Khdem-Makhsus-Hosseini Leila Golamreza, Jabbarinasir Hasan Reza A STUDY OF RUSSIAN BIOPOLITICAL TECHNIQUES IN WOMEN’S BEAUTY AND HEALTH CARE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 172-189

Here, we explore how biopolitical techniques regulating women’s bodies address the health, longevity and propagation problems to approach the demographic crisis that Russia is facing. The research is the establishment of how and why women willingly care about their health and beauty, so that the state will enjoy healthy women as human capital, the labor force and the producer of the future labor force and Russian race. We study how the control of issues of Russian women’s diet, drinking, and beauty care can be influential factors as biopolitical techniques. The survey is based on the Foucauldian concept of governmentality that demands two complementary dimensions of biopolitics and neoliberal rationality. We investigate a triangle of neoliberal market, biopolitical rationality and women as active agents. We examine how neoliberal market produces knowledge via advertisement discourse about the ideal female subject; we demonstrate that neoliberal market marketizes health and beauty, leading women towards the state-desired way. Women as entrepreneurs invest their time and money in their human capital to enjoy social visibility and promotion. This is not objectification of bodies, rather a new form of subjectification. Habituating women toward healthy diet and moderate drinking, the state enjoys a healthy labor force. On the other hand, naturalization of sex difference by highlighting the essentially fit and attractive female body materializes the female body promising heterosexuality and obviously propagation. Moreover, conducting women to care about the beauty assures the maintenance of the myth of Russian woman’s stunning beauty. Beautified improved Russian woman’s body can mirror the superiority of race. We conclude that the reiteration of heteronormativity in all three sides of the mentioned triangle manifests that Russia uses traditional heteronormativity as a technique for managing the critical demographic situation. A feminist perspective on Russian biopolitics establishes the way the female body is regulated to divide the border between the viable subjects, the healthy, thin, fit and attractive female body and the opposing abject bodies threatening Russian demography and race. The analysis confirms that the conduct of women toward self-monitoring to gain the approved subjectivity promises healthy women as human capital. Besides, association of peculiar features to the female body constructs a truth about the normal female body, driving women to quest the constructed truth, which is naturalized as an essential feature. Attribution of properties to the female body and idealization of its man-pleasing peculiarities highlight the sex difference and contribute to the circulation of heterosexuality, which is a way to manage demographic problems.

Keywords: biopolitics, neoliberal market, governmentality, entrepreneur, subjectivity, health and beauty care, diet, female body, heteronormativity

Aliabieva Liudmila A., Furse Anna FASHION MEETS PERFORMANCE: COSTUME, CLOTHING AND THE PERFORMING BODY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 3 (33). P. 153-168

This interdisciplinary collaborative paper looks at the ways performing arts and fashion practices have impacted each other, such as the performative nature of some of the recent catwalk shows, including Dries van Noten’s 2021 collection and the late work of Alexander McQueen. The Body as presence, matter and meaning has become central to the arts both creatively and theoretically, with a sensory turn being emboldened by, for example, Affect Theory. Our paper notes the performative and body turn in fashion studies, and the way theatrical performance has emancipated the presence of costume – thinking of, in the UK, for example, the way Michael Clark’s early work collaborated with artists such as Leigh Bowery, the ethos of punk as an aesthetic, and the legacy of this innovation. We consider the move from the dominant gaze (director as uber author) to a more inclusive model, which recognizes that all participants, including costume designer, contribute to the ensemble creation of a performance – theatrical or catwalk. We also discuss the more recent move from made-from-scratch costume to the (adapted perhaps) found object as sustainable practice, from new and bought to second-hand, customised, recycled and upcyled. We include in our discussion the way some current theatrical costume designers have insisted on bringing their presence in the creative process to the fore, arguing for an insubordination of costume; and finally, we reflect on the difficult and slowly emerging issue of body emancipation, with changes in the modelling business including more faces and body types, and contrast this with examples of inclusive casting in theatrical performance. Finally, we consider practice as research as understood in UK universities. This model is used to capture what constitutes practice that should be taken seriously by the academic environment: the creation of “new knowledge” in ephemeral practice and durable reflective – and possibly argumentative – analysis. In writing this collaborative piece, speaking about performance fashion, about practice, and practice as research, the authors have inevitably mentioned resistance to isolation: isolation between disciplines, isolation between artists and theorists, isolation across boundaries, and the necessity of articulating ourselves so that we can speak the same language, understand each other and work together.

Keywords: fashion, performance, body, punk, prosthetics, dance, catwalk, Practice as Research

Mylnikova Irina Sergeevna MILITARY METAPHOR IN THE LANGUAGE PICTURE OF THE WORLD OF MEDICINE: YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 3 (29). P. 153-175

Traditionally, medicine was considered to be a territory of mercy, which the patient turned to not only for treatment, but also for moral support and compassion. Recently, however, patients and society as a whole have been increasingly confronted with the fact that medical professionals do not respond to this request: medical care has become a service, and patients are less and less likely to find comfort and consolation in the words of a doctor. Future doctors often lose the ability to respond to other people’s pain and to empathize at the stage of training when they absorb the specific atmosphere of the medical world, join its culture. One element of this culture is the language that doctors, as well as laypeople if they are concerned with medical issues, speak and write. An important element of any language is its metaphors. By analyzing the use of metaphors in medical discourse, one can get an idea of the linguistic world of medicine, and of the medical world as a whole. It is quite revealing that one of the most common metaphors in medical discourse is the military metaphor. Like any metaphor, it not only reflects, but also forms a picture of the world in people’s minds, playing both positive and negative roles. Its negative impact on the general atmosphere of the medical world has been recognized to be so significant that there is an increasing tendency to suggest that its use in medical discourse should be abandoned, and it should be replaced by metaphors of cooperation and harmony. The first among them is the metaphor of a journey, which nowadays enters quite organically into medical discourse. This metaphor allows the patient to comprehend their long life with an incurable disease, and the doctor to find their role of an older fellow traveler, instructor, guide in this journey; communication of the former with the latter may have a therapeutic effect. By analyzing the use of the military metaphor in medical discourse in a temporal context, we can conclude that “yesterday” it allowed us to create a more or less adequate picture of the medical world in the minds of people, “today”, not keeping pace with the changes occurring in this sphere, it begins to introduce distortion, from which both patients and medical staff, as well as society as a whole, suffer; therefore, “tomorrow” its use in medical discourse will most likely decrease, giving way to metaphors of peace, unity and harmony.

Keywords: medical discourse, military metaphor, metaphorical violence, metaphor of journey

Shiller Alexandra Victorovna EXPRESSION OF THE SIMULATED EFFECTS OF EMOTIONS IN ARTIFICIAL AGENTS AS A VISUAL LANGUAGE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 223-243

The number of studies on emotions has increased significantly during the past decades; new theories and models of the emotional system have appeared. It became clear to researchers that the phenomenon of emotions can be understood, used and modeled using two fundamental processes: the generation of emotions and the effects of emotions, as well as the associated modeling tasks. These tasks serve as building blocks for affective models and, for both processes, include the following components: identification of the set of areas; determination of the relationship between these areas (from emotion triggers to emotion generation, and from emotions to their effects); calculation of the intensity and magnitude to calculate the intensity of emotions in the process of the generation and the magnitudes of the effects in their occurrence; determination of functions that connect and integrate complex emotions. Interest in the problem of emotions also increases with the development of a new research direction: artificial intelligence research. Increasingly, there is a requirement for demonstration and reproduction of human-like behavior, which is very difficult to achieve without trying to model the emotional apparatus. Especially important is the modeling of emotions in the context of creating agents whose functionality is associated with communication with a human. For many practical tasks and problems (for example, recognition of emotions, realization of emotion effects or consequences), the development of machine learning technologies seems promising. However, the solution of particular tasks (such as the recognition of emotions by photo, text, etc.) has not yet led to a qualitative breakthrough in the modeling of emotional systems. Moreover, researchers are increasingly refusing to create a separate emotional system, appealing to the fact that the effects of emotions are realized in the behavior of the agent automatically if they were included in the datasets used to train the agent. An example of the practical implementation is a Microsoft chatter bot Tay released via Twitter. It quickly learned to write emotional texts, but it is clear that its behavior is not the result of the work of its own emotional system. But many researchers in the field of robotics, AI, man-computer interfaces, and cognitive sciences still create computational models based on the previously developed theories and the nature of emotions. The purpose of the emergence of such models is to create more reliable, humanlike and effective artificial characters (including NPCs, non-personal characters) and robots, and also to improve the quality of human-computer interaction. The article presents an analysis of the methodological difficulties of modeling the effects of emotions. This analysis represents a step towards formalizing the modeling of emotions and suggests a basis for developing a more systematic, general approach to modeling, as well as particular approaches to create models of the effects of emotions and generation of emotions. As a result of the analysis, a number of modeling principles are revealed, which must be taken into account. These principles, which form the basis of an agent’s modeled emotional system, can help researchers move towards the creation of a humanlike AI, which uses the emotional system as a visual language in communication.

Keywords: visual language, effects of emotions, modeling of emotions, architecture of artificial agent, AI – artificial intelligence

Dukhan Igor N., Staruseva-Persheeva Alexandra D. OPTICAL STRATEGIES OF NEW MEDIA: FROM PERSPECTIVISM TO DRIFTING GLANCE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 3 (33). P. 9-38

A new ontology of seeing introduced by cinéma d’auteur and video art is proposed in the present paper. This ontology is associated with the transition from a centered position of subjectivity and perspectival construction of reality belonging to classical art – to a slowed-down vision and “drifting” glance introduced by new media. These slowed, layered, drifting and uncentered types of vision and continuous plans of moving image make it possible to shape a new sensitivity of “matter” in its complex variety and specificity. This is where experimental film and video art provoke and shape a new ontology of seeing. The study is focused on cinéma d’auteur (A. Tarkovsky, L. Visconti, A. Kiarostami, I. Bergman) and aesthetically and structurally related video art pieces (P. Rist, G. Hill, E.-L. Ahtila, Y. Fudong, et al.). These artists created specific ways of guiding viewer’s glance by means of moving image; exploring the aesthetic potential of camera travelling, mis-en-scène and montage; outlining the frontier of contemporary screen culture as a promising “symbolic form” of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We analyze the shift from a static and centered position of the viewer of a classical painting (whose place is determined by the structure of the image’s perspective) – to the movie spectator, whose gaze, as Jean-Luc Nancy mentioned, “gets embedded” into the moving of the camera’s point of view (while the body remains motionless); and then to the drifting glance of the viewer of video art (walking in the space of a multi-channel installation or virtual reality). We argue that the transforming structures of the moving image and strategies of the gaze tend to shape new forms of sensibility in line with the current state of the communication society, the visuality of which is characterized by the ever-increasing speed and density of information, hybrid media flux, multi-layer texture, and fragmented image. In each section of the paper, we introduce one type of decentered image/glance, which is shaped in artistic experiment: (1) deep mise-en-scène (A. Bazin); (2) “empty center” (slowed-down or motionless camera losing interest in the hero); (3) “sliding glance” (smooth camera travelling, leveling all objects in significance); (4) “drifting glance” (associative poetic montage); and (5) multi-screen compositions (stratification of the moving image). In the 20th and 21st centuries, when information is transmitted, read, and accumulated at a supernormal speed, and reading it calls for a keen gaze, a diffused, drifting view turns out to be the mode of vision with which one can see the flux, dissimilation and ambiguity lying beneath the surface (screen) of contemporaneity. And artists who use moving image to create a model of a relaxed gaze and multi-faceted seeing accept this challenge; and the relaxed, decentered, drifting and wandering glance provokes the intensity of artistic seeking.

Keywords: new media, new media art, video art, cinema, experimental film, moving image, multimedia installation, multi-channel projection, virtual reality, symbolic form

Sosna Nina Nikolaevna SOUND IMAGE “IN A LANDSCAPE”, IMMEDIATE AND IMMERSIVE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 1 (23). P. 47-57

The article aims to investigate if there are possibilities to put questions of image beyond the field of the visual. Considering the sonic matter as a complementary source of images, the author demonstrates, on the one hand, the dependence of sound studies on visual studies. It can be seen in methodology that uses a pair of terms ‘hearing / listening’, ‘audible / unaudible’ similar to ‘look / regard’, ‘visible / invisible’, as well as in expansion of the subject field by including examples of dealing with sound beyond the frame of classical music theory. On the other hand, ecologically charged sound studies developing out of communication with visual studies, that equate a human listener with any object standing in the way of sound waves, diminish the possibility to speak about image. These studies emphasize the main characteristics of the impact of the sonic – immersion and immediacy, but at the same time accentuate the absence of tensions and specific constellations, the result of which could be an image. Contrary to the latter, Hunter Noack’s actions exemplify by means of a “natural” artistic gesture the opening of different sense perceptions one to the other in their generative functions to flash images.

Keywords: image, sound image, sound studies, ecology, noise, immersion, constellation, music.

