Registica Multimodale: il design dei New Media

The book states and defines the concept of multimodal direction inside the framework of the new media. Using an historical, critical and inferential approach in an interdisciplinary context, the research work analyses the role that the design disciplines play in the interfaces design. The design disciplines are presented as a system of direction design for the modalities and for the languages for every communication channel, integrated in only one medium (the computer as a global medium). During the second half of the 19th Century different experimentations in communication have been evolved aiming at the integration of different ways/media in an global system for expression or, as to say, Gesamtkunstwerk . The starting point of this theorical approach is to define and explain such an experimentation as precursor and beginning of the present research in the field of multimedia language. At the same time the research activities and the merging events will be analyzed, when the artistical experimentation have been forced to face with the emerging technologies, mainly from the information technology (I.T.). The aim of this section is to produce a better understanding for the development of the different new media languages, as they are known in the present practice and how the development took place. The attention will be focussed on the artistic and technological experimentation, in a situation where economical and production constraints are not active in this way the nature and the meaning of those research activities can be understood and how they influenced the definition of the relevance of the design in the field of the new media can be evaluated. In the second section an analysis of the meaning of new media is being performed, and how they play a relevant role in the field of the know how of the design in the visual communication .Along this line the concept of multimodality of the communication channels is introduced and thoroughly investigated, taking into account the information (I.T.) medium. The very concept of multimodality allows to clarify the relevance of the design and of the designer inside this new design framework. Starting from a detailed examination of the "ostensive" systems and of the metaphoric concept currently used in order to describe the man-machine interaction (the theater metaphor) a second conceptual core has been introduced and defined: the multimodal registic (or directorship). An hypothesis has been cast: the multimodal interfaces designer is acting like a "director", where this word can assume any of the all usual interpretations.