Quest’anno il convegno dell’Associazione Internazionale di Sociologia Visuale IVSA - che si è tenuto presso l’UniversitàCumbria a Carlisle (UK) nei freddi e piovosi giorni 22, 23 e 24 luglio 2009 – ha avuto come tema guida la dimensione del ”panorama” con le diverse declinazioni che tale concetto prevede: Appreciating the views: how we’re looking at the social and visual landscape.

Il panorama può essere infatti la messa in forma di uno sguardo sociale, di una prospettiva di osservazione esterna sul modo che permette di tenere insieme diversi ambiti di riflessione: il paesaggio e gli scenari urbani, le derive del design e la produzione artistica, i fenomeni evolutivi di contesti abitativi che cambiano faccia, per via dell’immigrazione ad esempio ma anche di nuove forme di colonizzazione, e può riguardare infine il viaggio e il turismo, i suoi territori “immaginati” e la “colonizzazione” dei mondi online.

L’approccio visuale, dal canto suo, permette di approntare una metodologia di indagine di grande interesse e utilità proprio in questo tipo di “oggetto” sociologico a forte dominante visiva.

Il nostro lavoro è stato presentato con una relazione dal titolo Visual Sociology 2.0: Imagined and Travelled Landscapes in SecondLife (LucaniaLab Imagined and Travelled Landscapes in SL PDF) nel panel Masters of the Universe: Landscapes for Imagination, coordinato da Pat Brereton della Dublin City University e centrato su un tipo di ragionamento sull’ambiente online e su uno dei tagli interpretativi possibili della ricerca e dell’intero progetto LucaniaLab.

La rivoluzione tecnologica del recente passato ha cambiato incredibilmente le nostre percezioni dell’ambiente accessibile e si potrebbe sostenere che questo marchi uno spostamento significativo del ruolo del “reale” nelle interazioni che segnano il nostro campo di esperienza. La crescita di ambienti virtuali e la loro crescente capacità di offrire delle espereinze particolari è un fenomeno che interessa molti ma ne mette d’accordo pochi e il discorso attorno ai mondi virtuali è piuttosto eterogeneo. Il panel cerca di considerate ed esaminare il fenomeno dei “panorami immaginati” e il loro ruolo nella comprensione del contemporaneo.

La presentazione si è rivelata una buona occasione di confronto intere ed extra-disciplinare soprattutto per l’interesse che ha suscitato relativamente all’utilizzo dei linguaggi dell’innovazione e sull’applicazione “reale” a un caso concreto, sostenuto da un ente come l’Apt della Basilicata.

The landscape can be seen as a particular form of the social gaze, a perspective of the external observation that let to keep togheter several different contexts of analisys: the landscape and the urban scenario, design and artistic expression, new enviroments characterized by the immigration and, for example, by new forms of colonization and, finally, it can deal with the travelling and the tourism, its “imagined” territories and the “colonization” of the online worlds.

The visual approach let to use an interesting and useful methodology for the research in this pecualiar sociological “object” and its great visual dominance.

Our work has been presented as a speech titled Visual Sociology 2.0: Imagined and Travelled Landscapes in SecondLife (LucaniaLab Imagined and Travelled Landscapes in SL PDF)in the panel Masters of the Universe: Landscapes for Imagination (chair Pat Brereton della Dublin City University) based on the discussion about the online enviroment and on one of the possible meaning of the reasearch and of the whole LucaniaLab project.

The technological revolution of the recent past has dramatically changed our perceptions of the accessible enviroment, and it could be argued that it marks a significant shift in terms of the role of the “real” in the interactions that mark our realm of experience. The rise of virtual enviroments of all kinds and therir escalating capacity to offer heightened levels of particular expereinces is a phenomenon which interests many but few agree on, and the discourse around virtual worlds is very disparate indeed. This panel seeks to consider and examine the phenomenon of imagined landscapes, and their place in our contemporary understandings.

The presentation has been a good chance for a inter and extra-disciplinary comparison overall for the interest that is has been able to create around the languages of the innovation and their use and for the “real” application on a  concrete case history, supported by the Agency of the Touristic Promotion of Basilicata.

Tonight-  12.30 AM PDT on Second Life – open the Museum of Lucania Lab with the installation “continuousfilm”. A conveyor of Lucane’s images  wrap avatars interacting with their experience.

The images chosen are part of the project which is dveloping APT Basilicata on Flickr r gradually transferring his photographic archive, making the images public and freely with a Creative Commons license, so that anyone can use and / or republish freely (just that there is commercial purpose).

