Keywords

1 New Wor(l)d Emergence

Dealing with a new word has always been a delicate and complex process from a terminological standpoint. The lexical novelty still struggles to come up with a consensus definition that unites all the relevant fields of study. The term “new word” is used in linguistics to refer to any newly created word, while the term “neologism” is reserved for unique terms that add to the language’s lexicon [2]. Neology is one of the primary methods through which a language, and by extension, a culture, renews itself through a distinct narrative perspective. When neologisms are used, it is typically because new physical or conceptual phenomena are emerging or spreading, new scenarios are being developed, or old historical facts are being brought back to life by acquiring new semantic meanings.

Additionally, new terminology makes it possible to establish connective identities across many issues and fields, turning them into tools for promoting public participation. Neologisms might be “brand-new” terms that have never been thought of or spoken before, or they can be terminological compounds that derive meaning from the relationships between other words. According to Szymanek [3], there are two sorts of lexical formations, one of which is formed “ex nihilo” without any morphological alteration, while the other is a “derivational neologism,” which is created from established and well-known lexical patterns and combinations. The formation of a neologism proceeds through a series of phases, resembling typical design processes, which can be simplified into three main categories: invention, consolidation, and establishment [4].

The first phase sees the word initially voiced and then written by a speaker. In this way, it materialises and begins to have semantic value. The new term typically does not appear following a particular design procedure. However, it sometimes happens for less planned reasons, such as to synthesise or to lessen grammatical complexity, when there are not enough words to convey a specific idea, or when it is necessary to mix concepts from other domains. The emergence of an ad-hoc formation, i.e. a previously non-existent combination of existing morphemes, is driven by various circumstances [Ibid., 73]. The second phase, known as ‘consolidation’, begins when a new formation gets ingrained in the language and spreads. This stage is when the ad hoc formation becomes a proper neologism that may potentially endure. The third phase seems to be the hardest to accomplish for the term. Institutions must acknowledge the innovative lexical item as an object that transcends the meaning of its terminological constituents by opening up a new horizon of meaning. A neologism must also be separated from nonce word-formations [5, 364] to elaborate even further. The former is consistent, and institutionalisation ensures their continued use in language; the latter are “one-off coinages” [6, vii] destined to join the common lexicon when first issued but quickly went out of fashion.

Despite the noticeable conceptual differences, the answer to a change appears to be the prevalent substrate for all neological variables. In most situations, the necessity for adaptability is what inspires neologism, i.e. the ability of language to adapt to change and provide lexical support for ongoing, physical, conceptual, and world changes. A new method of engaging with locations, memories, and the atmospheres created by their interaction is emerging due to the significant changes occurring worldwide. We are transitioning from an anthropocentric conceptual model to a topophilic attachment to space that is created and aims to engage in an emotional and empathetic discourse with the environment [7]. According to this paradigm, there is an actual and pressing need to upgrade languages.

The derivational neologisms, composed of pre-existing morphological material [8] and acceptable for mixing significantly different topics, appear to be the most appropriate terms. These words transform into instruments that may activate new design approaches and shift cultural frontiers by connecting concepts and disparate knowledge domains. In this regard, the Mnemosphere project, which is being presented here, will look into the fertile ground of a new word formation, which is obviously not yet defined in a univocal manner but which nonetheless develops into a connecting and polyphonic instrument on similar topics like the memory of places, the whole range of emotions, and the atmosphere of spaces.

The project investigates what it means to design for a neologism and what parameters, guidelines, and research actions may be triggered to define a new unknown through online and offline events.

2 New Word Formation

As soon as one tries to define a composite term in a clear-cut way, the instant understanding of the word seems to evaporate. When attempting to identify ‘the distinctive air one breathes in a unique location’, also known as the atmosphere, or ‘the memories tied to a place that arises and blends into its fabric’, also known as the places’ memory, this process usually manifests. Without other conjuring pictures, it is challenging to understand how these affective and spatial elements create a personal emotional connection with the perceiver. However, the Mnemosphere project’s goal is to start from this assumption to spark processes, activities, and research reflections to create a radical new concept in the design culture. Furthermore, it is tempting to claim that it is a pure neologism. This term has been used sporadically in literatureFootnote 1, although a definition has never been formalised in any disciplinary field. Even in the design culture, it appears as a new word that offers itself to numerous experimentations. Mnemosphere project lives in this context and uses the new lexical item as a title and its definition as a principal objective. The research project Mnemosphere, currently under development, was prompted by the MiniFARB Call for Ideas, which has been supported by the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Design and involved PhD students and research fellows to provide funding and resources for transversal research projects. Because of the MiniFARB’s emphasis on interdisciplinarity, the project is distinguished by a composite research team driven by the shared objective of producing different interpretations of the topics being addressed. Mnemosphere bases its approach on a synergic collaboration among distinct fields of knowledge (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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Mnemosphere research conceptual map

