Media have always been able to configure our sense of space. However, in
recent years, technological development—which tends to affect the relationship
between the individual and the environment more and more deeply—has been
radically intensifying this process. More particularly, the spatial dimension
has assumed a role of increasing importance in determining the subject’s
activity and agency.
Two types of experiences appear particularly interesting in this regard.
Those of the first type, which are more immediately relevant to the field of
media studies, tend to delocalize the user in non-empirical worlds through the
use of immersive devices. Virtual reality—in its varied range of applications
and levels of interactivity, ranging from pure contemplation to video ludic
interaction—is an effective example of such “heterotopic” spaces.
The experiences of the second type, which are only apparently not
related to the field of the media, explicitly reconfigure the relationship
between the body of the subject and the material space. Transit through urban
spaces, frequenting stores and shopping centers, visiting an exhibition or a
museum, enjoying tourism and theme parks, mass events or shows, and so on, are
today mediated experiences, not only in their content but in their own
conditions of existence.
Whether immersive technologies are used to build simulated worlds or to
construct mediatized physical environments, the design of the space plays a
fundamental role. It is a complex operation, to be conceived above all as a
process of organization and prefiguration of the interactions between bodies
and environments. In particular, such a design: 1) establishes criteria of
accessibility of space by organizing and hierarchizing the sensory processes;
2) orients the subject by establishing the range of perspectives and the
breadth of fields of interaction; 3) lays out plans of action through the
articulation of space and the distribution of centres of interest; 4) manages
the experience by prefiguring trajectories, more or less rigidly oriented but
nonetheless deployed over time.
Upon closer look, these operations are in themselves narrative
procedures. In the study of the narrative dimension of media, the
narratological perspective has often been privileged. Such a theoretical
approach insists especially on the temporal dimension of events, taking as its
basis a fundamental distinction between the discursive present of the act of
narrating and the past of the narrated actions. Although the representational
forms of narrative spaces are frequently investigated, the spatial dimension of
storytelling is frequently relegated to a metaphor (“narrative architecture”,
“narrative structure”, “conceptual map”, etc.).
A new “narratopology” applied to environmental media may instead be
able, first to describe forms of narrative design of the situated media
experience (i.e. grounded in a physical environment), this time in a
non-metaphorical sense. Think, for example, of the arrangement of installations
in a museum itinerary; or of the functional configuration of a shopping centre;
or of the creation of a digital environment. Second, it would be able to
identify a different temporal structure, in which the users’ action takes place
in the present but interacts with a previously established discursive
organization. On this front, the prototype is videogame experience, which is
arranged by the game designer and variously implemented by the player; but one
can also think, for example, of the design of website navigation.
These new narrative architectures accentuate both the
environmentalization of media experience and its prefigured nature.
Consequently, this monographic issue aims to encourage reflection on two
unavoidable issues that media studies have progressively highlighted over the
past decades: 1) the ecological or “territorial” logic, which emphasizes the
situated and relational aspects of mediation, and in particular the
interdependence between subjects and environments; and 2) the logic of
premediation or feed-forward, i.e. the prefiguration or anticipatory
organization of the physical and mental trajectories of the subjects.
Scholars from all disciplines interested in the narrativity of spaces
are invited to send essay proposals aimed at investigating the theme at a
theoretical level and/or focusing on specific case studies. The bibliographical
references offer some examples of the different theoretical-methodological
areas from which the contributions may come. Possible areas of investigation
are:
- the narrative design of architectural and urban spaces;
- the narrative configuration of museum and exhibition spaces;
- the design of virtual and videogame environments, immersive or not;
- the penetration of cinematic/televisual imagery into everyday space;
- the body-environment relationship in the constitution of the media experience;
- the role of technological devices in the mediation between subject and environment;
- the role of images and sounds in the production of narrative space;
- the functioning of cinematic/televisual storytelling in light of contemporary media structures;
- the issues of environmentalization and premediation in contemporary media studies.
Contributors can send proposals in English or Italian (max. 2000
characters, 5 references, 5 keywords and a short bio) to Adriano D'Aloia
(adriano.daloia@unicampania.it) and Enrico Carocci (enrico.carocci@uniroma3.it)
by March 22, 2020. All notifications of acceptance will be sent no later than
March 31, 2020. If accepted, 40.000-character essays will then be required for
double peer review by June 28, 2020.
Imago. Studi di cinema e media is a biannual Class A-rated peer-reviewed
academic journal of film and media studies. The journal is sponsored by the
Department of History Anthropology Religions, Performing Arts, Sapienza University and the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts,
Roma Tre University.
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