Asian Lednev: digital design

Tonino Lane: digital sculpture

In the context of the project “Experimenting the innovation in SecondLife”, the “theme parties” had in May in the land Lucania are parts of a research that connects the communication of the places to the meta-territorial characteristic of the contemporary collective imagery that finds its best metaphore in the “journey” .

Let’s try to understand why.

First of all: the party. An ancient tradition with an effectiveness guaranteed by the community, the relationship among participants sharing a recreational moment. Therefore amusement but also an ideal moment to get to know with the environment and its residents, a chance for a meeting among avatars/people useful for the vitality of a territory. Inside and outside SecondLife.

This aspect deals with other people but it deals with also the relation with a territory that must be known in a physical and symbolic “touristic” relationship. Where the touristic gaze is nothing but the setting up of the relationship between a “here” and an “elsewhere”, the search for an alternative normality that is worth picking.

That’s why the goal of the opening parties in Lucania was let people be in touch with the territory, with its evocative qualities. Opening the land to the others, making it a place for sharing but also a travel experience. All this in accordance with a world as SecondLife, in general, and a land as Lucania in particular, wich must be explored.

The party can be easily adapted to the “zeitgeist”. For this reason some themes have been chosen some themes that could emphasize the traditional and carnival character of the party, starting, however, from the contemporary imagery: its forms, iconography, sound, cultural products.

“Today’s Japan”, “Pop science fiction” and “Obscure kingdoms” have been therefore occasions to travel in the imagery but also, more physically, a chance to have an experience of SecondLife lands looking for dresses, accessories, objects… and meanwhile to have an oppotunity to know new inspirational enviroments for new images and ideas.

["Lucania in a Crystal Ball"  concept by Fabio Fornasari]

LucaniaLab restarts with different experiences about the ways of communicate and novelize a territory using digitals languages – from social network sites to SecondLife. We present our “novel” in this project blog.

We restart from novelized contents, building our report of research day by day with you.

Second Life is a new and interesting point of observation of social and communicative dynamics. Moreover, Second Life can be observed with the visual methods of the research – and for this reason we’d like us to present our work with the Internet connection.

The background of our research is based on three linked areas: the communication theory, the theory of collective imagery, the sociology of tourism. Therefore Second Life, has seen as a particular place for the communication of the territory, a space built as social relationship, able to involve the new travellers of the “second life” in new ways in connection with the “real” places of the “first life”.

On these ideas launched the LucaniaLab project – Lucania is a region in the south of Italy – in order to experiment and analyses new ways of the communication of a territory. As an experimental form LucaniaLab suggests a different pattern for the communication of a real territory inside Second Life. This pattern focuses on the relationships between avatars around the brand “Lucania” and tries to promote a participative culture with the involvement of virtual tourists and locals.
The research tries to understand how is possible to communicate a territory inside Second Life. For this reason it involved a group of tourists/travellers/SL-goers to understand the ways of this new kind of touristic gaze.
The research – nov 2007 – jan 2008 – involved a panel composed by a number of male avatars and female avatars, expert and newbies, aged until 34 yers, 35-44, 45 and more (because these are the ages of the users in Second Life). They were asked to visit a SecondLife land, a land chosen on their own, that could represent a real territory. Moreover they had to take 10 snapshots of the land that could tell a story about the travel experience. The visual technique of this step was the native image making.
Thanks to the pictures about Cuba, Assisi (Italy), Mantova (Italy), Dublino, Yamato, Atomium Belgio, and so on, avatars have been interviewed into a peculiar lab-room in Second Life with photo-elicitation.
In a second step of the research it was created LucaniaLab. LuacaniaLab is a sort of Sim-Stim: that is a sim (the land in SL) and a visual and interactive space. A particular stimolous for the perception and for the experience: the avatar explores, the patron watches the screen.
Thanks to the results of this first step of the reaserch – qualitative and based on the visual approach – the researchers made a survey and the visitors avatar of LucaniaLab could fill out a questionnaire about the SL experience of a territory.
The first goal of the reaserch is the chance for the avatars/researchers to focus new ways and possibility of the making research. For example the second order observation dynamics (observer who observes the relation between the observer and observed: Human observer ->Avatar observer/avatar observed). But also some interesting ways for the visual methods in Second Life: to project images during the interviews, and so on.

The team of the research is composed by Giovanni Boccia Artieri (Un. “Carlo Bo” Urbino, Italy), Laura Gemini (Un. “Carlo Bo” Urbino, Italy) and Valentina Orsucci (IULM, Milan, Italy).