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As stated before, the term “mnemosphere” is created by joining the words “MN+EMO+SPHERE,” which in turn allude to the three themes that were examined: memory (MN), emotions (EMO), and atmosphere (SPHERE). The purpose is not to consider the extent of each thematic component but the actual relationship between them. In fact, the term “mnemosphere” was developed as a terminological reaction to the need for a single term, a conceptual entity, able to describe the effect of the interplay of the mnestic, atmospheric, and emotional domains.

In this setting, it is essential to emphasise that the themes addressed need to be investigated from a wide range of perspectives to be deemed a mnemospheric union. The concept of memory is viewed concerning the places where historical stratification of communal and individual narratives occurs. These locations are seen as intricate symbols of territorial interpretation [9], necessary for mnestic interaction, and an essential component of the surrounding environment. On the other hand, the atmosphere theme is closely related to the designed space. This research part adopts neo-phenomenological thinking [10], which has been spreading internationally in the humanistic and scientific academic community in recent years, as its primary theoretical reference for the aesthetic concept of “atmosphere” [11, 12]. Since people interact daily in engaging narrative and emotional experiences with the designed space (and thus not only natural) through different types of displays, the atmosphere of the space is explicitly studied in the field of exhibition-installation design.

Regarding the theme of emotions, the general designation refers to the sentimental aspect of experience and is defined by subjective as well as physiological and behavioural components. In this context, colour is one of the critical components in the design of the mnestic-spatial experience that may strongly influence people’s perceptions and emotions, which in turn might influence their behaviour [13, 14, 3233]. Therefore, the research project suggests a method for studying emotions that emerges through the connection between colour, memory and space.

3 New Word Stabilisation

Mnemosphere was introduced in June 2020, while research and educational initiatives were being completely reevaluated in light of the COVID worldwide emergency. With a gradual redefining of the optimal tools and methodologies, the project moved all scheduled tasks from offline to online. This research was not affected by the obligations for a general rearrangement of methods; instead, it has presented a valuable chance to engage a larger audience and accesses broader cultural and geographical contexts. Research on the derived neologism has been discussed within the Design field. The Mnemosphere project has examined the connections between several themes that, via inherent overlap and mutual effect, enable the development of a collection of tools intended to enhance the territory through engagement using emotions and the designed space.

The experiment aimed to study the research subjects from both a theoretical and practical point of view, determining how the different areas contribute in a unique and cross-disciplinary way to the topic and examining neologism through fieldwork activities.

As a result, the study project was organised into the three methodological phases detailed below.

3.1 Exploration

In the first stage, each discipline field’s current state of the art was examined to develop a unified theoretical framework. The innate intangibility of the numerous themes explored and the diversity of perspectives represented in the research served as its starting point.

The initial activity was directed at the semantic delimitation of the proposed concepts concerning the themes involved. Using an internal questionnaire with open and closed-ended responses, it was determined to adopt a shared vocabulary with a specific glossary of references as the main result. The Mnemosphere lexicon, an essential tool for this hermeneutic research, was collectively created by the interpretive synthesis of the replies and extrapolation of the keywords chosen by each team member.

The graphic identity of the research was also established during this point, highlighting the importance of being sensitive when visually integrating different topic sections and bringing back the universality of a single concept container. The logo was created from the sphere, which serves as the unifying element and alludes to the three-dimensionality of space. The circle serves as a dynamic representation of abstract concepts. Consequently, it was decided to employ nuances rather than rough shapes to accentuate the theoretical relationship between the concepts visually.