Belyaletdinov Roman Rifatovich DELAYED RISKS: HOW THE IDEA OF INFORMED CONSENT IS CHANGING UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF BIOBANKS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 3 (29). P. 39-54

Taking into account standpoints of visual semiotics, the concept “delayed risks” is proposed. The concept fixes the basis (1) for analyzing the situation caused by the development of new forms of biomedical research, primarily genetic, on the platform of biobanks; and (2) for searching for a form of warning the participant of the experiment about risks with no evidence of an immediate danger to health, but in the distant future potentially conflicting with the participant’s personal ideas about the good. The problematic situation is formed by the specificity of studies in biobanks, which technically do not allow requesting informed consent for each specific study. The article provides an overview of the emerging solutions to the problem. These solutions are associated with new forms of consent for participation in biomedical research – extended forms that are given for multiple studies, without informing the biobank donor about each specific biomedical research for which his/her bio-samples are used. However, the relevance of such forms of consent is controversial, stimulated by the precedents mentioned in the article, as well as hypothetical circumstances. The article provides arguments in favor of rethinking the actual health risk connected with the form of conventional informed consent as a delayed risk correlated with sociohumanitarian value intentions that are associated with the idea of the relationship between autonomy and welfare. The transition from a specific risk to a value risk delayed in time by its effect can be represented by public mechanisms. The actions of these mechanisms are controlled by the institutions of sociohumanitarian expert examinations and bioethics, which are responsible for legitimizing the change in the pragmatics of informed consent. But in this “buffer zone” between the interests of technoscience, which includes biobanks, and participants in biomedical experiments, there remains a place for the positions of paternalism. The potentials of visual semiotics make it possible to distinguish these positions (both in social optics and in individual optics). The “new ethic” serves to understand the direction of optical instrument development by establishing multiple angles for considering the configuration of delayed risks. Visualization of delayed risks is achievable on the basis of semiotic diagnostics of the value intentions of participants in biomedical experiments, which will make it possible for biobank donors to control the occurrence of contradictions between their beliefs and the use of their biomaterials, and, in a broad perspective, this serves as the basis for trust in the institution of biobanks. The need for visualization of delayed risks determines the emergence of new types of research with human participation (the transition from single biomedical studies in humans to multiple biomedical studies on human biomaterials), as well as the emergence of new types of risks: from specific health risks in a single study to the large-scale socio-humanitarian consequences of possible unethical research in the framework of multiple studies based on biobanks.

Keywords: delayed risks, visualization of delayed risks, semiotic diagnostics, biobanks, autonomy, informed consent, technoscience, autonomy

Dolgov Alexander Yurievich “DIFFERENT TROUBLES ARE POSSIBLE ON THE WAY”: WHAT SPECIALISTS SAY ABOUT MEDICAL GENETICS IN RUSSIA (BASED ON RESULTS OF EXPERT INTERVIEWS) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 3 (29). P. 97-115

The article presents an analysis of expert interviews (N=13) based on the ideas of semiotic diagnostics. The interviews were conducted with Russian specialists in the fields of human genetics, medical genetics, and genomic medicine. The relevance of such diagnostics is due not only to the specificity of the above mentioned fields, which caused the emergence of new ideas about the role of the genome as a code and about the procedures of its editing, but also to the essence of social and humanitarian assessment of innovation, expressed in the finding of differences in the images of the present and the future, which all actors of the sphere of new technologies use. The aim of the study is to find out how experts look at the growth of the popularity of genetics, how they describe the expectations and requests from the government and society, what problems, in their opinion, they face in the development of scientific knowledge in Russia. In analyzing the data, the following main topics were highlighted: uncertainty; government support and regulation; the professional community problems; ethical limitations and responsibility to patients; expectations, fears and prejudices of people. The problem of uncertainty is one of the key issues for the current stage of knowledge about human genome. Experts note that it is impossible to foresee the long-term consequences of the use of genetic technologies, but this does not mean that research activities should be suspended. According to experts, the problem of uncertainty is solved through cautious and thoughtful actions of specialists, who are guided by the values of scientific knowledge and professional ethics. The government’s interest in the results of genetic research plays a controversial role. On the one hand, government support measures (such as financial, administrative) are being improved; on the other hand, excessive regulation of scientific activities appears, while many issues remain unresolved in terms of their legal regulation. In addition, experts have described problems that arise in the scientific and medical communities. Experts see the emergence in the scientific and organizational field of participants who monopolize resources through cooperation with the government as a process that will lead to restrictions on the free dissemination of scientific knowledge. There is also a problem in the academic community at the level of interaction with doctors who do not work with genetic data and are not ready to accept new diagnostic and treatment methods. Experts call ethical limitations and responsibility to patients the main principles of their work. In the experts’ statements, professional ethics is a working self-regulatory mechanism that warns against ill-considered actions. Finally, experts note that people are not ready to introduce genetic technologies into their everyday lives. This is partly due to the consumer attitude toward new services in the field of medical genetics, as far as people expect quick and clear answers and results from it; partly due to unfounded fears and myths, visualized in contemporary culture, about the danger of everything related to genetics. Thus, scientific knowledge about genes collides with different collective ideas, interests, fears, political and ideological attitudes, which ultimately affects scientists themselves.

Keywords: expert interviews, semiotic diagnostics, medical genetics, human genetics, genomic medicine, doctors, patients, government, ethics

Fereński Piotr Jakub HOW TO GO BEYOND THE WALLS OF THE ACADEMY AND RETURN? // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 1 (23). P. 93-103

The city as one of the most important phenomena of the modern globalized world is the subject of investigations of various scientific disciplines. It is important phenomena for studies on the history of civilization, on urbanization processes, on the development of architecture, on the relationships between spatial planning and religious and political ideas, for studies on social and economic changes, for studies on urban ways of life, studies on the history of art, as well as critique of contemporary art. There are also elementary analyzes of a city in the field of literary studies, sound studies, performance studies, psychology (the perception of space and its properties), pedagogy, political science (interested in direct democracy or even urban movements). The issues of optimization of models of the city’s functioning are important for departments oriented on transport and infrastructure (water, gas etc.), as well as underground construction (car parks, garages, tunnels, metro). Informatics dealing with the process of creation of new communication technologies is involved in the design of “smart city”. The faculties of biology or environmental protection conduct research and didactic activities in the field of “applied ecology” – relations that occurring between the human environment and nature. Today technological innovation and creative power of culture are the key to the development of the city. However, what does it mean for the representatives of humanities? What can they bring to it? The city space then appears as a heterogeneous place, full of constant tensions, collisions, circulation of meanings, values, representations, as well as the field of great social experiments. I perceive the human practices and creations as something that is a subject to constant transformation and that constantly requires new readings. In my search, I often go beyond the walls of the academy and try to sense the character of the city and experience its space with all my senses. I keenly observe the ways of life of the inhabitants, their daily practices. I listen to what they say and read what they manifest on the walls of buildings. This peculiar wandering around the city is aimed at capturing what is visible, but also at reaching what remains inaccessible to us at first glance. It is a collection of notes, it is an attempt at visual and audio recording of the surrounding world, which I then try to structure and interpret. However, as experts, we academics need to “go out” to the city also in a different way – we must take the floor in public debates and have an influence on the decisions of various municipal institutions, have an impact on local politics. There is a discussion about the role of the university in shaping urban space and life in the city.

Keywords: visual studies of urban culture, academy, university, scientific disciplines, culture, city, urban space, daily practices, flaneur, ocularcentrism, conceptual rationalism, politics.

Koval Oxana Anatolievna, Kazantseva Zlata Vladimirovna A LOOK INTO THE DEPTH OF TIME: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTION OF A MYTHICAL REALITY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 3 (25). P. 156-167

The essay attempts to present the art of photography as a special relationship with time. A photograph is most often seen as a fixation of the present moment. Nevertheless, it contains the entire temporal spectrum: on the one hand, it corresponds with the past, acting as its documentary evidence; on the other hand, it is always created with the prospect of subsequent viewing, i.e., in the anticipation of its completion in the future. The uniqueness of time connections in photographs lies in the fact that the present does not crowd out the past and does not give way to the future, but they all coexist on an equal basis. According to the biblical tradition, such a fullness of times was traced in life in paradise. The mythopoetic model, reconstructed on the basis of the traditional Christian doctrine of the world’s creation, suggests an absolute modus temporis. It is thought as a transitional stage from the self-identical eternity of God to the constant variability of human existence after the Fall. At first glance, the perfected technique of photography seems to be the exact opposite of the artlessness that distinguished the life of the first man. However, as the analysis shows, it is the technical capabilities of modernity that offer us special optics that can bring the lost chronotope of paradise closer. The reference of photography as the art of the new epoch, the epoch of modernity, to such archaic ideas is justified in the essay through the attraction of the philosophical reflections of Walter Benjamin. His eschatological understanding of history caused nostalgia for the ideal condition of being that was lost by mankind. This made it possible to consider photography as an artistic expression of the figurative and symbolic model of the initial time. If to apply the method of time interpretation in spatial categories Benjamin invented to photos, one can establish its important role in the (re)production of cultural meanings, reveal the secret of its attractiveness as an idealizing practice, and find its heuristic potential that opens a new perspective on the nature of time. The mythological element of the photographic art eludes the modern viewer due to excessive visualization of the world. However, it is this element that legitimizes the “archaeological” approach to the study of photography and introduces a certain element of the miraculous into the process of technical reproducibility of new media. The magic of photography manifests itself as an echo of the primeval universum, in which the divine eternity still guarantees the immortality of the current moment.

Keywords: art of photography, time, biblical model of time, image theory, Walter Benjamin, aura, modern, media

Kostina Alina Olegovna DATA VISUALIZATION AND CONCEPTUALIZATION ON ACADEMIC DIGITAL PLATFORMS: THE SUCCEEDED ISSUES OF KNOWLEDGE STORAGE AND THE NEW CHALLENGES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 30-45

Digital platforms present revolutionary phenomena that fundamentally change the way both scientific research and its metadata are stored and organized. Platforms inherit features of classical libraries, at the same time seen as revolutionary, implementing algorithms and interactive methods of systematization and analytics. Adequate access to research data and metadata is perceived as the result of a high-quality storage organization. The latter is aimed to provide an adequate picture of research fields’ conditions and interactions, as well as the prospects of their development. While data is related to researches themselves, metadata demonstrate social aspects of scientific work: researches, institutions and projects they conduct. The lack of a universal workflow of entering data leads to multiple misrepresentations, among others, about the platforms themselves. Understanding of platforms as autonomous structures, “black boxes” with “mysterious” algorithms, significantly limits intellectual access to issues required to be resolved in relation to them. The workflow of entering and processing data and metadata is dependent on the competences of the actors, mentioned above. Should a scientist, focused on actual research, be well equipped technically to avoid misrepresentation of scientific results on their part? Should a data scientist be universally educated so they can comply with the standards of historical indexers? Indexing itself is one of the main focuses of the article. It is analyzed in two respects: as an instrument of textual search (on the example of early medieval practices) and as an instrument of navigation in multiple fields of research on a platform. The index is construed here in accordance with its initial function of a pointer, on the one hand, and as a “map-reading”, which not only reads, but also creates the maps of communications in disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields, on the other. This observation highlights the necessity to overcome a number of difficulties. The first one is correspondence between the conceptual and technical levels of the platform organization. Another issue is the way classical methods optimize and visualize data within the realm of digital storage. Indexing, science mapping and complex systems engaged cannot be unambiguously evaluated. They all are methods used to simultaneously optimize and politicize data (as it is demonstrated in the “politics of the list”). The given analysis shows the need for constant work on the correspondence of the conceptual, visual and technical levels of academic platforms: technical issues could not be perceived independently from the conceptual ones, whether they are related to the data or metadata of research. The progress of knowledge and communication of scientific communities demonstrate themselves as dependent on the strategies related to the methodological apparatus that determines the quality of research data and metadata representation.

Keywords: academic platforms, digital platforms, data, metadata, indexing, science mapping, network science

Nahirny Rafał GOOGLE’S CARS AND VISUAL RESISTANCE IN URBAN SPACE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 2 (20). P. 33-41

The article discusses how city residents react to the sight of Google cars taking pictures for the use of the Street View service? The author notes that the vast majority behaves completely normal as if the Google car was not even there. It is observed that some of the residents of the Street View world wave in a friendly manner towards the camera lens, some of them smile or take selfies with the vision machine passing by. However, there are some that opt for spontaneous gestures displaying displeasure at the presence of a nosy technology in their everyday space. The author creates an introductory typology of the methods of visual resistance and then proceeds with an analysis of specific strategies.

Keywords: Google Street View, urban space, vision machine, methods of resistance

Joussellin Charles, Mailenova Farida Gabdelkhakovna, Popova Olga Vladimirovna VISUALISATION, SUBJECTIVITÉ ET MALADIE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 156-171

La santé et la maladie sont des facteurs subjectifs qui se développent au plus profond du sujet, et ce n’est qu’alors qu’ils sont exprimés à l’extérieur. La ligne de démarcation entre normal et pathologique est inexacte pour un groupe de personnes : où s’arrête la santé ? Ceci peut être évalué à la fois objectivement, par la recherche et le diagnostic, et en fonction du sentiment intérieur du sujet. Il est également extrêmement important de tenir compte de ce que la personne ressent et dit pendant le traitement. Un langage imagé aide à entrer en contact avec le corps. Les capacités créatives d’une personne peuvent non seulement rendre sa vie plus brillante et plus heureuse, mais aussi l’aider à surmonter la maladie. Les psycho-technologies telles que les metaphors thérapeutiques sont un moyen étonnant d’utiliser l’imagerie pour se guérir et se guérir soi-même.

