Prison Views: Rethinking the Moving Image in the Era of Transmedia Communication

The paper presents an on-going research project aimed at exploring the fast modifications in the area of audiovisual communication and of the moving image. The combination between the ubiquity, ease of access, improved capacity of ‘self-producing’ audiovisual artefacts, and the medium’s communicative force and interactivity, have opened a completely new season for this domain of communication. A key aspect is a relevant shift in the way information is delivered. One can today witness a migration process in which contents that were traditionally delivered in the most diverse formats tend to be re-packaged into audiovisual form. In this framework, the formulation of the audiovisual artefact as an individual, independent piece is increasingly being questioned in favour of the communication landscape described by Henry Jenkins as transmedial: an online distributed space, populated by intertwined multi-media contents. This not only produces a massive proliferation in the available information in audiovisual (or ‘multimedia’) format, but greatly impacts the foundations of the moving image as a language. Thanks to a grant from our Regional government we are currently developing an experimental research project for an exhibit on the historic Museum of Alghero 19th century city’s prison. A unique opportunity of exploring the interactions between the physical and intangible dimensions of information design, the project revolves on a series of exhibit displays, populated by short audiovisual artefacts that either revisit audiovisual narrative formulas such as the documentary and the historical reconstruction, and venture to emerging hybrid formulas such as interactive augmented reality. The paper describes the first outcomes of this ongoing research within an exhibit project that integrates space, interactivity, real artefacts and digital storytelling, taking into scrutiny the evolving role of moving image artefacts in the emerging scenario of hybrid communicative environments.