Due to the pandemic, it has become crucial to expanding the research to online communication platforms that would reduce geographic barriers and encourage a sense of closeness and engagement. This need led to the decision to create a social approach to publicly communicate the early results obtained, but more importantly, to reach a significant diversified audience. By configuring the graphical interface as a composite visual table of the mnemosphere lexical nebula, the connective vocation of the Instagram platform (@mnemosphere.project) serves as an evocative device and design tool to convey the research in its ongoing evolution. The theoretical undertones meant to be transmitted to users are made more evident by a mood board type of approach and layout, encouraging both intimate and shared interaction.

3.2 Analysis

The research’s intermediate phase attempted to gather information through several planned online activities highlighting the images’ visual aspects.

The lexical and literary apparatus had a crucial role in organising the subjects’ complexity. However, they did not appear to accomplish enough to define adequately, express, and convey the perceptive aspect of the “mnemosphere”. In order to represent the neological value built into the images created by a visual-formal composition, content visualisations also seemed to be essential. For these reasons, an Open Call for Images was published online to translate a method generally used in the visual arts sphere to the design domain, thereby encouraging creative cross-fertilisation, i.e. hybridisation, among different disciplines, fields and creative ways of expression.

A brief survey and a participant’s choice of up to three images were required for the open call. General inquiries concerning the participants’ identity were asked in the first section, as well as open and closed questions concerning the new concept of the Mnemosphere on what kind of imagery came to mind associated with this term. In contrast, the second section was solely devoted to image uploading. Each participant was invited to upload a maximum of three files with a title and a description, with no limitations on format, communication style, or figurative language. Photographs, illustrations, paintings, collages, drawings, and sketches were among the many different types of media employed by the participants, which collectively brought heterogeneity and expressive variation to the Mnemosphere theme.

3.3 Synthesis

The last stage involved synthesising all the data to establish parameters and repeated factors among the images and descriptions.

More than 200 contributors worldwide participated in the Open Call, which lasted from the middle of January to the end of March 2021. They uploaded more than 400 diverse images that captured the subjective essence of mnemospheric perception. The research project’s official platform, the website (https://www.mnemosphere.polimi.it/), has been updated with all of the gathered contributions (authors, pictures, titles, and descriptions) as a digital database and public online exhibitionFootnote 2.

The research group made a set of Identity Cards as a preliminary step in examining all the contributions. These tools provided a more thorough, synthetic, and visually understandable summary of the data present in each contribution, enabling the pictures to be arranged for analytical examination.

Each card provided:

  • several interpretations for textual information (containing concepts and descriptions),

  • visual information (consisting of percentages of colours and themes involved)

  • sensory information (relating to the senses involved in the narrative of each image).

In order to categorise and organise all of the submitted submissions, internal online and offline workshops were organised using various methodologies based on the disciplinary standpoint addressed. The workshop activities proved valuable methods to extract transversal key concepts that could be translated into parameters for designing mnestic spaces and atmospheres.

The first workshop concentrated on image processing from an atmospheric-spatial perspective. All the images were divided into seven categories that permitted the discovery of shared morphological features, representational modalities, unique framings, and repeating subjects. The strategy was solely visual and less dependent on language descriptions of the images.

The categories include:

  • “Atmosphere as Air” in which wide spaces, sky, and horizons appear;

  • “Atmosphere as Bubble”, where circularity and the nest emerge;

  • “Atmosphere as Fog” where undefined areas, in motion and out of focus, arise;

  • “Atmosphere as Diaphragm” where components linking interior and external, such as entrances, hallways, doors, and windows, show up;

  • “Atmosphere as Net”, in which complex, interconnected spaces and conceptual and practical connective elements emerge;

  • “Atmosphere as Colorful”, where images with colour, tone, and abstract symbolism as the main characters spring up;

  • “Atmosphere as Void,” where singularities, empty spaces, and places full of nothingness and melancholy appear.

The second workshop was arranged from a mnestic standpoint, but it took a different approach, emphasising the interpretation of texts and descriptions rather than the analysis of the visual material. In this context, the images were divided into four conceptual categories:

  • “individual memory”, where faces of people, details of bodies and private spaces frequently emerge;

  • “collective memory”, where the forms of externalisation of memory predominate, especially monuments and memorials;

  • “physical environment” where natural environments like landscapes and urban and domestic environments arise;

  • “abstract dimension” is characterised by symbols, vibrant pictures and free signs, forms, and colours.

