Soft signs for landscape representation. Two case studies across ligurian coast

The paper addresses the issue of territorial identity representation in order to point out how the complexity of the sites, their many vocations, their increasingly diversified use, can be expressed through mild and mutants signs, available to "light" but significant modifications. Precisely the use of flexible signs, which, on the one hand, have the "strength" of the code, on the other hand, the "vitality" of its dynamic elements, seems to constitute the foundational stretch of identity representation of the contemporary territory inasmuch "fluid organism", characterized by local and social practices, but open to exchanges (sometimes even just virtual ones) with individuals and cultures increasingly "distant." In this sense, therefore, it's important to represent what territory is, or those distinctive and unique traits that identify it as place where they are expressed specific traditions and cultures (architectural, artistic, landscape, socio-economic, etc.), but also what might be, its potential for use, its being available in different relationships with its users (people belonging to demographic groups, cultural, geographical also very different). In the light of these observations, the essay develops some reflections on contemporary communication linked to the Italian territory (in particular that of the two "Riviere") to try to illustrate the basic elements of the visual language and, in a historical-critical perspective, to read lines of continuity or discontinuities with the representations of the last century.