L'ordine delle parole

We put forward two mathematical tools, called the rank distance and the bubble distance, to compare the ordinal structure of natural languages. Traditionally, ordinal structures have only been studied in a very basic and “abstract” context, as for example, the six idealised arrangements for the subject-verb-object sequence. Our tools allow one to get an overall picture of the ordinal distance between a text and its translation. Thinking of future work, availability of web resources will make it possible to conduct large-scale experiments, which will account for the difficulties experienced by simultaneous interpreters, say between Italian and German, or even more so between Italian and Turkish. However, if one wants to get a realistic picture of these differences, one has to abandon the traditional approach to mathematics, based on binary logics (true vs. false, black vs. white), and introduce the grey nuances made available by soft logic; in other words one has to relinquish the esprit de géometrie and adopt the esprit de finesse which is typical of soft computing. It is no coincidence that soft logic has been largely inspired by the flexible logical structures which are possessed by natural languages, rather than those of “hard” mathematics. A crisp mathematical approach will do for simple and abstract structures such as subject-verb-object, but it is wholly insufficient if one moves to the overall word order in actual texts

Critical Dialogues : Scotland + Venice 2012

Alberto Campo Baeza writing in the catalogue, Young Spanish Architecture, an Ark Monograph of 1985, talks about, ‘’a world riddled with noise and yet paradoxically mute, creatively speaking, a group of young Spanish architects are playing a very engaging song, their own song, the most beautiful song.’’ Twenty-seven years later that Spanish song has grown in quality and projection as subsequent architects took their lead from this earlier generation resulting in a Spanish architectural culture of great stature and depth. New voices are occasionally heard, often emanating from the architectural edge, such as Pascal Flammer and Raphael Zuber’s work in Switzerland and Alejandro Aravena’s Elemental Housing in Chile. Some of the most beautiful and poignant songs have emerged from China in Atelier Archmixing’s Twin Trees Pavilion and Amateur Architecture Studio’s early Ceramic House, projects that can be heard through the din of the architectural circus that travels the globe, a circus with an increasingly desperate and cynical appetite. For a song to become engaging and powerful, three components are critical: personality, passion and technique. Scotland’s presence in Venice 2012 is about the recognition of four voices that are on the verge of making themselves heard. Scotland lies on the periphery of Europe, nascent both politically and in contemporary terms architecturally. Yet once its architects stood shoulder to shoulder with the best in Europe and many claim that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s sublime Glasgow School of Art 1899-1909 heralded modernism not just in the UK but also in Europe. In the post-Second World War period Gillespie Kidd and Coia in the West and Morris and Steedman in the East helped propel Scottish architecture in new directions, the former becoming part of a west coast figurative culture that explored a phenomenological sense of section and atmosphere, the latter by an east coast sense of abstraction, detachment and refinement. It seems to me there has always been this kind of architectural watershed that splits Scotland in two. The west possesses a character like its fractured romantic coastline that is passionate about layers, complexity and conversation, whilst the east with its more austere coastline nurtures a more ascetic, reflective, emotionless and silent quality in both its art and architecture. More recently the architectural scene seems to have lost this sense of split personality that came out of place. The new architecture has a tendency towards an image of rediscovered modernism albeit executed with a new graphic material suaveness that could equally be seen anywhere in the UK. The years from the 1970’s have seen a gradual dissolution in the architect’s role. It is a situation that has been greatly exacerbated by the current recession in which many architects have lost not just their voice, but their ability to make architecture altogether. The four architectural practices represented in Venice are all based in Glasgow; they all share a concern for people, the ordinary, and the street. They all have passion and an emerging personality even though their technique has had little opportunity to develop. The critical word that connects these architects is architectural practice. They explore the act of practicing as an architect in a marginal situation, politically, socially, professionally and culturally. Their approach is primarily concerned with conversation and engagement. Venice itself is a city on the edge. Once the edge of Europe and a portal to a far eastern imagination, a city barely founded on land or sea, a mirage. The Scottish contribution to the Venice Biennale itself is a marginal act, emerging, hopeful, outside the main event. Four Northern figures flit amongst southern shadows