Following the creation of the visual compositions, now referred to as “atlases”, it was feasible to examine the colour components of each central theme and create an investigation of the emotion theme from a chromatic point of view. The analysis was supported by 25-colour charts created for each visual atlas allowed for detecting harmonic and opposing relationships and the conceptual link within semantic clusters. These charts allowed for identifying similarities and divergences in the thematic atlases. In this way, it was feasible to state that the hues of the natural world and the materials of certain places had an impact on the memories associated with them on an individual and a collective level, and as a result, the emotional “temperature” experienced by the perceiver/open call participant. Gradually integrating the location into the user’s emotional experience changes the colours, brightness, and saturation of the realistic depiction of the location and environment.

3.4 Results

The visual research of Aby Warburg, one of the most renowned contemporary art historians, serves as the inspiration for the historical backdrop for analysing the open-call pictures. Pioneer of the interdisciplinary study of culture across history, Warburg emphasised the need for scholars to quit enforcing disciplinary boundaries to understand better how cultural memory works [15]. His panel system, embodied in his most significant work, Atlas of Mnemosyne (1924-28), inspired the methodological approach of the Mnemosphere atlases. The images in the panels were assembled and arranged in groups or sequences, which made it possible to perceive an underlying harmony at first glance; visual components were not placed in a hierarchical relationship to each other, and their positioning was not fixed, but fluid and could therefore continually change according to the investigation evolution [16].

These assemblages made it possible to link different works of art produced by artists in different periods and geographical contexts, which converged in large iconographic tables having a solid aesthetic and artistic installation aura effect. Atlas images are the prime subject of study because they provide a transversal and striking way of narrating world cultures, histories and aesthetics. In Mnemosyne Atlas, the juxtaposition of images, which weave different elements around a central theme, creates different fields of energy that trigger an open and dynamic interpretative process in the perceiver.

The mnemospheric exploration, sparked by the participatory open call and the workshops and subsequently took shape through the digital atlases, seeks to provide several visual hypertexts [17]. In order to gain new meanings that might capture the mood and recollections of the places, the images lose some of their original meaning. The loss of sense of some images is not a negative and uncontrolled aspect but an engine of development for a shared and participating definition of the Mnemosphere. The Mnemosphere Atlas (Fig. 2), which takes its cue from Warburg, is a dynamic tool for a neological study that may materialise the mnemonic imagination and provide unique interpretive processes in design.

Fig. 2.
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Extract from the Mnemosphere atlas panels

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4 New Wor(l)d Embodiment

The project’s objective was to present the new word Mnemosphere as a research activator in the design culture by explaining its primary operations. Thanks to its participatory visualisation through Open Call, it has become a neologism open to many knowledge domains: it can spark reflections in several disciplinary areas, including art, photography, and architecture. Mnemosphere now emerges as a term transitioning from word-formation to an effective concept-formation, even though a strong establishment and institutionalisation process has not yet been fully accomplished. The term reveals itself as an autonomous entity, transcending its conceptual components to display their composite junction, and the meaning appears to be considerably less hazy.

Mnemosphere neologism comes across as a notion that lives and communicates its complexity through aggregation, capable of generating deep involvement.

It is nevertheless clear that further experiments and applications are required, notably in the form of exhibition spaces and installations that may explore the multicomponent character of the mnemospheric dimension, considering the terminological and design development that has been realised through the atlases.

In this sense, the research intends to proceed by extending to more different offline activities, including active and proactive participation.

Plans include:

  • To hold a series of Mnemosphere seminars with academics and professionals to broaden the project’s impact.

  • To participate as curator of a group show in Lisbon with GAAT Museum - Garagem, Arte, Arquitectura, Tecnologia, to transform the concept of Mnemosphere into the exhibition of original artistic experiments united by a shared vision.

  • To publish the Mnemosphere research and atlas with all the guidelines and findings, thus making the neologism in the design culture more effective.

Above all, the aspiration is that this experience will not remain enclosed in a terminological definition made up of images, words, and concepts but may be the starting point for further reflections, practices and studies.

In conclusion, this contribution sought to propose an alternative and new approach to knowledge, starting with a neologism coined by interdisciplinary research that has enabled diverse creative research processes, thus contributing to design culture and expanding its theoretical and design boundaries.