12th Conference of ECAADE, The Virtual Studio, Glasgow. Multimedia in communication: a study on the urban image of Barcelona

The Hypertext on Barcelona was realized within the interuniversity scientific research “La Produzione dei circuiti multimediali didattici per l'architettura e l'urbanistica” (The production of multimedia didactic circuits for architecture and urban planning), coordinator Prof. Paola Coppola Pignatelli - Dipartimento di Progettazione Architettonica e Urbana - Facoltà di Architettura, Universit “La Sapienza”, Roma, Italia. During the numerous debates on the relationship between multimedia and communication of the project a long list of problems emerged: the understanding and the management of explorable fields opened by these new media, the informative overflow that can introduce irrelevant information, the “interactive” anxiousness that produces a continuous jumping from one theme to another without any understanding, the identification of the right contents of a multimedia product, that requires an elaborate culture of media languages, the education of the users on new models of learning. From the debates emerged in short a principal point: the necessity to study and to experiment a “multimedia tool” able of transmitting knowledge not through a simple sum of data but through a group of information. If every single tool has -its own characteristics and if the combinations are not automatic, then the modes and contents should be examined. Is it possible therefore to invent a strategy of communication?