Situated Emotions. The Role of the Soundscape in a Geo-Based Multimodal Application in the Field of Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Cartography has traditionally been the privileged key to reading an urban territory. The form “map”, in fact, translates in two-dimensionally and with an abstract language the complexity of the space that we perceived and interact with through our physicality. In this process of conceptualisation many of our visceral abilities must be distilled into a form of representation that elects vision as a privileged channel. The possibility of using mobile devices has widened the range of expression and the ways in which we orient people in the environment. But, well beyond this instrumental function, the use of the acoustic channel, for example, opens up design scenarios for the construction of an identity of places that involves users from the point of view of experiential richness. Generally used to give procedural indications and free the user in movements, the sound interface has in itself further potential for exploring the communicative design and reading of the anthropic environment. The paper proposes an interpretation of the urban landscape of the city of Milan and its historical transformation through the narrative key of one of the major Italian novels and the construction of soundscapes that gives back the emotional richness of reality. Based on a holophonic recording, the prototype of the mobile app explores the possibility of extending a space-contextual experience through a multimodal storytelling that generates “sound vision”.