"La Carta e il Territorio"

Year: 2018

Artist / design: Andrea Santini
Commission: Regione del Veneto, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari and ARBOS – Italian eco design, within the project MIMESIS. Trasmettere immagini artistiche di impresa.
Partners / research context: Developed for the Veneto Region’s V.A.L.O.R.E. call, curated by Elena Nena Agosti and Fabrizio Panozzo.
Material collaboration: Created with recycled cardboard in collaboration with ARBOS.

Role:
I conceived and designed the interactive system, developing the overall concept, interaction model, visual layout and programming of the capacitive interface. I also designed the acoustic implementation, using vibrational surface transducers mounted inside the structure so that the sound is heard directly through the cardboard itself.

Project description:
La carta e il territorio is an interactive paper surface conceived as a tactile storytelling device on the history of paper production and printing along the Brenta river, from Castel Tesino to Venice via the Valbrenta. Capacitive sensors embedded in the cardboard map transform it into an interface: touching specific locations activates short narrated segments on places, paper mills, industrial memory and territorial connections.

The audio is not played through external loudspeakers but is propagated by the cardboard itself, actuated by internal vibrational surface transducers so that the map becomes both interface and sounding body. The project links material culture, landscape and interaction design through a deliberately tactile interface, foregrounding the relationship between paper as medium and paper as historical subject; following the course of the river, the narrative traces an ideal line from the Remondini printing tradition to the contemporary recycled paper and leather products of ARBOS in Solagna