Keywords: bioéthique, maladie, santé, subjectivité, autonomie, psychotechnologie, visualisation, métaphores thérapeutiques, communication humainistique, santé

Rodin Kirill Aleksandrovich A GENTLE WOMAN BY ROBERT BRESSON // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 190-202

As known, Robert Bresson rejects the widespread theatrical forms of film adaptation of a literary text. The use of author’s expressive means in cinema creates a separate, unique (characteristic almost exclusively for Bresson) space for the interpretation of literary texts. Bresson’s style in cinema makes it possible to change (transform) the narrative structure of the text being filmed subtly but radically and, at the same time, to remain faithful to the spirit of the original text. So, any Bresson adaptation is interesting also as an original reading (in many ways different from literary or theatrical readings). In the article, I trace the author’s methods of transforming and at the same time preserving the spirit of the screened work on the example of the film A Gentle Woman based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s story “A Gentle Creature” or (sometimes translated as) “The Meek One”. In the first part of the article, I offer an immanent analysis of the story and try to show the meta-plot nature of the main intrigue (at the plot level, the decisive events are immediately known and do not constitute any intrigue). The main character and at the same time the narrator leads a monologue (the story is exhausted by the narrator’s monologue) to clarify the truth of the event (his wife’s suicide) and determine his own degree of guilt. Along with other underground types and characters, the main character gets confused in his own mind and hesitates between self-exposure (admission of guilt to the Meek) and self-justification. Against the background of the monologue of the protagonist (the diegetic narrator), the silence of the Meek, together with the uncertainty of the motives of her behavior and a very general description of her character, becomes an important key element in the structure of the narrative. I prove the inconsistency of interpretive attempts to break the silence of the Meek to explain her character or her suicide. In the second part of the article, I pay special attention to the context of Dostoevsky’s remarks about various types of suicide from A Writer’s Diary and show the impossibility of explaining the Meek’s suicide by any logical or explanatory schemes (which always work in the case of other Dostoevsky’s suicidal characters). For Dostoevsky, the Meek’s suicide differs from the other described suicides and remains incredible and inexplicable. In the concluding part of the article, I consistently trace the transformation of the text in the film. The erasure of the traits of the hero’s underground consciousness and the diminution of the role of diegetic narration (without which it is impossible to imagine the meta-plot basis of the story) in the film leave intact the understatement of the Meek’s character and the vagueness of the motives of her suicide. With the radical transformation of the story, Bresson retains the silence of the Meek as the main structural defining element. At the same time, the understatement of the character and the vagueness of the Meek’s motives in the film point to an insurmountable gap between possible explanatory schemes and an anguish pushing towards a suicide and a feeling of impossibility to live. Bresson also reproduces the ambiguity and uncertainty of the protagonist against the background of despair and belated admission of his own guilt.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Bresson, underground consciousness (man), suicide, diegetic narrator

Surovtsev Valery Aleksandrovich, Goncharenko Mark Vasil'evich PARADOXICAL CONCEPTS, QUINE’S CONSTRUCTIVISM, AND OBSERVATION SENTENCES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 4 (26). P. 150-159

The article examines Willard Van Orman Quine’s approach to the problem of paradoxical concepts in the context of their relationship with reality. Quine’s thesis, according to which it is necessary to resolve paradoxes where they appeared and not to extend them to reality, is analyzed. It has been suggested that observation sentences, being intermediaries between language and reality, in retrospective analysis, always turn out to be the primary points in the development of theories due to the constant incompleteness of empirical concepts. The working hypothesis of the study is as follows: the possibility of a particular theory, as a specific variant of the organization of empirical concepts, is determined by observation sentences arising from the schematization of reality and often producing paradoxes.

Keywords: paradoxes, ontology, observation sentences, theories, universe of reasoning, Willard Van Orman Quine

Tolmacheva Ekaterina Borisovna CONSTRUCTING AN ETHNIC IMAGE: APPROACHES TO VISU-ALIZATION OF HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL FACTS (ON THE EXAMPLE OF PHOTO DOCUMENTS FROM IVAN POLYAKOV’S COLLECTION) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 1 (27). P. 180-200

The article examines the archival photo documents of the 1860s–1870s, stored in the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and graphic materials created on their basis. These images reflect the trends of the second half of the 19th century in the visualization of ethnic features. The desired effect was achieved both through various expressive means and by manipulating the recorded information via compilation, retouching and textual accompaniment. The author’s aesthetic vision of beauty and exoticism often dominated in these pictures. Saturation with visual information was more likely to attract clients to purchase such an image. The comparison of the original and secondary data shows how the artificial information content and the integration of aesthetic approaches were reflected in the specificity of ethnic representation. The careful investigation of specific im-ages suggests where to look for difficult situations, allows avoiding loose interpretation and supporting the conclusions with specific facts. The museum received Collection No. 106 from the scientist Ivan Polyakov. The collection of photos is heterogeneous and includes two sets of documents: (1) prints acquired from various photographers during trips across the Russian Em-pire: the Caucasus, Siberia, the Volga region, Kazakhstan; (2) prints of photos Polyakov took during his own expedition along the Ob River to study local people. The history of the collection demonstrates how difficult it is to find out the origin of a photographic document and then to study its content. An example of changing attribution for a set of six photos from the collection is considered in the text. This group of documents is interesting because it vividly demonstrates conventions in depicting gender and national differences. All the photos show the same man. However, in three of them, he presents three variants of the Samoyed male costume; in the oth-er three, two variants of the female costume. The attribution of the photos is not clear to date. It is known that they were displayed at the ethnographic exhibition in Moscow in 1867 as images of the European group of Samoyeds (Nenets people) from Arkhangelsk Province. However, in the museum’s collection, they are registered with the title “Ostyak and Samoyed Winter Cos-tumes”. We can see how this change of attribution is reflected in the illustration and text error in the book about travel across Russia by Otto Finsch and Alfred Brehm. In the second part of the article, photo documents are considered as a source for creating graphic art works, in particular by the artist Mikhail Znamensky. Three color drawings, whose objects he borrowed from the prints of Collection No. 106, are analyzed in detail. Znamensky combined the objects with visu-al data from other sources and created new works of his own. The artist placed earlier samples into the new pieces of art. As a result, the original context presented in the original source was lost or altered. People drawn from photographs were assigned activities they did not do or this information was not embedded in the original image. The author colored his images copied from monochrome photographs and chose the color of the clothes at his discretion. The characters taken from different documents and placed in the narrative of the combined pictures turned out to be connected with each other by different semiotic links and created contexts in the new plots. Thus, representing various phenomena and cultures, a community of characters and events from different-time documents was created. This gave rise to unification and created ethnic stereotypes. Undoubtedly, people who created such constructs were more than far from thinking about a conscious falsification of data and from understanding that, in the historical perspective, the analysis of their compilations can lead to false conclusions. Their work, which concentrated information, responded to the needs of their time; it allowed contemporaries to see the diversity of life, without reference to special literature.

Keywords: ethnography studies, Khants, Ostyaks, Nenets, Samoyeds, photography, visual anthropology, source criticism, museum collection

Ivanov Dmitry Igorevich FILM CONSTRUCT MODELING: A SYSTEM OF PRECEDENT-PERSONIFIED POLITICAL MARKERS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 3 (25). P. 41-58

The article offers an authorial model for studying film construct based on cognitive-pragmatic programs. The cognitive-pragmatic program (CPP) theory synthesizes various approaches and has a wide range of applications. CPP is a conceptual matrix of meaningful activity and a support system of cognitive-pragmatic sets. This is a universal concept linking the cognitive mechanisms of an individual/collective/people with the pragmatics of cognitively conditioned behavior/action. CPPs, unlike abstract models, are found in the most diverse areas and spheres of human activity: they are not abstract schemes, but everyday (in the case of daily actions) or, on the contrary, “strategic” (for example, for a politician or artist) programming and self-programming, a vital reflection of goals, means, and results accompanied by self-identification. In terms of this theory the author considers the film construct as a specific synthetic (creolized) form of embodiment and transmission (translation) of one or several CPPs that have received the status of the foundation of subjective reality (i.e., they determine the consciousness, self-consciousness, and behavior of the characters of the film). The article substantiates the typology of film constructs according to the type of the dominant CPP built on the principle of an “inverted pyramid” (from an abstract conceptual-semantic “peak” to broad specifics). The system of precedent-personified political markers—a special system of conceptual codes of political discourse that has a precedent status in this discourse—is studied in detail. These markers are actively involved in the plot formation, in the differentiation and segmentation of the entire space of the CPP dominating in the film; they are sharp psychological indicators of the consciousness of the subjective environment of the film construct. The roles of specific markers differ, but they all characterize the aggressive and destructive internal nature of the dominant industrial CPP (Soviet ideological model), the genetic and “strategic” homogeneity of its options, which equally require manipulations with consciousness, a permanent fight against “enemies” and total terror. In general, the system of precedent-personified political markers in the space of the political (ideological) film construct is capable of embodying multi-layer semantics and can set its defining properties.

Keywords: cognitive-pragmatic program (CPP), political (ideological) film construct, political identification marker, precedent-personified marker, modeling, mythologization, total terror, viral-manipulative nature of CPP

Shipovalova Lada Vladimirovna THE DESTINY OF VISUALIZATIONS IN PUBLIC SCIENCE COMMUNICATION: BETWEEN ACTION AND REPRESENTATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 273-292

The article discusses scientific visualizations in three contexts. The context of the visual turn emphasizes attention to the ambiguous character of images in social interactions – as representations and as agents. The context of the crisis of scientific representations concerns scientific visualizations, which are the way out of it due to their linking of theory and reality. The context of public science communication demonstrates visualizations as activity changing the relationship between public actors and as representation of important scientific information. In the transition from the second context to the third, the author finds the collision of the destiny of scientific visualizations. Visualizations in public science communication turn out to be both scientific and political objects that represent scientific research and take part in the processes of decision-making. In professional science communication, the ambiguous nature of scientific visualizations turns out to be constructive. Scientific visualizations exist simultaneously as representations referring to reality and as actions that bring together the scientific community. However, in public science communication, the assembly of a community through scientific visualizations turns out to be no less significant, but more problematic since the interests of the subjects participating in the interaction are different. Nevertheless, visualizations in public science communication work quite effectively, contributing to the dissemination of scientific literacy in the popularization and to the involvement of citizens in decision-making. In this case, conditions arise that prevent the retention of the constructive ambiguity of visualizations. As such conditions, the author examines the emerging digital mediators of communication that enhance the activities of visualizations, as well as uncertainty as a subject of “post-normal” science, which is difficult to represent through images. In conclusion, the author proposes a way out of this situation, contributing to the retention of the necessary ambiguity of visualizations in public science communication.

Keywords: scientific visualizations, public science communication, representation, objectivity, policy, digitalization, uncertainty

Evstratenko Anzhelika Vladimirovna THE ROAD SYMBOLISM IN THE ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 1 (27). P. 25-47

The article discusses the evolution of the architectural space of service objects in the zones of transport communication influence under worldview approaches. The highway is a publicly accessible and often primary carrier of the region's cultural traditions. The problem of philo-sophical knowledge of architecture as a form of culture in general and as applied to the research topic is connected with the development of public ideas and the progress of the engineering and construction industry. The construction of buildings and structures in the right-of-way spaces of large highways has a number of features, including the importance of natural and agricultural landscapes, low-rise buildings or their absence, the length of constructed complexes, the im-portance of sign communication. The importance of these features as an object of research with-in semiosis has not yet been fully assessed. The relevance of the work is conditioned by the cru-cial role of architecture in visual communication, the value-based practical perception and emo-tional and sensory exploration of the space of major highways. The author's aim is to analyse the semiotic role of the roadside development, the role being shaped when the dominant para-digms change. The research is based on factual data analysis through the prism of fundamental concepts. Some examples of how philosophical and cultural views influence the formation of architectural and planning structure of roadside objects are considered. The examples demon-strate that architectural objects in roadside spaces are not faceless, voluminous structures de-signed to meet the immediate needs of road users, but rather aesthetic and psychological forms of roadside area organisation that to a certain extent dictate user behaviour patterns. The func-tions of the architectural space are closely linked to the physiology of human perception and must be built on the visual properties of the environment. The preliminary situational analysis of the potential of the area and the image of roadside objects to “embed” architectural objects into the dynamically changing landscape must take into account the following: the environmental determinants and landscape values; the location of relatively large urban settlements, adjacent buildings (if any), road axes and open spaces; the dynamic perception of the space, the lines and corridors of visibility when a vehicle is moving; the points of the preferential view of the object; the visual and audial links between the main functional areas and the highway line. The form of existence and the ideological content of the road is a symbol of the chronotope of modernity, and its architectural arrangement is the main mechanism for transmitting culture. It is therefore important to find a way to preserve cultural identity in the application of this particular type of communication space. The analysis allows recommending the principles of highway develop-ment: consideration of the impact of local traditions, attractive integration, use of topography and expressive properties of the landscape, tolerance of architecture, environmental and social responsibility, sense of context, suitability for transformation, development of design code and branding. In the foreseeable future, the author believes that travel time will be treated as a use-ful experience, a learning and development activity, and a separate type of leisure time. We can speak about further transformation of the communication space into a useful or effective one and about other approaches to filling this space. Probable development scenarios for roadside buildings and structures, depending on the initial conditions of the terrain, are to provide condi-tioned external and internal visual connections of service areas and their optimal architectural and spatial organisation. The practical significance of the work lies in the possibility of using the results in further studies of roadside architecture development and identifying positive and neg-ative scenarios for the perception of this architecture.

