Rethorics through images. New strategies to communicate, valorise and share the Cultural Heritage

Abstract

European Community Agenda assigns to Culture a primary role in achievement of the so defined “Knowledge Society”, as inferred by the numerous events inside the “Culture Program”, established in 2007 with the “Lisbon Agreement” (according to art. n. 167). The “Europe 2020” Program continues the policy outlined in Lisbon, pointing on Innovation, Research, Digitalization and ICT detailed implementation on Cultural Heritage. The spread of new technologies, including those from Information and Communication (ICT), has deeply changed the way of learning transmission, increasing the possibility to create knowledge. The aim of this paper is to illustrate examples of enhancement of cultural heritage through new communication strategies based on the use of digital technologies for the construction of images that convey cultural content, and oriented to fruition as a visual experience, which is lived, told and shared, to catch the attention, expand knowledge and create a sense of identity and belonging. The starting point of the proposed considerations is the research activity carried out by PhD in “Architecture, Industrial Design and Cultural Heritage” of the Second University of Naples. We are dealing with courses of reflection and planning strategies in which the skills of Architecture, Archaeology, History of Art and Design for Communication are fused into transverse paths that interpret in a progressing manner the complex issue of cultural policies, which are oriented to the enlargement of the `mental space' through the intimate relationship with the cultural heritage. This is an indispensable condition for the building of a society really oriented to the production of knowledge. Examples in this way are the case studies presented, some of which carried out within the research and teaching activities of the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design SUN where obvious is attempting to use the potential of ICT (Information Communication Technologies) in order to enable “capital emotions” and therefore the processes of identity and cultural appropriation of heritage through the telling and sharing of experience.