ICONAUTICA per cavarsela nel naufragio della comunicazione

This book discusses the psychological mechanisms that lie behind the creation of images and their enjoyment, and how they can be used to maximise their potential. An iconaut’s journey (and a homage to Gian Piero Brunetta) to check the endurance of the old pathways and perhaps – but this is merely a hope – glimpse some new ones. Indeed, “reading” an image entails a complex cognitive mechanism operating on several levels: the aesthetic, linked to judgement: I like/don’t like it (or rather, it gives me/doesn’t give me pleasure); memory and a greater or lesser ability to recognise the things, stories and values involved, in other words the specific cultural background of each of us (Dante said that without memory there’s no culture); the handling of the symbolic apparatus that captures everything said and moves it to the realm of ideas. New neural research, including studies of mirror neurons, place aesthetics in the same area of the brain that reacts to chocolate and maternal love, thus confirming what artists of every shade and every era have always known: emotion, pleasure, recognition, wonder and synaesthesia are things artists have known all along. Alongside advice on how to decode an image, the book also gives indications for using the new video shooting technologies, which force us to review the tools of the trade and bring into question certain things that were taken for granted, with the underlying question: why are some things more pleasurable than others?