The emotional landscape

Abstract: In the era of the globalization, characterized by a strong compression of time and space, the sensorial experiences and their influences on the human psychology are the landing-places which help us to perceive the space we live. Going through a space, a landscape means bringing with us our past , our experiences of the surrounding world and the emotions which form our cultural richness, just like a map of our values. The emotions themselves are culturally defined, they are “the structures which regulate both public and private human relations” which led us to share the emotions of the society we belong to.The main concept of the survey is the relationship “landscape-emotion”. The emotions linked to the landscape are objective when they are strictly correlated to some spectacular and astonishing natural events and subjective if they can evoke feelings, memory and experiences.The emotions in the geographic meaning concern " phenomena , objects , places and land individuality " as promoters of emotionality and emotion ( Ruocco , 2010). The emotional aspect is framed as additional features making precious the landscape.The landscape as the scene of our existence is essential to reconstruct our lives . Our experience of the world takes place through a continuous exchange between the exterior landscape ( of geographical sciences ) and the inner landscape (of which the exterior is a reverb ) : a complex interplay between perception and sign as well as a continuous interaction between the first one and the second one. The attraction for the landscape, reduced to its biological essence , is an aesthetic moment able to recall our ability to perceive, to feel, to experience the feelings, and it also represents our being in communication with the world , a vital communication whose source stays in everyday life: both in the silence of nature and in the roar of a city street . However a question is necessary: Is the man more fascinated by the natural landscapes where the man doesn’t exist or landscapes which, on the contrary, represent man’s ability to modify nature according to his need?The survey has used the new technology , a virtual learning environment ( Moodle ) in which 234 students , attending the Laboratory of Geography , have had the opportunity to investigate the “lived and acted space” by identifying and declining the elements of the landscape which are the symbol of specific emotions and, therefore, a first answer to the theme and to the building of a probable group emotionalidentity.