Keywords: highway, communication corridor, roadside architecture, service zone, visual perception, space, architectural planning organization

Voloshin Mikhail Yuryevich 3D-VISUALIZATION OF MACROMOLECULES IN BIOINFORMATICS: // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 12-35

Bioinformatics scientists often describe their own scientific activities as the practice of working with large amounts of data using computing devices. An essential part of their self-identification is also the development of ways to visually represent the results of this work. Some of these methods are aimed at building convenient representations of data and demonstrating patterns present in them (graphics, diagrams, graphs). Others are ways of visualizing objects that are not directly accessible to human perception (microphotography, X-ray). Both the construction of visualizations and (especially) the creation of new computer visualization methods are considered in bioinformatics as significant scientific achievements. Representations of the three-dimensional structure of protein molecules play a special role in the inquiries of bioinformatics scientists. 3D-visualization of a macromolecule, on the one hand, is, like a graph, a representation of the results of computer processing of data arrays obtained by material methods – spatiotemporal coordinates of structural elements of the molecule. On the other hand, like microphotography, these 3D structures should serve as accurate representations of specific scientific objects. This leads to the parallel existence of two contradictory epistemic regimes: creative arbitrariness in making convenient, communicatively successful models, is combined with commitment to the object “as it really is”. The paradox is reinforced by the fact that the scientific study of objects in question (determining the properties of the structure, its functions, comparison with other structures) by means of computers does not require visualization at all. Its obviously high value for bioinformatics does not look justified if we take into account the prominent artificiality and artistry of the resulting images. However, the status of these images becomes clearer if we relate them to earlier notions of the role of the visual in scientific discovery. The highest estimation of visualization as the final result of scientific research was characteristic of Renaissance science. The artistic representation of ideal essential properties, instead of a strict correspondence to a particular biological object, is an epistemic virtue typical of the naturalists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Both suggested a close collaboration between the scientist and the artist; and standards for visualizing macromolecules in bioinformatics grow out of a similar collaboration (Geis’ drawings). The desire for maximum accuracy and detail inherits the regulation of “mechanical objectivity” (as Daston and Galison put it into words), for which it is also important to eliminate humans from the image production process (in bioinformatics, to transfer these functions to computer programs). Thus, 3D-visualization of protein structures bears traces of historically different value orientations, but the scientific practice of the 20th and 21st centuries, supplemented by computer technologies, allows them to be intertwined in particular disciplinary units.

Keywords: epistemology, visualization, scientific object, bioinformatics, data analysis

Troitskaya Anna Alekseevna MODELING HISTORY: RETROSPECTION AS AN ARTISTIC DEVICE IN WILLIAM ESSEX’S MINIATURES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 4 (26). P. 160-171

The article addresses the artworks of William Essex, an English enamel-painter, who created a series of the Tudors’ historical portraits. In the context of general interest in English history, as well as a certain retrospective trend peculiar for the Victorian era, William Essex`s works exemplify the miniature portraits as the embodiment of images from the past and as something characteristic to the past. The tradition of small-size portraits intended for private contemplation is quite old, and the British, who have succeeded in the development of the portrait genre, have been rather keen on it for several centuries. The article considers William Essex’s miniatures from the point of view of the stylistic and technical aspects of the genre, which allows casting some light on the issues related to the change of perception of this minor art form. The paradox of duplication by Essex of original sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century miniatures is investigated in the article from the standpoint of the theory and practice of collecting as a way of interaction with history. The reason why the miniatures were commissioned by the Queen is both in necessity to create a gallery of family history of the English crown and in the Victorians` taste for reconstruction of the past. The choice of form for its embodiment is determined by the preference for personal, private miniature art, which gives a sentimental character to the appeal to history. In the context of the origin and spread of daguerreotypes at the time, enamel miniatures act as representatives of images of the past and the phenomenon of the fading handmade art, displaced by new technical means. In addition, Essex’s work on the Tudors’ historical portraits, with his aim for formal and stylistic resemblance, is included in a complex retrospective mechanism, like a double quote, since the sources of the reproduced miniatures were also not painted from the life and had their own originals. The analysis of artistic and imagery methods, characteristic for this series of miniatures, as well as the description of the historical circumstances in which the customer took interest in the specific images from the past, allows exposing a fine line between imitation and stylization, between tradition and idealization. In conclusion, it is stated that the specific artistic experience of the creation of these miniatures reveals a peculiar way to refer to the cultural memory, to assert some family and national values evoked in the process of the formation of the collection. Here the practice of collecting (one of the manifestations of the Victorian visual culture) is closely connected with the modeling of English history and the artistic taste of the era.

Keywords: William Essex, Nicholas Hilliard, portrait miniature, visual representation, collecting, daguerreotype, Bosworth Jewel, mechanisms of retrospection

Pirogov Sergey Vladimirovich, Kashpur Vitaliy Viktorovich, Dunaeva Daria Olegovna AXIOLOGICAL COMPONENT IN THE STRUCTURE OF VISUAL IMAGES OF THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 1 (31). P. 75-89

The article is dedicated to the possibilities of studying the axiological attitude towards the urban environment on the basis of user-generated content in social networks. The visual image of the city in the context of digital footprints is considered to be a cognitive model of the urban environment, which reflects interpretative and projective constructions – subjective ideas about the environment loci that become adopted “places” and express certain axiological attitudes and expectations of individuals. The article shows that the content of social networks implements, first of all, a communicative function – between users, and between them and the city itself. Interpersonal communication and communication with the city are conditions for constructing personal identity and for the city existence and change. The city exists, in particular, as an urban identity, in forms of adopted places of urban space. The described tendency of the urban environment appropriation is quite clearly expressed in the visual materials of urban communities, which appear as a new and significant phenomenon. The analysis of user-generated content in social networks shows that photographs poorly represent the city dwellers’ vital values of everyday life, but they express their existential needs. The dominant value-semantic meaning of the urban environment is its ability to be developed and appropriated by a person

Keywords: city image, axiological analysis, urban environment, social networks

Grebenshchikova Elena Georgievna SOCIOTECHNICAL REGIME OF GENOME TECHNOLOGIES: INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS ON BIOTECHNOSCIENCE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 3 (29). P. 83-96

The starting point of the theoretical analysis of the article is the concept of a sociotechnical regime, which reveals the relationship between inertial and innovative trends, as well as the mutual influence of intrascientific and sociocultural factors on the development of technoscience. The author focuses on the transformative potential of genetic technologies, which are often described as promising, disruptive, platform, breakthrough, etc. In the center of the author’s research interest are the CRISPR-Cas9 human genome editing technology and preimplantation genetic diagnostics. They have been shaped by the regulations, laboratory practices, academic institutions, markets, infrastructure, etc. of the current sociotechnical regime. In turn, they began to influence the regime gradually. Innovations in genetics affect social ideas about health and disease, about human nature, about the ratio of the hereditary and the social, about ways to prevent and treat many diseases, promising to solve many problems in health care and, in a radical version, to “enhance” human nature. The assessment of innovations by society is largely determined by the socially constructed meanings of genetics – metaphors, myths, images, narratives, which allow comprehending the unknown through familiar discourses and symbols, and embedding it in ideas about the prospects for biotechnology development. The social significance of many technologies and the attention of society to this issue emphasize the need to take into account the social and humanitarian dimensions of modern innovations, avoiding narrowly technological and one-sided approaches. At the same time, communication between science and society should be open and constructive in how the technology is developed and what risks may arise as a result of its use. This communication should take into account the experience of previous polemics and social representations of biotechnoscience, as shown in the article using the example of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technologies and PGD. Bioethics can play a significant role in communication processes, for it is focused on transdisciplinary ways of coordinating different positions that ensure the efficiency and validity of social acceptance of innovations – the admissibility of some technologies and social concerns about others.

Keywords: metaphor, narrative, discourse, biotechnoscience, sociotechnical regime, genome editing, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, bioethics

Fadeeva Tatiana Evgenievna VIEWER IN THE VIRTUAL REALITY SPACE: PLANETARY OPTICS’ FORMATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 3 (33). P. 73-96

This article discusses a special way of the bodily presence of the viewer in various works designed for virtual reality. In some of them, the viewer is not able to interact with the world of a virtual installation and influence the events taking place in it (although they can, for example, move through the digital space); in others, there is a limited quality of presence at the perception (but not action) level leading to a meaningful result: when the viewer is compelled to observe events as the director/artist intended – their gaze is built into the point of view of the director or camera. Finally, there is a third type of VR projects where we find an enhancing user interaction with the digital environment. Viewer’s capacities – including the ability to move in the space of the installation and interact with it – depend on the “genealogy” of a particular VR piece. There are basically two types of VR pieces that have the same image and sound output devices, but differ significantly from each other in the way moving image is produced and in the kind of effect produced on a recipient. The first type involves the creation of real-life decoration with actors in it filmed on a panoramic camera (a device with a 360-degree view). This kind of the piece is similar to panoramic cinema: it is basically a film that provides a high-quality image and a bright immersive effect, but does not provide the viewer (just like classical cinema) with the opportunity to interact with screen reality. In these cases interactivity goes down to choosing the point of observation and following the camera. Examples reviewed in the current article include such pieces as “Caves”, “Container”, “Montegelato” (demonstrated at the Venice VR Expanded, 2021 program), etc. The second type of VR is based on creation of virtual space and 3D models of characters and objects inside it (“Goliath”, “Anandala”, “Last Worker”, “Samsara”, “Lavrinthos”, also viewed in Venice). These pieces are technically part of a game-design framework since they are constructed on game “engines” and imply a high degree of interactivity. Here the emphasis is on the interaction with an artificially created world, even though authors may limit the viewer’s ability to act within the VR space and make only limited number of choices. Observing various strategies of interaction in VR, I outline three kinds of them: (1) lack of interaction; (2) limited interaction (participation at the level of perception, but not action); (3) full-fledged interaction. Artists put the very phenomenon of interactivity into question each time eliminating certain aspects of this experience. For example, a user can be deprived of an ability to move (as in the Tree VR project offering one to “be” a tree that cannot “respond” to the violence committed against it) or, conversely, granting one such “rights” and “powers” in the virtual world that are hardly imaginable in everyday practices (flight, telekinesis, etc.). The element of interactivity may either structure the project or, on the contrary, be “bracketed”, users’ actions (participation or the lack of it) turn into means of artistic expression. What kind of expression? How can we describe the experience that a viewer gets interacting with VR pieces? The current article provides an answer to these questions in a broad sociocultural context, including issues of bio- and digital ethics. I examine the VR pieces of the first and second type (where a viewer is limited in actions and cannot influence the events taking place in the installation) and explore the difference between them, conceptualize the compelled inaction of the viewer. In this regard, based on the concept of event introduced by French philosopher A. Badiou (meaning something that changes the frame of our perception of reality), I agrue that VR technologies can be considered as a machine for producing events – an apparatus for actualizing potentialities that are converted into events for the viewer and in the future may or may not become a reality. It depends on whether the viewer decides to “embed” the opportunity offered by the virtual event into their Weltbild. For example, one could take off VR-glasses and transfer the aesthetic affect into some kind of action in reality beginning to show greater social responsibility, taking part in social assistance programs, becoming more tolerant, etc. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by experiments conducted in the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University (USA). Furthermore, I focus on projects that create the possibility of communicating and interacting with nonhuman agents that populate the space of VR installations. And the emphasis is shifted from the “anthrope”, who is used to seeing oneself in the center of the world (a subjective position that has been constructed in Western culture since the Renaissance) to the play of nonhuman entities. This pulls up the paradigm of anthropocentrism, basic to European culture, and provides one with an ability to think and act on a completely different level — on extra-egocentric one. In case when the viewer has freedom of movement and interaction within the VR world, the rules and restrictions that the artist/director imposes on this interaction are important, since the quality of viewer’s experience will be shaped by it. It is the need to perform motoric actions aimed at achieving a specific goal (or the impossibility of doing so, as in case of projects of the first and second types) that shapes viewer’s identity in the field. In a VR installation of the third type (“full-fledged presence”), the viewer can, like an actor in the Stanislavsky Theater, become an actor “in the proposed circumstances”. The elements of such installation and models of user’s interaction scenarios with its interface (including motoric actions) are aimed at helping the viewer get immersed into their “role”. However, if in theatrical plays and films actors were supposed to perform for a spectator to follow the plot and transfer their emotional and cognitive projections onto it, in VR these projections are turned onto the viewer. Thus, in the field of virtual reality, languages of various arts intersect: theater, cinema, game design, etc. are giving rise to multiple hybrid formats of experience. Projects of the third type can also be seen as shattering the viewer’s habitual egocentric position. Such projects, which problematize our experience as a contingent construct, make it possible to design an experience of alternative subjectivity. I argue that the development of virtual reality makes it possible to build the experience of a new sensual plane: a re-subjectivised and superhuman vision of multidimensional relationships between phenomena and events in the world. Thereby our way of thinking is being brought to a completely different level: an extra-egocentric state that forms a new optics of “planetary vision”. ”Planetary optics” does not imply a view from afar. The precise (not abstract) way of thinking is a challenging thing; it is hard to get away from reducing reality to familiar schemes, binary oppositions and common hierarchies. That is why, while analyzing the strategies of artists working with the medium of VR throughout this article, I focus on pieces where these familiar schemes get overturned. A hunter becomes a prey, an actor becomes a non-participant, and so on. The binaries of male and female, Eurocentrism and Orientalism, nature and culture, animal and machine get blurred not to erase the boundaries between them but with the aim of offering the spectator-actor a new perspective or even a set of perspectives, points of view, positions of various stakeholders, polarities and experience of a multipolar world. “Planetary optics” does assume a multipolar world (after all, we cannot block some part of it and separate ourselves from other beings, we are too intertwined with other techno- and biological actors) — and one of the ways to achieve this multipolar way of thinking can be through the experience offered by the VR medium, an artistic image that becomes personal experience. And, in turn, existing experience will allow the viewer to attain a more flexible and tuned perception, correlating it with the Weltbild, perhaps, of social groups far from it with their own interests, which however must be taken into account. Therefore, VR as a medium has not only artistic, but also social meaning, since it may concretize and focus human thinking, prone to abstraction, it may synthesize the sensual and the rational. The further development of virtual reality will perhaps make it possible to build a visual experience of a new kind: one associated with a different scale of view, different assemblage points, the experience of a hybrid space that combines the virtual and the real (what might be called a “meta screen”), so that the user will be able to look at the world with a different vision (for example, to see multidimensional connections and networks of actors in different approximations).

