Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

How both students and researchers, as creative co-producers, interpret messages found in the public space of the city, is the core question of a design platform for the production and distribution of meanings in a city. If media themselves are considered “texts”, designed to be read, analyzed, deconstructed, and reconstructed, understanding how to interpret media messages within the urban fabric, the first step to check for bias or avoid stereotyping, thus building a pathway of co-designing meanings with citizens. Understanding how, and why, media messages are constructed, and for what purposes, is been the focus of the media research design studio running between Barcelona arts colleges, that I will present. I ask: are the students and researchers, who are mapping, exploring and co-creating these messages, effective co-producers of cultural media in public space? The interdisciplinary questioning allows a for a new series of transformations, centered around the digitization of text, image, sound and data and the global interconnection of the city as an “open lab” of opportunities and political critical reflections.