Differenze di genere nell'uso dei media tradizionali e dei Social Network

Obiettivo di questa ricerca è evidenziare eventuali differenze, in relazione al genere, nell’uso dei media tradizionali e dei media digitali e le specifiche motivazioni all’uso dei Social Network (SN) e di Facebook (FB) in particolare. A tal scopo è stato somministrato online ad un campione di 189 studenti un questionario per rilevare a) tempi e frequenza di esposizione ai media tradizionali e ai SN; b) modalità di utilizzo di FB; c) motivazioni all’uso di FB. Allo scopo di fornire una visione integrata dei pattern di esposizione ai media tradizionali e ai SN, è stata utilizzata inizialmente una strategia di analisi che utilizza l’analisi dei cluster e l’analisi discriminante, individuando tre gruppi di soggetti: i connessi, i tradizionali e i ritirati. Dalle ulteriori analisi sono emerse significative differenze di genere: a) le donne leggono più spesso libri rispetto agli uomini e vedono più spesso la TV e passano in media più tempo sui social rispetto agli uomini; b) dichiarano di avere un numero maggiore di amici su FB e passano in media più tempo degli uomini su FB; c) ottengono punteggi più alti rispetto agli uomini nella curiosità e nel ricercare persone che non vedevo da tempo, mentre gli uomini ottengono punteggi più elevati in motivazioni come flirtare. Anche il nostro campione conferma, in linea con la letteratura, un utilizzo di FB da parte delle donne che comprende numerose attività, con un orientamento a mantenere e creare un più ampio numero di relazioni interpersonali.The objective of this research is to highlight potential gender differences in relation to the use of traditional and digital media, with a specific focus on the motivations behind the use of Social Networks (SN), in particular Facebook (FB). We administered an online survey to a sample of 189 students aimed at monitoring a) time and frequency of exposure to traditional media and SN; b) the use respondents make of FB; c) the reasons why they use FB. In order to provide an integrated view of the exposure pattern to the traditional media and to SN, we have adopted a cluster analysis and discriminant analysis, identifying three groups of users: the connected, the traditional and the detached. The subsequent analysis demonstrated significant gender differences: a) women read a higher number of books than men, they watch more TV and they spend more time on social media; b) women claim to have a greater number of friends on FB and spend on average more time than men on FB; c) women get higher scores than men on motivation like curiosity for browsing or to search for people who they have not seen for some time. In contrast, men get higher scores in motivations like flirting. Our results are in line with the findings of previous studies, showing how women use FB for a plethora of activities, with a higher orientation to maintain and create a larger number of interpersonal relationships

Le fondazioni culturali delle corporate del lusso. Collezioni d’arte aziendali, mecenatismo e sponsorizzazione

At the heart of the growing entrepreneurial partnership between luxury brands and the art business, we can see a structural closeness of two realities that today are more than ever in a winning conjunction for the spread of culture. The narrative is fairly silent regarding luxury companies involved in patronage, art collecting, and sponsorship practices, especially towards contemporary art. Arts and cultural foundations have been founded by luxury companies during the last decades, motivated by the intention to place the brand in the competitive scenario of the art business. This work contributes to the literature on cultural heritage through the analysis of three case studies. It is argued how the contribution in arts and cultural heritage by luxury brands cannot be considered only as a reflection of strategic marketing actions but also as a benefit aimed to improve the cultural and local environment

Project Outcome: un caso studio

Le biblioteche concorrono con altri soggetti nell’offerta di servizi destinati alla collettività. Per tale motivo hanno la necessità di conoscere la percezione che gli utenti hanno del loro operato. Per farlo, possono cercare di identificare gli outcome, le ricadute che la frequentazione della biblioteca comporta nella vita degli utenti. Lo scopo di questo contributo è quello di presentare una bestpractice statunitense nell’ambito della misurazione degli outcome. Il Project Outcome, creato e diffuso dalla Public Library Association, ha lo scopo di diffondere tra le biblioteche degli Stati Uniti forme standardizzate di valutazione di impatto, focalizzate sulla centralità degli outcome. Le biblioteche hanno la possibilità di aderire al programma gratuitamente utilizzando tutta una serie di strumenti che le accompagnano nelle procedure di indagine. Le rilevazioni sono basate sulla percezione e sulle impressioni che gli utenti hanno avuto di un servizio fruito o della partecipazione a un’attività offerta dalla biblioteca. Le opinioni degli utenti sono raccolte attraverso questionari standard che toccano sette aree di indagine, identificate come quelle suscettibili di maggior influenza. Il progetto, lanciato nel 2015, ha avuto uno sviluppo significativo, che è stato evidenziato dall’American Library Association attraverso la pubblicazione di un report annuale

Chapter Visioni in movimento e spazi espositivi di memorie in transito

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences

Paesaggi elettrici e nuove economie: valori, patrimoni, responsabilità sociali e management

A fronte di imponenti operazioni di ristrutturazione industriale -in particolare di ripensamento di tutto il processo economico di produzione dell'energia- che coinvolgono molte aree dell'Occidente (e non solo), una questione emergente è quella dei patrimoni "elettrici" dismessi e della riqualificazione dei contesti su cui sono localizzati. Il percorso della valorizzazione –di fatto consolidato disciplinarmente- per questo comparto offre suggestioni di ricerca e di dibattito con alcuni elementi di innovazione: 1) una reinterpretazione della teoria del valore e delle sue componenti classiche; 2) la sinergia tra interventi architettonici e interventi economici strutturali; 3) l'urgenza di operazioni di censimento, di costruzione di conoscenza attraverso banche dati e nuovi flussi di informazioni; 4) il control management dei processi. Il contributo ha l'intento di ripercorrere lo stato dell'arte sul tema e di rileggerlo alla luce dei nuovi approcci di valorizzazione uniti ad un'ottica ambientale e di economia circolare. Fanno da supporto a tale analisi critica, la lettura di casi nazionali italiani (a partire dalle operazioni condotte da Enel) ed internazionali, dove si stanno già generando esternalità, intangibile e benefici attesi oltre che plusvalori economici