Keywords: VR, virtual reality, installation, contemporary art, agency, nonhuman agent, new media, media art

Nikiforova Larisa Viktorovna EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VISUAL MEDIA: THE NEW ARGONAUTS BALLET AND THE CELEBRATION OF THE CHESME VICTORY IN 1770 // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 136-156

The New Argonauts ballet by Gasparo Angiolini was performed in St. Petersburg on September 24, 1770. It finalized a series of celebrations, including thanksgiving prayers, receptions and awards on the occasion of the Chesme victory, as well as celebrations of the anniversary of Catherine II’s coronation and the birthday of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich. The ballet, which literally showed how Peter the Great and Minerva (referring to Catherine II) inspired Russian sailors in the battle against the Turkish fleet, concluded with allegorical scenes. It summed up the providential coincidence of the “tsar” days and the news of the grand victory that had just been received. The performance is important, above all, not because of its allegorical frame, but because of its documentary plot. We can see the ballet as a part of the history of visual media. Usually performances “on the occasion,” such as the one-time performance of The New Argonauts, interpret current events in the language of allegory. The New Argonauts is a rare attempt to present the documentary story of a major event into a visual form. Traditionally at this time news was learned by reading or by ear. The ballet, judging by the surviving program, showed the Battle of Chesme and the destruction of the Turkish fleet by means of theatrical machinery. The text of the program (in its documentary part) is based on the victory reports from Marquis Cavalcabo, envoy to Malta, and from the Commander-in-Chief Count Alexei Orlov that had been published in the Supplement to the Newspaper Sanktpeterburgskie Vedomosti on September 7 and 17, 1770. The performance became a kind of a newscast, “seasoned” with a lyrical plot about the brotherly affection of Yazon and Promak, in whom the audience easily recognized the commander-in-chief Alexei Orlov and his brother Fyodor Orlov; this plot is also drawn from the battle reports. This case shows the complexity of the formation of media as technically mediated communication and technically mediated ways of seeing. It expands the history and archaeology of media in the Russian context. There are few studies in this field and they cover “classical” objects like camera obscura, magic lantern, panoramas and dioramas, i.e. they try European trajectories on our soil. The New Argonauts, perhaps, demonstrates a culturally specific format of the overall process. The “centaur phenomenon,” which combines traditional theatrical techniques with a new intention of reportage, allows raising the question about other similar subjects in the history of visual experience and technology.

Keywords: visual media, early optical performances, New Argonauts ballet, Chesme victory

Bryzgalina Elena Vladimirovna DIGITAL BIOETHICS AS DIGITAL HEALTH ETHICS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2023. Issue 1 (35). P. 9-29

Personalized medicine development includes an active use of digital products and tools for diagnosing, treating and monitoring health. This phenomenon generates such digital-related concepts as “digital health,” “Digital Medicine,” “Digital Therapeutics,” or “Digital Wellness.” Digital health includes tele- and algorithmic medicine, e-health, and mobile health. Bioethics represents a research area and social institution. Bioethics should increase the ethical support for bioethical choice subjects in the context of the social practices’ transformation in personal and public health. The article highlights the features of the subject and methodology interpretation; indicates the prospects for the development of digital bioethics. This article describes digital bioethics as digital health ethics. This interpretation differs from the understanding of digital bioethics as a field of using digital methods of empirical research. The research subject is social relations regarding confidentiality, truthfulness, trust, justice, and accountability. The entire social system is involved in the bioethical analysis, since the ethical issues of digital health are considered in a wide context of social dynamics, economic interactions, and political governance. Thus, digital bioethics is close to biopolitics. Digital bioethics uses several approaches. It refers to certain ethical theories to evaluate the results of the digital health technologies’ use. It considers different digital health-related situations through bioethical principles. It also describes the ethical harm in the digital technologies’ creation and integration in healthcare. Ethical issues are related to the social mechanisms in which they are created and used. The moral dilemmas’ resolution is seen as power relations’ manifestation. Digital bioethics analyzes the policy of various healthcare actors, the dependence of digital health on communication infrastructure and economic influence. Digital bioethics proposes to address treatment depersonalization and anonymization which represent the consequences of health and disease datafication. Digital bioethics complements empirical description of digital health practices and public health policies. On the one hand, digital bioethics is a field of digital methods’ application for studying bioethical discourse in the digital space. Thus, digital bioethics digitizes analog methods and additionally develops digital analysis methods. On the other hand, digital bioethics is defined as digital health ethics, and does not pay attention to the development of its own research methods. These two interpretations are interconnected. According to digital bioethics, ethically acceptable futures are the basis for management decisions in healthcare. This fact enhances a comprehensive transdisciplinary description of digital ethical foundations and ethical regulation mechanisms. Bioethics, algoretics, artificial intelligence ethics, engineering ethics, business ethics, political ethics, and other manifestations of applied ethics can be combined into a unique research complex and form a common mechanism for social and humanitarian innovations’ expertise. Prospects for the digital bioethics’ development should be comprehended through the empirical and normative traditions, the correlation of analog and digital discourses of bioethics, as well as the peculiarities of the bioethical institutions’ functioning in the digital space.

Keywords: ethics, bioethics, digital bioethics, social and humanitarian expert appraisal, digital healthcare, digital health

Ivanov Konstantin Vladimirovich SEMIOLOGY OF PRELITERATE ASTRAL FIGURES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 81-116

For a long time, ideograms and graphemes of the Neolithic period were primarily the particular archaeological, ethnological, cultural, and theological interest. However, as archaeoastronomy consolidated its disciplinary positions, they were increasingly becoming a matter of attention for historians of astronomy. Indisputable alignments of archaeological remains toward the points of midsummer and midwinter risings and settings of the sun shows conclusively that people of the Bronze Age were expected to have a still greater knowledge of astronomy. The broad truth of the cyclical movements of the points of rising and setting and their correlation with the cycle of growth in nature was certainly known from very early times. That, in turn, means that the thorough understanding of the oldest symbolism to have come down to us – if it, in fact, was so – is only possible when a researcher is familiar at least with spherical astronomy. At their highest stage of development the Bronze Age people certainly knew the cardinal points of the horizon; they were aware of the tropical year as a cycle of repetition of the position of the sun against the horizon; they knew about solstices and equinoxes; some of them distinguished between azimuth positions of the highest and the lowest moon; they built monumental architecture for regular observations of the sun and the moon, and even invented writing, though not everywhere. It would be hard to imagine that such a complicated system of ideas and actions was created all at once, without an evolutionary accumulation of that rather complex knowledge and a concatenation of insights which came together to make the final discovery embodied in stone monuments of the Bronze Age. The given circumstance forces us to look closely into ideograms of the pre-Bronze Ages, namely the Neolithic and the Aeneolithic ones. Is it possible to find there some traces of formalization of primary astronomical observations which could be assimilated, developed, and widely adopted by representatives of the Bronze Age? This study attempts to identify among the corpus of Neolithic symbols, graphemes, and ideograms those of them that could be supposedly used as denotations for astronomical meanings. The article uses the system of Neolithic meanings developed by Ariel Golan as the reference body. The astronomical part of the study is based on the gradualist concept of the Western Zodiac by Alexander Gurshtein. In the course of a semiological analysis of Neolithic ideograms, categories of symbols and signs have been identified that are difficult to interpret from the point of view of archaeological and ethnographic data. However, they show clear signs of correlation with the rhythms of the seasons. Among these are, for instance: the so-called sign of ‘two suns,’ ‘f-shaped’ signs, and ‘four-part-binary symbols.’ Analysis of their probable semantics suggests that ‘protozodiac’ concept could have been preceded by a simpler binary division of the year indicated by opposition between the winter and summer solstices. In this regard, clarifications, concerning semantics and symbolic meanings of the first zodiacal quartet are included in the hypothesis by Gurshtein.

Keywords: archaeoastronomy, early agricultural Neolithic culture, Neolithic symbolism, zodiac, first zodiacal quartet, ritual, Neolithic religion

Sokolov Pavel Valeryevich, Ivanova Julia Vladimirovna LOUIS DE CASENEUVE’S ΔΩΔΕΚΆΚΡΟΥΝΟΣ HIEROGLYPHICORUM ET MEDICORUM EMBLEMATUM: EMBLEMS AS A LANGUAGE OF THE 17TH CENTURY MEDICINE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 186-212

The article deals with one of the most magnificent samples of the early 17th century emblematic literature – Δωδεκάκρουνος Hieroglyphicorum et Medicorum Emblematum (1626) by the French physician Louis de Caseneuve (Lat. Ludovicus Casanova). This text may be considered as the only extant full-scale emblematic treatise in the field of medicine; therefore, its study enables its reader to take a closer look at the early modern medical imaginotheca. The composition of this text aims at encompassing all the traditional branches of medical knowledge: the first emblem symbolically represents the Δωδεκάκρουνος itself; in the following four, the author represents the temperaments, combining their traditional iconographic attributes very freely; other three are dedicated to different pathologies (humoral pathology caused by the excess of black bile, melancholicus aeger; then follows a kind of a “pathological encyclopedia”, a list of the diseases of all the organs of the body; the third one deals with the mental illnesses and evil passions); the penultimate one to the therapy, and the last one to the glorification of physicians and medical science. Δωδεκάκρουνος may be viewed as belonging to the discursive formation of medical humanism – one of the extinct dialects of the early modern learned culture that emerged in the first half of the 16th century in the texts of such authors as Niccolo Leoniceno, Fortunato Liceti, Jean Frenel, and Jakob Schegk. About a century after de Caseneuve’s treatise was published, medical humanism definitely came to an end together with emblematic, humanist dialectics, sacred physics, Ciceronianism, iatrochemistry, Jesuit “middle knowledge”, moral logic, et al. A special focus has been made on the mixture of genres of the learned culture carried out in the treatise: Δωδεκάκρουνος is simultaneously an emblematic treatise, an ekphrasis, a medical manual, and, last but not least, a specific learned “Menippean satire”. The polyvalence of the text, visible in this fusion of genres, is corroborated by a broad use of illusionistic verbal and visual effect – anamorhosis. The anamorphic effect, a conscious ambivalence of signification, may be found not only in the emblems and epigrams, but in the “serious” scientific parts of the text as well. This ambivalence manifests itself in a certain epistemological tension which may be detected throughout the text: the “episteme of similarity”, heavily present all over the treatise, especially in its “humoral” section, coexists with the resolute Aristotelian philosophical credo and the gesture of recognition towards the Hermetic medicine.

