"Paradigm Shift" Participants

ABSTRACT
The present paper, conceived as a work in progress, is a project for the building up of a taxonomy of the passages from one world to another in the composition of linear and non-linear narrative structures. This taxonomy is understood as a creative act external to every defined structural discipline, the poetic construction of a taxonomy in this case; and it aims to order and classify a series of heterogeneous phenomena according to a process of research and analysis in constant revision. In this context, world is defined, following Aristotle, as the unity of space, time and action within a certain narrative, while the threshold is the linguistic element that allows to transit from one world to the other. Accordingly, there is a weak sense and a strong sense of the threshold: the weak sense is a linguistic element that bonds different narrative units but these units are coherent within a same plot; whilst in the strong sense the narrative units are completely detached and no coherence can be found among them. Therefore, the threshold is a new way of considering the poetic aspects of linear and non-linear contemporary narrative with a particular focus on the issues related to new media; at the same time that the proposed taxonomy is a tool of analysis and consultation that provides new instruments for the planning and compositing of narratives in any kind of media. The mentioned work in progress contemplates the development of this taxonomy as an online archive. For the present study, different examples of fantastic narrative are going to be considered in video, cinema, literature and painting.

BIO
Amos Bianchi (1975) is coordinator of postgraduate programmes at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano, www.naba.it). At the same institution, he has been Assistant Professor of Theory and Method of Mass Media, and he is currently Lecturer of Research Methods and History of Cinema. He is a Ph.D. candidate of the University of Plymouth, Planetary Collegium, at the M-Node, based in Milan.

Gabriela Galati is a researcher and art historian currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Plymouth, Planetary Collegium, M-Node, and working as Junior Editor for Annotations 2011- published by ISEA & Leonardo Electronic Almanac- MIT. She recently presented scholarly research papers at TATE Gallery Liverpool-FACT Postgraduate Research Forum 2011; Always Already New Symposium- Planetary Collegium M-Node- Noema, NABA, Milan 2010; at ISEA Istanbul 2011; Rewire-FACT Liverpool, 2011, Culture Lab-Newcastle University, 2011 and Consciousness Reframed 12, Lisbon, 2011.