outline possible futures - can help to embrace change, accelerate systemic and responsible innovation and narrate it in companies operating in complex, multidisciplinary sectors such as packaging. The hypothesis is that it could take place through an Advanced Design-led project such as an Observatory: an ecosystemic monitoring system, which collects case studies, gathers and processes knowledge and disseminates it in narratives that can be understood by all the actors in the supply chain, contributing to the creation of a network that connects the actors. After describing the methods and practices of ADU's Packaging Innovation Observatory, the applied research developed by the Observatory for Giflex is described: a work example that starts from data and interprets them with the aim of defining an identity and value profile of flexible packaging, and creating value stories to be told in the context of dissemination and promotion.
Enhancing Local Cultural Heritage by Designing Narrative and Interactive Exhibitions. MEET at the “Museo del Territorio di Riccione”
Authors: Bosco Alessandra , Gasparotto Silvia , Lengua Margo
Published: December 2023

The paper presents the application of the research project “MEET - Multifaceted Experience for Enhancing Territories” at the “Museo del Territorio di Riccione”. The project aims at enhancing the local cultural heritage by involving institutions, professionals, and citizens in the realization of a co-designed interactive exhibition. The enhancement considers the narrative processes strategic for the inclusion of and broader access by different types of public and for a more effective learning process. After explaining the different types of narratives used in the installations, the contribution lists all the phases of the project, synthesised in a visual roadmap. The contribution is then carried out by mentioning all the stakeholders involved – together with their role – the cultural assets enhanced, the development of the process that brought to the creation of the audio-visual content and the realization of the exhibition path. Finally, in the conclusion, the research team presents the result of the qualitative and quantitative evaluation phase conducted through questionnaires useful to understand the actual appreciation and the effectiveness of the project.
From a Word-Formation to a Concept-Formation: Mnemosphere as a Connective Tool in Interdisciplinary Design
Authors: Galasso Clorinda Sissi , Cecchi Marta Elisa
Published: December 2023

We are experiencing profound changes on a global scale and a different way of connecting with places, memory, and atmospheres. Adaptation is a necessary process.

In this context, the need to update languages is real and urgent [1]. There is a growing demand for new terminologies to disseminate ongoing changes and communicate them to professionals and the public. Neology is one of the main ways a language, and therefore a culture renews itself through a different narrative approach.

Design becomes the chosen field of experimentation and activation of new practices and theories that aim to bridge the gap between what we experience in the present reality and what, intangible, can only be captured by combining words.

It is within this framework or reference that the present paper illustrates the Mnemosphere project, interpreted through the lens of a new wor(l)d formation research. The project is based on the interdisciplinary design of a terminological combination.

Mnemosphere appears as a compound word that is still searching for a shared definition and a detailed characterisation but represents a potential theoretical and practical strategy that can be applied and developed in many ways.

This contribution focuses on the transition from a word-formation to a concept-formation recognising Mnemosphere neologism input as an active research tool to stimulate reflections, foster experiences, trigger design practices, and research actions in different contexts. After describing the theoretical framework, the paper will outline the main research activities to blur semantic boundaries within the new word actively.
Through the Mirror. Concept Maps to not Lose (One’s Way Between) Objects
Authors: Berselli Silvia
Published: December 2023

This study delves into the relationship between the subject and things by regaining the anthropological and cultural values that have become embedded in objects already theoretically investigated by other disciplines (philosophy, literature, history of art, cinema) but here presented together with the works of designers that from the 19th to the 21st century managed to give a voice to things. This presentation springs from multi-annual research undertaken by the author at the universities of Bologna and Parma. After selecting twenty-four everyday objects (like mirror, ring, chair, table, telephone, suitcase, door), the research carried out for each one an analysis of its symbolic and cultural values and required students to create a graphic concept map to be intertwined with other maps, therefore with other objects, in more complex structures. This essay focuses on one object, the mirror, in order to explain thoroughly the survey method. Delving into the cultural values of objects gives the material landscape that surrounds us a critical perspective, which is essential to the comprehension and the project.
Einleitung
Authors: Ruther Lilo
Published: December 2023

Die Umsetzung und Gestaltung der mit dem Tod eines Angehörigen verbundenen Aufgaben (von der Pflege des Leichnams bis zur Trauerfeier und Beisetzung) ist in der Schweiz längst nicht mehr nur in der Hand von Bestattungsunternehmer*innen und Vertreter*innen der institutionalisierten Kirche(n). Vielmehr sind die Möglichkeit, zwischen verschiedenen Angeboten der rituellen Begleitung des Todes wählen zu können, und die mit der Wahl verbundene Entscheidung zwischen verschiedenen Angeboten und Ritualen in den letzten Jahrzehnten für viele Menschen immer selbstverständlicher geworden. In der Schweiz wächst das Interesse am Thema der Gestaltung von Trauerfeiern insbesondere bei Menschen, die nicht (mehr) in der Kirche sind, stetig.