Keywords: emblems, hieroglyphs, Louis de Caseneuve, Menippean satire, medical humanism, anamorphosis, ekphrasis, epigram, gardens of knowledge

Avanesov Sergey Sergeyevich VISUAL AXIOLOGY OF THE POST-KIEV URBAN MODEL // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 1 (31). P. 24-40

The article is dedicated to the study of the axiological transformation of the leading urban planning model of the Russian Middle Ages in the second half of the 12th century. The article shows that the construction program of Andrei Bogolyubsky, which was supposed to solve the problem of architectural design of the idea of Vladimir’s priority over Kiev, led to an ori-entation towards Western architectural samples, which, nevertheless, underwent an obvious adaptation to the established Russian-Byzantine artistic tradition. Expressing quite clear ideo-logical priorities of the duke and dukedom, the urban environment of Vladimir acquired a visually fixed axiological peculiarity. This axiology, new for Russia, indicates the start of the original Russian urban planning model transformation: the transformation of sacredness is gradually losing its exclusive cultural and semiotic meaning, and acquiring a vivid political emphasis. That is why the prototype-city, having lost its sacred character, loses its former value and therefore becomes a subject to cruel destruction. The purposeful and meaningful attempt of Duke Andrei to deprive Kiev of the character and function of “Jerusalem” and to build a new city as an alternative to the old sacred center demonstrates the beginning of de-struction of the Jerusalem urban matrix and lays the initial foundation for the future theory of the “third Rome”.

Keywords: medieval urbanism, axiology of city, Russian urban planning models, sacred semiotics of urban space, North-Eastern Russia, city of Vladimir, Andrei Bogolyubsky, Romanesque architecture, “third Rome”

Gizdatov Gazinur Gabdullavich AESTHETICS OF FILM EDITING IN THE ART PRACTICE OF PAVEL ZALTSMAN // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 1 (39). P. 30-43

An analysis of the use of montage techniques as a literary method in the works of Pavel Zaltsman is presented in this article for the first time. The influence of the concept of analytical art and the practice of film editing of the 1930s on the formation of Zaltsman’s aesthetic views is revealed. At the time, the idea of montage became a kind of a cultural “fashion” of the time, and the basic principle of montage was applied not only to cinema, but also to poetry, prose, and painting. The research focus in the case of Zaltsman is retrospective. The authorial attitude of the writer Zalsman is compared with what Sergei Eisenstein did in the movie. The idea of post-utopian modernism – the portrayal of history and/or modernity in personal and social experience as a series of painful ruptures – is presented as the main narrative in Zaltsman’s unfinished novels: Puppies and Central Asia in the Middle Ages (or The Middle Ages in Central Asia). The article justifies that Zaltsman’s texts, which have become famous in our time, were generated by time itself and implement the artistic principles of the early avant-garde. The forms of interaction of the verbal, the intermedial, the cinematic, and the visual lead (in the case of Zaltsman’s texts, as described in the article) to the creation of a discourse that transforms reality in the reader’s mind. Zaltsman recodes the word in the specific and thoughtful way of structuring the text, which turned out to be possible thanks to the use of film editing techniques. The main feature of montage aesthetics in Zaltsman’s texts is dividing the text not into chapters, acts or scenes, but into fragments and episodes that reveal the writer’s montage optics. As a result, montage in the text, just like in the movies, creates subjectivity – the opportunity to perceive the reality through the eyes of the character. In the aesthetics of the novels, the montage of both planes (images) and episodes (actions) can be traced, which shapes the polyphonic novel as a film discourse. Despite the incompleteness of Zaltsman’s novels, the ideology and aesthetics of the literary texts are interesting from the standpoint of our time as they give a detached and objective view of what is happening that the author outlined using film editing techniques, and are expressed in the most original form of presenting a historical narrative that resonates with our time.

Keywords: avant-garde, discursive practice, intermediality, cinema, literary text, narrative, montage, poetics

Melik-Gaykazyan Irina Vigenovna BIOETHICS AND SEMIOTICS: INSTEAD OF A FOREWORD // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 3 (29). P. 9-18

The organizational and research circumstances for determining the area of intersection of the two transdisciplinary directions indicated in the title are stated.

Keywords: human construction, limits of interpretations, process philosophy, diagnostics of sociocultural transformations

Nekhaev Andrei V. SHINE AND POVERTY OF SEMANTIC PLATONISM // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 3 (33). P. 118-126

The article presents criticism of Katz’s proto-theory. Based on the principles of semantic Platonism, he offers a new understanding of the relationship between sense and reference. However, his account faces three strong objections: against non-causal ways of accessing abstract Platonic entities (Benacerraf–Field–Cheyne), against intuition as the faculty to a priori knowledge of grammar facts (Horwich–Cheyne–Oliver), and against the medial status of finite intensionals in matters for fixing the reference of linguistic expressions (Kripke–Boghossian–Kush). Without convincing answers to these objections, Katz’s proto-theory cannot be considered as a fit competitor to naturalistic theories of language.

Keywords: Katz, sense, reference, abstract object, semantic Platonism

Tishchenko Pavel Dmitrievich THE WOUNDED SELF AND THE DISMEMBERED FLESH: ANTHROPOLOGICAL SENSE OF COMMUNICATION DYSFUNCTIONS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 3 (29). P. 176-194

The article analyzes communication dysfunctions between patients, consulting geneticists and doctors in the practice of medical genetic counseling. Despite the obvious usefulness of genetic advice for the counseled and their family members, as well as the fact that patients pay for counseling services, they (the counseled) often do not follow these recommendations, putting both their own lives and the lives of the loved ones at risk. How to understand this oddity? As a virtual participation in a hybrid forum, two cases from the practice of genetic counseling are discussed, which, with a significant similarity of the situation, differ from each other in the presence or absence of patient confidence in the scientific knowledge and expert judgments of the geneticist. In order to theoretically interpret the problem posed, an assumption is introduced about the self as a communication dysfunction, which is diagnosed in various value coordinates either as noncompliance in directive models of counseling, or as nonadherence in non-directive ones. If we consider that medicine as a cultural practice is based on a sense of solidarity in the face of bodily suffering, then, in this regard, the patient’s strange, counterproductive behavior may indicate the presence of deep problems in the foundations of modern sociality. The formulation of the narrative imperative is proposed.

Keywords: биоэтика, гибридный форум, коммуникативная дисфункция, комплаентность, уязвлённая самость, расчленённая плоть, множественное тело, коммуникация с одним языком

Obolkina Svetlana Viktorovna GAME DESIGN AND THE ONTOLOGY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 3 (33). P. 39-52

In modern philosophy, the topic of “ontological turn” and “impossible reality” is relevant. The author considers this situation in a semiotic way. The object of the research is the search for a symbolic environment representing the “Impossible”. The author analyzes the specifics of the presentative language (non-discursive sign systems) and specifically digital imagery. The assumption is substantiated that the desired symbolic mediation with the “Impossible” can be found in this area. The author makes an assumption about the pragmatic effect of this communicative situation. This effect is associated with the possibility of an ontological “update”: the formation of new conditions for the intelligibility of experience. Further, the author discusses the heuristic potential of computer games as a model situation of contact with the “Impossible”. Based on the analysis of 4D Toys and Miegakure, the author proposes a sketch of the ontology of 4D-spatiality. She discusses the possibility of an “open ontology" and the heuristic potential of "building up" transcendental possibilities. At the same time, the author questions the previous understanding of “peculiarity” and “selectivity” in the knowledge of the “beyond”: the experience of a virtuoso gamer allows us to update the idea of our abilities to overcome the boundaries of reality (for a gamer, the physics of a particular game world). This refutes the myth of the “perfect game”, just as glitch art refutes the myth of the “perfect signal”. It is no longer possible to contrast “signal” and “noise”, “game” and “glitches”. Thus, the article draws attention to an important pragmatic aspect of digital images and, as a result, substantiates the possibility of convergence of theoretical philosophical positions and the practice of game design as projects implementing an “open ontology”.

Keywords: ontology, “Impossible”, computer game, four-dimensional space, virtuoso gamer, visual experience, weird effect

Dorofeev Daniil Yurievich, Tomaščíková Slavka NIETZSCHE’S SELF-IMAGE-FORMING AND ITS REPRESENTATION IN THE POSTMILLENNIAL MEDIA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 293-311

The paper is devoted to the consideration of the theoretical problem of the human image and the mechanisms of its formation, a topic which is of considerable relevance in present-day visual semiotics due to the totalizing visualization processes brought about through the increasing power of media and internet technologies. The visual aspects of the functioning of food as a cultural element in the postmillennial communicative environment are analyzed through the interdisciplinary perspective of philosophy and cultural studies. The authors identify Friedrich Nietzsche’s work Ecce Homo as one of the most important sources for understanding the processes of self-image-forming in philosophical and cultural studies, and they show that it is a text which explains cultural and anthropological practices that can be applied in 21st century visual anthropology. In Ecce Homo, the German thinker reintroduces the continuation and development of the traditions of ancient “self-care” (epimeleia), emphasizing the need for the responsible, conscious and individual relationship of a human being to his or her integral image as it emerges in everyday life. Nietzsche demonstrates the key importance of self-image-forming from a primarily medical or even physiological point of view, focusing in detail on the formation of the self through the conscious and authentic use of food practices, living environment, climate, and modes of relaxation. All of these components, especially that of food, are central mechanisms in the formation of the visual image of individuals in contemporary media, focusing not on a critical self-evaluation but instead on an aggressively approved image. The paper argues that it is within Friedrich Nietzsche’s everyday practices of lifestyle that we can identify how food, living environment, climate, and modes of relaxation dominate the 21st century self-image-forming of hypermodern postmillennial individuals in their quest for almost unlimited consumption and hypermediation. The authors also discuss the roles of visual food practices in the presentation of human identity and the representation of cultural realities of the postmillennial era in the functioning of hypermodern media.

Keywords: Nietzsche, self-image-forming, ancient self-care, Foucault, visual semiotics and anthropology, everyday cultural practices, postmillennial media communication, hypermodern individual

Boyarkina Albina Vitalievna, Simyan Tigran Serzhikovitch SYNTACTICS OF STORY TRAJECTORIES IN A UNIVERSITY RECREATION COURTYARD // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 1 (31). P. 103-126

The article is dedicated to the semiotic analysis of the exterior space using the example of the contemporary sculpture park in the courtyard of the Faculty of Philology, Saint Petersburg State University. The relevance of this discourse is in the fact that a cultural-semiotic description of the university space can become an impetus for such local studies of the first level. In addition, due to the analyzed empirical material, cultural and semiotic constants of the university space, as well as the structure of social and cultural memory, are derived (second level). The article was written using a semiotic method. The semantic and pragmatic aspects of the sculptures are analyzed as not only a holistic text, but also emerging syntagmatic chains. A special place is also given to the pragmatic (superstitious) sculptures of the university space, to which students attribute miraculous qualities. The empirical material is also described in a typological way. The sculptures are clustered according to different parameters and themes: sculptures of cultural representatives, literary heroes of the park, transnational sculptures of the park, scientists and philosophers of the park, pragmatic sculptures of the park, sculptures of the park as indicators of faculties and offices, religious sculptures of the park, comprehension of time and history in the park, historical sculptures of the park, pragmatism of the park. The typologization of the empirical material shows the structural and thematic outlines of the exterior of the space and identifies important markers of social memory and the importance of its animation and transmission to the next generation. In addition, it is proposed that Russian researchers would conduct studies of the third level – this is the level of the description and analysis of the typology of the university space not only of Russian universities, but also of universities in the countries of the Soviet and post-Soviet space. The analysis of the empirical material shows that the university park is semantically and pragmatically loaded. Each sculpture becomes an object of decoding and comprehension by recipients. Moreover, each new generation of students gets acquainted with the social, cultural and historical memory; forms their own traditions, such as “superstitious” monuments bringing luck. The university park, in fact, becomes a space for relaxation, romantic and intellectual exploration. Thanks to the inspiring authors (Bogdanov, Avetisyan), the university park has become an “interior” space in the open air, a materialized example of the concept of “education-upbringing”, since there are many sculptures dedicated to famous figures of culture, literature, as well as literary heroes, key historical events. In addition, cultural artifacts endow the university space with a new function – an open-air museum, which includes not only different cultural and religious layers, but also historical events such as the Great Patriotic War and the tragic events of the Soviet era (repressions). All the encoded cultural, historical and religious values, in fact, become important soft power constants for modeling the national, cultural and political identity, which in emergency (military) situations manifests itself as a sense of patriotism.

Keywords: Saint Petersburg, axiology of city space, university, university space, pragmatics of park, cultural monuments, semantics of sculptures, pragmatics of sculptures, social memory, cultural memory, historical memory

Borisov Evgeny Vasilyevich CONTEXTUALITY IN KAPLAN’S AND KATZ’S SEMANTICS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 3 (33). P. 111-117

Semantic theories by Kaplan and Katz represent a view on ordinary language opposed to the view of the late Wittgenstein, Strawson, and others. Both Kaplan’s and Katz’s theories accommodate phenomena of contextuality, whereas Wittgenstein and Strawson held that contextuality makes a semantic theory for ordinary language impossible. I compare the two theories and show that both are based on analogous fourfold distinctions. In Kaplan, it is the distinction of expression, character, content, and reference. The analogous distinction in Katz is the distinction of expression, the sense of expression-type, the sense of expression-token, and reference. The analogy between Kaplan’s character and Katz’s sense of expression-type is established by the fact that both are, formally speaking, functions from contexts. Content (Kaplan) and the sense of expression-token (Katz) are similar in that both determine reference (extension) with respect to a possible world. So we can conclude that both theories represent the same approach to contextuality.

