dolomiti contemporanee twenty sixteen: parola prima

twenty sixteen dolomiti contemporanee communication campaign: parola prima

the dcc of dC2016 is designed by dc and developed by bra.ba.m.

Concept (gdil/dc)
the concept for the sixth season of dolomiti contemporanee is parola prima (Eng: word first).
An expression which wishes to convey that the (written, printed) word is the first and foremost image of all.
It is, even, an entity full of meaning that comes before – thus permeating it – every image.
Neat core of the idea itself, not yet molded through any kind of aesthetic mechanism of representation.
The word, concept of matter, effluence of the idea itself, at first, is pure: no colour or shape has intervened in the characterization of its integrity, yet.
And the artist hasn’t started to play with said idea through the voraciousness of their own poietic circus.
The word, like the idea, is naked (and full, like solid rock).
Thus, the aesthetic choices at a later time intervene on the word which, being itself finished, finds itself in-action without having to manifest itself in a specific action, a kinetism, a plastic mechanism of communication.
The word, when it is meant in such a way, doesn’t equate to a potential kind of energy: it is a quiet, steadfast fire, without flame, evenly expanding space.

Aesthetic choices, then, always come after words, which are fully active, and heavy.
Each of those choices, as a matter of fact, deliberatley (through taste, experience, impulsive subjectivity, phenomenal fortuity) traces a path and, by traveling it, transforms (reduces) the all-powerful word into an oriented and unambiguous construct – even when said construct is made to coincide with a mouth or door, wide open, as it gains a specific measure it loses its core essence, which lacked spefic qualities.

development (fabio balcon/bra.ba.m)

After five years of collaboration with Gianluca D’incà Levis in the context of the project Dolomiti Contemporanee we at Bra.Ba.M must honestly admit that we haven’t yet been able to understand completely the ever-changing genome of this astonishing organism. It evolves exponentially through a non-linear pattern. Our lazy metabolism doesn’t allow us to keep up with it. Because of that, trying to convey Dolomiti Contemporanee to the public has always beeing a falsely difficult feat. I say “falsely” because we never did try, favouring pure branding over communication. Dolomiti Contemporanee like Procter & Gamble. We’ve always stubbornly hung onto the pure concision of the brand, marvellously summed up in the name itself: Dolomiti Contemporanee. There’s everything in those two words, and at the same time they hold a strong limit that clutches the helm of creativity firmly to keep it in place.
All the communication campaigns we’ve carried out for DC have presented “contemporary” elements embed in “dolomitic” settings, in a simply didactic way. From the digitalized archetypes of the mountain with a primitive Photoshop-made pixel effect, we’ve moved to z-movie themes reinvented in bucolic pastures, and to a fashionable take on genetic experiments between humans and local fauna, to evetually reach 2015′s edition, where we terra-dolomiti-formed far away, non-trekker-friendly worlds.

This year, we felt the strong need to simplify, clean, heal the communication from too many Photoshop layers used in previous editions.

We’ve always thought that the perfect image to represent Dolomiti Contemporanee would be the artwork by Peter Saville, which he made for the Joy Division album “Unknown Pleasure”. That graphic compared to the frequences of the signal coming from the CP1919 pulsar that is reminescent of a mountain ridge defined in its concision by simple white strokes on a black backdrop has always been on our minds

When we’ve been informed of the underlying theme of the 2016 edition, i.e. THE WORD – la parola – meant as something that comes before thought itself (PAROLAPRIMA – WORDFIRST), immediately a pleasant shiver ran down our spines: this is the season of naked lettering. Simple Text.

Right after that, the imeges created with ASCII code (the one needed to cipher characters) came to mind.
These images, produced through composition of the 95 ASCII characters, are basic illustrations with an undisputed low tech charm, Amiga Style.
But we immediately realized that online editors didn’t really work for us. By their definition they work on random single characters with fixed spacing and they don’t allow for the generation of meaningful words or phrases. Unless, via text editors such as Word or Text Edit, one manually composes the image: a mountain, of course.
But months of attempts would have been necessary to generate Mt. Civetta‘s simple profile via this technique.
The speed of communication in the third millennium doesn’t allow for an operation of graphic craftmanship. And we’re not illustrators.
Luckily, the diverse app landscape has provided us with the solution to the problem.
Browsing the app store searching for a cloud tag generator we’ve stumbled upon one with a fascinating name: Phoetic, the amazing photo word cloud generator.
Basically, the program transforms images, for example a selfie, in literal clouds of tags. The examples on display are amenities, like a female face made up of emoticons and little hearts, or a male one composed of the phrase I LOVE YOU translated into 72 different languages. Either way, the final product is still the same, beyond the subjects; noteworthy.
Once we moved past the ethical hurdle of the necessity for a 4,50 euro investment for the pro version and we spent a couple of days spent testing various settings, the new image of Dolomiti Contemporanee began to take shape on the screens of our smartphones.
Thanks to Phoetic we’ve also experimented with new work frontiers, and can assert that this is the first ad campaign realized in non conventional locations such as: our houses’ bathrooms, public transport, bar and restaurants, a post office queue.

The word itself generates the mountain. The future is that mountain.