Babelfish: sensitive survey and interactive installation for Porta Nolana

This paper aims to propose a reflection on the possible applications of theories related to the sensitive survey (Sepe, 2007) and the urban acupuncture (Lerner, 2011). Starting from these studies, an urban regeneration project for the Porta Nolana area of Naples, called Babelfish, was born. This is an installation which, interacting with the space and the communities that inhabit it, acts as an endogenous device able to translate the linguistic codes of the neighbourhood and to form a network of connections between the actors living in the same space. The sensitive survey made it possible to describe the identity elements of the area and to translate them into maps, catalogues and nominal analyses of the objects identified in the urban environment. The study of urban acupuncture, on the other hand, opened up new possibilities for interpreting the city, the cultures that coexist and for defining the project’s objective: the revaluation of the territory through action. The result of the analysis is a heterogeneous image of the Porta Nolana district, from which emerge innumerable local codes and ways and worlds belonging to cultures that communicate – or not – in the urban context. The action becomes the medium with which to re-evaluate the territory and the objects, bearers of one of the many local codes: the urban ready-made. Babelfish is therefore proposed as an interactive and audiovisual installation whose aim is to lead the user to the discovery and translation of codes belonging to the territory for which it was designed, telling the story of the objects as photographs of the territory.