Keywords: ordinary language, contextuality, semantics, Katz, Kaplan

Troitskiy Sergey Aleksandrovich TOPOGRAPHY OF THE ALIEN: NATIONAL STEREOTYPES OF GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOKS AS A BASIS FOR CARICATURED VISUALIZATION OF IDEAS ABOUT SPACE AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 234-255

The article discusses how constructing visual images that reflect cultural stereotypes simultaneously creates a cultural (mental) map. The objective of the paper is to reconstruct the system of visual images in political caricatures of a short period of history of Russian culture (the last decade of the 19th century and the first five years of the 20th century) culminating in fact in the Russo-Japanese war (1904) and the first Russian revolution (1905). Then the ideology of romantic nationalism was at its peak. That period is referred to as imperialism because it was characterized by an active colonial redivision of the world and protectionism. To reveal the main national stereotypes, the article draws on descriptions of the mental characteristics of various countries (peoples) from Russian geography textbooks used for teaching on the eve of the analyzed period. Attracting geography textbooks as a source of national stereotypes for political caricature studies is a new approach, and it leads to unexpected conclusions. The authors of textbooks proceed from the romantic attitude that definitions are essential, integral, which means that the image of any representative is the image of every representative of the population (country). Geography textbooks transmit common national stereotypes about other peoples, which, by teaching, are fixed at the level of everyday consciousness. It allows almost everyone to understand the humor of caricature images. Caricature is a continuation of the cultural or political discourse whose attitudes it translates, so it is caricature visual images that allow the researcher to identify (stereo)typical content in everyday culture (at the level of everyday consciousness), determine the features of the cultural and political discourse of that period, and record any changes in stereotypes. The article shows how the mental map of the world from the geography textbook in which Russia is located in the center is concretized and transformed into an everyday mental map of the world that has stereotypical monsters-Others, easily transformed into enemies. The scientific discourse of that period is easily transformed into a tool of political propaganda. The research develops from the general description of the historical and political context, research attitudes, and the main characteristics of imagological discourse in caricature to the consideration of more specific examples, comparisons of national stereotypes from geography textbooks (Germany, France, Turkey, Japan, and China) with national stereotypes recorded by caricaturists in relation to these countries.

Keywords: geography textbook, mental map, national stereotype, political caricature, imagology, Alien, significant Other

Druzhinin Andrey Sergeevich CINEMATIC OBSERVATION IN LINGUISTICS AND BEYOND: TOWARDS AN EMPIRICAL SCIENCE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 9-29

The article raises the problem of methodology in the language science and discusses a possible way of solving this problem by recognizing films as a source of observational scientific data. The article claims that the reliance of classical linguistics upon logical analysis and interpretation as a sufficient method of research with texts as primary sources of data is a a fallacy. This fallacy is accounted for by a number of epistemological factors. Firstly, science generally concerns itself not with what things are, but how they appear to the standard observer in the process of interaction. Language, oppositely, is studied as a self-sufficient sign system in and of itself. Secondly, any science constructs its object and produces valid knowledge about this object on the basis of empirical data put together in a logical way, which means that theory and observation are two co-dependent technologies of science ensuring that any claim about the experiential world is verified and “life-tested”. In linguistics, conversely, such an empirical test and verification of claims is replaced by a logical procedure of interpretation and analysis on the basis of texts, which is far from empirical evidence, but rather appears as another set of claims. In other words, texts take on the role of empirical data in linguistics, which is wrong for one simple reason that texts are logical interpretations devoid of any perceptual dynamics and, therefore, unable to be observed. In order to break with such a product-oriented approach and the logico-positivist tradition, and study language beyond written texts only, especially given that illiterate people are language users too, linguistics needs to take an empirical turn. To make this turn possible, linguists need to reconsider the empirical role motion pictures play in the study of how a human’s experiential world is enacted and constructed into a coherent story. Recognizing that films make the work of somebody else’s imagination observable, linguists and cognitive scientists as well could make practical use of cinematic observations as a primary source of evidence for claims about how a human imagines things, constructs meanings, communicates with others, and uses language in general to make all of those things possible. The article elaborates on the cinema-mediated empirical methodology of language studies and specifies what types of observable actions (or their implications) upon linguistic objects we can find in films, including attentional processes, the dynamics of the lived experience, emotioning and sensorimotor activity. As opposed to apparatus theory, the conception of language as experiential dynamics observable in films fits in with the philosophy of radical constructivism and enactivism according to which a human, by analogy with an actor, enacts the world as a (biological, social and cultural) history of her previous actions, these enactments becoming the world itself.

Keywords: primary sources of evidence, language data, experiential world, lived experience, eigenbehavior, enactivism, radical constructivism

Sazonova Nataliya Ivanovna, Fendel Elena Robertovna, Artamonov Maxim Viktorovich, Shklyar Yaroslava Yurievna SIBERIAN MONASTERY AND THE CITY SPACE: PROBLEMS OF INTERACTION (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE TOMSK SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST CONVENT) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 1 (31). P. 127-152

The article analyzes the role and place of the Siberian monastery in the space of the city on the example of the Saint John the Baptist Monastery, which existed from 1876 to 1922 in Tomsk, reveals the problems of the interaction of the tradition of monastic construction with the secularizing culture of the Siberian society of the 19th century. Since ancient times, monastery has been a factor of consecration of both the city and the adjacent territories space. In this case, monasteries became “satellites” of the city, being on its outskirts – a place of interaction with the unconsecrated surrounding territory. Monasteries were often built outside the city if missionary work among non-Christians was necessary. The accession of Siberia to the Russian state took place in the conditions of a gradual secularization of culture as a result of the growing influence of secular elements. Therefore, the well-known traditions of monastic construction continued to exist, but changed gradually. The further secularization of culture, as well as the state policy of restricting monasticism, which had been carried out by the government since the 18th century, led to the fact that the sacred and city-forming role of the monastery as a spiritual center ceased to be perceived by the urban community. By the end of the 19th century the city authorities began to perceive monastery not as a sacred object, but as a competitor to the city, a contender for urban lands. The analysis of the structure and components of the Tomsk Saint John the Baptist Convent estate suggests that the convent preserved the symbolic structure of a monastery land. The confrontation of monastery traditions and values with secular culture led to the destruction of the convent at the beginning of the 20th century and the total desacralization of its land. In the context of a complicated attitude of the urban community to the convent as a part of the city space, and considering the reformation of the monastery space, the proposed aim of the research is a historical reconstruction and establishment of a museum on the territory of the former convent.

Keywords: city space, symbolism, Tomsk, Saint John the Baptist Convent, construction, architecture, historical reconstruction

Ogleznev Vitaly Vasilyevich “MEANING AS USE”, NORMATIVE SENTENCES, AND ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 3 (33). P. 127-134

This short remark, which is a minor objection to Vsevolod A. Ladov’s panel article “Gottlob Frege’s Semantics in Modern Analytic Philosophy”, examines one of the critical arguments put forward by Jerrold Katz against Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “meaning as use”. I am talking about the argument that fixing deeper meanings of grammatical forms that are not relativized in language games allows us to show that the meanings of grammatical forms are not caused in a specific language game. I show that, if only a certain action can be treated as a criterion for understanding meaning in the framework of communication, then the crucial importance is not so much the propositional content of this action as its illocutionary force. Without the illocutionary force, the meaning of linguistic form is quite difficult to understand, if at all possible. The reference to normative sentences expressed by special prescriptive speech acts made it possible to show that the differences between orders, requests, predictions manifest themselves only at the pragmatic level of language use, there is no such difference at the semantic level. Beyond the context of a particular language game, such a distinction cannot be made.

Keywords: meaning, speech act, normative sentence, illocutionary force

Drozdova Daria Nikolaevna TIME REPRESENTATION IN SCIENTIFIC DIAGRAMS: GALILEO GALILEI’S SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF THE MOTION OF A FALLING BODY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 58-80

The textbook narrative of the scientific revolution of the 17th century says that the early modern transformation of physics and mechanics was grounded in mathematization, that is, the application of mathematical principles and procedures to physical entities and events. However, such a transformation faces a major obstacle: compared to geometry, mechanics includes an additional dimension, namely, time. When temporality of motion is to be represented geometrically, a question arises on how a temporal succession can be expressed by a static image. The problem of representation of temporal events is not limited to science. In my paper, I apply a conceptual tool elaborated by Gregory Currie for the analysis of temporal representations in art, especially in cinema, to the analysis of scientific diagrams. In his book Image and Mind. Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science (1995), Currie distinguishes depictive and nondepictive representations, arguing that depictive representation requires similarity and homomorphism between an object ant its representation. Thus, it seems that any non-temporal image of temporal processes would lack the required similarity and cannot be a depictive representation. However, taking into account explanations given by Galileo Galilei for his famous diagrams of accelerated motion, I argue that the representation of time in scientific diagrams as a geometrical line is grounded in isomorphism between time as a continuous structure and continuous structure of a geometrical line. The main temporal process studied by mechanics is motion. Motion can be represented in two main ways: as a trajectory of a body over some period of time or as a functional relation of various parameters of motion (speed, path, acceleration) versus time. In the latter case, time is usually represented in a diagram as a geometrical line. We can find the origin of this type of representation in the late medieval doctrine of ‘intensio et remissio qualitatum’, intension and remission of qualities, in the context of which first diagrams representing intensity and extension of velocity of nonuniform motion as a changing quality over time were produced (Nicolas Oresme). We can find very similar graphical schemes in Galileo Galilei’s works, especially in Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (1638). In this work, Galileo announces with all clarity that he considers time to be the same aggregate of temporal moments as a line is an aggregate of points: every moment of time has a corresponding point on the geometrical line. This allows us to establish a homomorphic similarity between temporal duration and spatial (geometrical) extension. Thus, the essential requirement for depictive representation is met. Concluding, I have to point out that the homomorphic relation in this case is established between not real but abstract entities. The visible line itself is a representation of non-visible abstract geometrical line; in the same way, time consisting of non-divisible moments is just an abstract construction which refers to physical of psychological time-duration. However, the established relation between abstract time and abstract geometrical lines is a grounding event of the modern physical science.

Keywords: Galileo Galilei, history of early modern science, representations of temporal dimension, scientific diagrams

Mikhel Dmitry Victorovich, Reznik Oleg Nikolaevich SYMBOLS OF HUMAN DIGNITY AND IDENTITY PROTECTION: RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY FACING THE CHALLENGE OF THE BIOTECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION IN MEDICINE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 88-111

The article discusses the development of bioethics in Russia. Bioethics is viewed as a form of expert knowledge designed to protect human dignity and identity in the field of health care and biomedicine. The authors show that the emergence of bioethics was connected with the transformation of the Soviet healthcare system, which was replaced by a system based on the principles of market relations. The authors note that the situation in Russia is typologically similar to the situation in the United States, which emerged on the wave of neo-liberal economic reforms that led to the rapid development of biomedicine science and biotechnology. Like in the U.S., in Russia, the development of bioethics also took place in response to the biotechnology revolution in medicine, but its advance was interrupted by the dramatic collapse of the Soviet state. The emergence of the public-private healthcare system and the rapid expansion of biomedical technologies required an intellectual and moral response from a diverse group of experts analyzing problems associated with it. The two most active groups of the expert community could articulate this answer – philosophers associated with the system of academic institutions and theologians participating in the development of the official position of the Russian Orthodox Church. The article offers a general picture of the development of bioethics in Russia, taking into consideration the specific contributions of these two groups. The focus is on two historical stages in the development of bioethics: its emergence, associated with the transformation of the healthcare system, and the contemporary state, characterized by the rapid spread of biomedical technologies. The authors conclude that philosophers see their mission as to sound the alarm about the “pace” of the spread of biotechnology and the speed of change in human nature that they believe is possible. Theologians, on the other hand, see their mission as to signal the dangerous “temptations” of progress that invite humans to take the place of God and become creators of their own nature by replacing themselves with something completely different.

Keywords: biotechnology revolution in medicine, biomedicine, bioethics, history, Russia, philosophy, Orthodox theology

Mikhail Novikov Andreyevich HOW TO USE THE VISUAL IN SCIENTIFIC STUDIES? (FOLLOWING PETER GALISON AND LORRAINE DASTON) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 117-130

Unlike the visual as a component of scientific practices, the study of scientific visualizations is a young field of epistemology that has only recently begun to gain momentum. Despite its “young” age, this field of research has already been enriched by all kinds of approaches, concepts, and independent conclusions. In my opinion, Peter Galison and Lorraine Daston’s book Objectivity can be considered as a work which, besides bringing obvious innovations in understanding how knowledge is produced, including knowledge about knowledge production, summarizes all achievements of modern epistemology and history of science, first of all, epistemology of the visual or VSTS (Visual Science and Technology Studies). From this it can be inferred that, among other things, in addition to the study of objectivity, the authors are inventing a new way of speaking about science. The visual in science, with all the possible ways of practicing it, allows the authors, moving in one way or another in the direction of pragmatic approaches, to avoid externalistic versions of explanations of knowledge production. This is achieved by the fact that the researchers do not look at some local visualizations, but work with whole assemblages of images, based on the premise that the visual is an inalienable part of science. In order to understand what Objectivity is, one must refer to works that also investigate the visual. It turned out to be important to demonstrate that contemporary research often takes place at the junction of different disciplines, with the assumption that strict disciplinary distinctions for this research are as real as pastoral ideals. By reclaiming the status of alienated scientific components, such approaches demonstrate that science is by no means reducible to some exclusively a priori or transcendental propositions. On the contrary, it confirms that science is done here and now, and is incredibly close to us, which means that one cannot simply pass by any of the elements it practices.

Keywords: objectivity, visual, epistemology, image, self, VSTS

Dydrov Artur Alexandrovich, Neveleva Vera Sergeevna, Tikhonova Sophia Vladimirovna, Trufanova Elena Olegovna A PERSON IN THE DIGITAL AGE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 4 (34). P. 102-122

In the context of economic, political, technological, cultural challenges and rapidly changing realities, one of the significant tasks of philosophy is to form a conceptual position about a person and, more broadly, to achieve a certain level of understanding of a person in a transforming world. Meanwhile, philosophers and specialists in the field of social and human sciences dealing with anthropological problems widely believe that all human projects have exhausted their resources. A radical variation of this opinion is expressed by the thesis “a person is dead”. The digital age, characterized by the intensification of the development of information electronic technologies and the introduction of the Internet into all spheres of society, is a fertile ground for the formation of a different, “posthuman” formation. The radical nature of these beliefs encourages the formation of a humanitarian alternative that takes into account modern technological trends and challenges of the time. The article consistently considers various aspects of the stated topic. The first section of the article discusses the digital human environment. The authors indicate a significant transition in the development of the Internet from anonymity to total control. The Internet has turned from a “magical” space (a pioneering technology) into an everyday means of political, economic and other practices. Communication now is subject to total economic and moral control. The second section, “A digital person: From transhumanism to Homo telematicus and beyond”, discusses a directly anthropological aspect. The position of a person is ensured by a frequently unconscious transfer of cognitive functions to the machine. A person predominantly seeks and copies information (consumer orientation), rather than produces it. Among modern practices of handling information, situational, one-time reproduction of text from the screen is popular. At the same time, the speed of access to content is conceived as an unconditional value. The authors give two options for interpreting the digital person, relying on the philosophical concept of Homo telematicus by Jean Baudrillard and on the discourse of transhumanism. The latter constructs images of a technologically transformed being that ultimately overcomes any “limitations” of human nature. The section “Digital Age: An individual in the space of publicity” examines the pattern catalyzed by the quarantine conditions of 2020. The public digital space has invaded the private environment. This trend has ambiguous consequences: on the one hand, the growth of the public sphere and the emergence of a wide range of political and professional roles narrow the private and actually make it a social mode; on the other hand, the private turns into the secret, which must be hidden, protected. The final section, “The time of the “significant-selves”: To the anthropology of the new world”, discusses the problem of personal identity in the digital age. The authors argue that the Internet at the present stage stimulates the activity of an individual and creativity. At the philosophical level, the authors conceptualized this phenomenon as the actualization of “self-significance”.

Keywords: digital age, digital technologies, digital humans, Internet, virtual, anthropological frontier, transhumanism, Homo telematicus, privacy, pandemic, identity, individuality

Koczanowicz Leszek DIALOGUE FOR SPACE, SPACE FOR DIALOGUE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 4 (26). P. 90-97

In the past years it has become clear that liberal democracy is in crisis and that this crisis is first of all visible in the public sphere and in the public space. The new social movements in many countries have re-defined the public space introducing to it elements which have not been so far present in the public sphere, for instance, demonstrations which turned into long-lasting meetings, performances, artistic activities, and so on. Moreover, it has turned out that the crisis touched not only the liberal system of institutions but also the civil society and the party system that had been a backbone of liberal democracy. The aim of the article is thus to look at human space/city space as a machine for communication, or, strictly speaking, a machine for understanding. The article has been inspired by the views of American pragmatists, mainly John Dewey’s and George Herbert Mead’s as well as Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogue and carnival. I think that taking such a standpoint would lead to better understanding the new social movements in city space. The four models of communication in the city space are discussed in the article. The first model is taken from the philosophy of American pragmatism. Its main features are: the close relationship between politics and everyday life, and the concept of democracy as a form of life of a community. The pragmatists also put stress on dialogue/communication as an activity which forms social life as well as our mind and self. The second model is Jürgen Habermas’s concept of communicative action. Habermas states that the possibility of an agreement is inscribed in the very structure of language if certain conditions are fulfilled. He calls these conditions “the ideal communicative situation.” The continuators of Habermas’s theory have developed it into the idea of “deliberative democracy”, i.e., democracy which is a permanent discussion of the most important social and political issues. The third model is associated with Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue as a phenomenon which permeates all human interactions. Finally, I propose my model of communication which is based on my concept of dialogue as a vehicle of understanding rather than vehicle of agreement. Starting from the last model I discuss the question of the role of the university in the democratic society. My idea is that the humanities should give up any ambition to universality and instead they should facilitate mutual understanding. Therefore, their function has changed radically. Traditionally, they serve to maintain national or religious identity and/or promote individual perfection. Now, they should prepare people to enter a dialogical relationship with the Other.

Keywords: democracy, pragmatism, dialogue, non-consensual democracy, urban democracy, liberalism

Gornova Galina Vladimirovna, Fedyaev Dmitry Mikhailovich THE CITY IN A LABYRINTH OF REFLECTIONS: FROM A CRAFT SAMPLE TO AN IMAGE OF THE CITY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 1 (31). P. 12-23

The article explores the ideal, reference image of the city. The aim of the article is to analyze the correlation of the ideal image of the city with its similarities, reflections of the prototype. To illustrate the functioning of the image of the city as an ideal object, the image of Amber from Roger Zelazny’s work The Chronicles of Amber is used. The objectives of the article are: (1) to carry out a theoretical description of the metaphysical construction of Platonism and Neoplatonism reproduced in Zelazny’s work; (2) to show, with the help of the methodological approach of Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology, that the hero’s desire to return to their city can be interpreted as a movement along the path of individuation, in which the archetype of the self is actualized, and a person’s desire to achieve the fullness of being is realized; (3) to trace the use of the metaphor of reflection in the urban discourse of world culture, expressed, in particular, in the “reflection of names”, to reveal the mechanism of changing the hierarchical position of the prototype and reflection; (4) to demonstrate the multidimensional and paradoxical nature of urban reflections on the material of the St. Petersburg text of Russian culture; (5) to trace the genetic link between urban planning and handicraft activities of the pre-industrial era. The result of the study is a description of the material, procedural, subjective, and social forms of reproduction of the sample, in which the ascent from the craft sample to the image of the city is made. One of the versions of the beginning of city design is proposed. The conclusion is made about the similarity between urban planning design and handicraft activity, the creation of metaphysical systems, and the construction of scientific theories.

Keywords: image of city, craft sample, The Chronicles of Amber, metaphor of reflection

Polonnikov Aleksandr Andreyevich, Korol Dmitriy Yuryevich, Korchalova Natalya Dmitriyevna TRANSMISSION OF CULTURAL MEDIATORS AND EDUCATIONAL ORDER // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 3 (25). P. 118-135

The authors of the article focus on the issue of changes in education. The subject matter is based on treating education as a specific producer of sociocultural reality structures formed as an effect of semiogenesis interactively implanted by individuals. The researchers are mainly concerned with educational reality as a locum of sociostructural actualgenesis, which is symbolically mediated in a complex way and is always problematic. The point is that the forms of the current education, due to the reproduction conditions in place, have been put into the reification processes. This means that changes in education oriented at the reorganization of educational reality are in line with semiotic-symbolic transformation, in the first place. The latter’s main constitutive element is communication mediators, such as oral utterances, written texts, and visual images whose status in this research is considered in terms of instability. The authors determine a specific feature of the current educational situation as a challenge of visual culture that claims to be visually dominant in the procedures of cultural semiosis, building group and individual identities, as well as establishing social order and regime of social control and principles of power execution. The performance of image compared to that of the word is considered as a more direct one, striving for the realization of mechanisms of cultural messages’ simultaneous cohesion. The authors suppose that while cultural relations are being increasingly visualized, educational practices remain verbal- and text-centered. With regard to the participants of educational situations, this is expressed in the dominance of legitimate (metanarrative) ways of message organization and a transmission model of educational knowledge that are structured and tend to be unambiguous, clear, and complete in terms of form of thought, etc. The authors suggest considering the change of the mediation form in the organization of educational interaction as a necessary step of its development. At the initial stage, this is about a transition from a verbal-centered communication order to an ocular-centered one. For this to take place, it is necessary to initiate changes in speech practices of education (communication) and ways of referential linking between the word (speech) and the image (vision). In the former case, this is about re-orienting educational communication from implicit and explicit objectives of accomplishing behavior synchronization and establishing a consensus of meanings to cultivating in interaction forms producing differences: paradoxicality, paralogicality, and incommensurability, which can be achieved due to practicing differences in discursive positioning. In the second case, an educational objective is vision liberalization that occurs in the course of receptive work emancipated from an apriori interpretation of what is apparent, based on a metaphoric order of the utterance organization. Both these occurrences result in the distancing and self-distancing experiences, as well as in an opportunity to look at oneself not as a natural position that is automatically shared by the other interaction participants, but as a specific and relative discursive formation, a position in the processes of educational semiosis. In the final analysis, this enables to create sustainable effects of differentiation and diversification of the worlds of the human continuum.

Keywords: cultural orders, educational orders, semiotic-symbolic mediation of learning relations, educational semiosis, transformation of educational interaction

VISUAL STIMULUS IN EDUCATIONAL SPACE: INVESTIGATION OF THE MICRO-LEVEL OF EDUCATIONAL INTERACTION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 4 (14). P. 116-123

In this article we are talking about the preliminary results of the experiment “Mediation of the educational situation with means of visual culture”. The main part of the work is an analysis of the transcript of the lesson, which was conducted with students of Tomsk State University. The author present the results of the research into the change of mediation in the contemporary educational communication. The changing landscape of modern educational reality results in new educational trends – on-line and distant courses, massive open courses. I observe how those changes lead towards the change of the traditional role and functions of a teacher and educational communication in an educational event in particular. The objective of the presented research is to detect the interdependence between semiosis of education and the type of mediation in an educational situation. We have distinguished three types of mediation: oral speech, text and image. The domination of each type influences the changes in educational environment. With oral speech (verbal mediation) dominated we face education experience transmission via oral communication. While text as a mediation type dominates, it constructs the particular type of teacher-student interaction. And, finally, when we have image as the mediator, we can observe the transition from text-oriented interaction to the communication related to the electronic mediation and an image as its representation. The presented research is conducted within the framework of the phenomenological method which is focused on personal interaction occurring ‘right here, right now’. We believe that the interest to such ‘local’ (occurring in a classroom) could cast a light upon the nature of such interaction but also reveal the micro-processes occurring in educational community and practices.

Keywords: iconic turn, visual stimulus, visual in the sphere of education, phenomenological research in the field of education, educational communications

Filas Viktor Nikolaevich, Ivanova Blagovesta IMAGINING ODESSA: EUROPEAN STEREOTYPES AND BELIEFS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY (ON THE EXAMPLE OF A WORK BY LOUIS GARNERAY) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 157-171

The image is not an exact copy of a historical object. It represents its structural equivalent in one or another pictorial expression, which historians often do not notice or ignore. Therefore, in history, due to the lack of a proper research methodology, graphics are the visual support of the text that enhances the text’s perception and attractiveness. The aim of this publication is, based on the method of structural analysis of image elements, to show the depth of the informative potential of graphic works with, at first glance, “doubtful” reliability. The object of analysis is View of the Port of Odessa by Louis Garneray. This work is full of symbols, metaphors, allegories due to the fact that it was created on the basis of oral recollections of European sailors who once visited the port of Odessa. The analyzed work is a set of staffage and entourage elements that are of secondary importance in other work of arts. Seven plot elements were identified, which carry indexing and symbolic information about Odessa. Compositionally, these elements make up three parts: the foreground “Cape Fontan” (a lighthouse and a cape, walking people), the middle plan “Bay” (ships, Odessa Harbour), and the background “Mainland” (city, mountain range, bastions). For Europeans, Odessa was a typical, but important commercial, military and economic Mediterranean city. The main stereotypes about Odessa were its localization in the highlands and excessive fortifications. The actual Odessa markers were the Holy Transfiguration Cathedral, the lighthouse at Cape Fontan, as well as the multi-ethnicity of the population.

Keywords: Odessa, visual source, informative potential, plot structure, stereotype, staffage, entourage