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THE VISUAL, SOCIAL, AND IMAGINATIVE: VISUAL PERCEPTION AS A FACTOR OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 1 (7). P. 9-25

The main theme of the article is the notion of paradigmatic character of visual image for the topical and methodological self-consciousness of the visual culture studies. Among main questions under consideration are the following: what is a structural unity between material and meaningful aspects of visual representations? How is this unity connected to the ways the socially relevant visual representations circulate in contemporary culture? One of the key conclusions of the article: the notion of the specific iconic materiality – the structural interconnection of modes of seeing, understanding and presence, put into effect in some perceptive acts – is able to function as an explanatory model for a set of important processes in contemporary visual culture such as the current priority of visual forms of communication, historical durability of cultural imagery (despite instability and diversity of their visual embodiment), enhancement of the role of visual literacy and, as a consequence, necessity of the revision of current educational standard.

Keywords: image, visual culture, iconic materiality, iconic rite

DISTRIBUTED IMAGERY: IMAGINATIVE PRACTICES OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 1 (23). P. 31-46

Main theme of the article are the types of imagery becoming increasingly characteristic of contemporary culture. The core feature of these types is their being distributed across time and space, their ability to accompany us virtually everywhere, without being tied to any organizational form. Distributed imagery opposes “traditional”, non-distributed images “representing” some identifiable subject-matter. One of the essential traits of non-distributed imagery is its normative claim addressing not only the ways of its interpretation but also bodily practices of the perceiving subject, relevant for experiencing images of this kind. In contrast to the inherent oppressiveness of non-distributed image connected to a perceptual regime characteristic of it, the distributed imagery draws not on reduction and control of body of the perceiving subject but – on the contrary – on intensifying (and in this sense, on emancipating) its bodily emotional self-presence. From a diachronic point of view, the relationship between distributed and non-distributed imageries is mediated by quite a complicated socio-historical and material-technological dynamic of the developed and late modernity. Reconstruction of this dynamic enables us to identify the genetic interrelation (continuity) between non-distributed and distributed imagery. From a synchronic point of view, distributed and non-distributed imagery forms generate incompatible experience types with mutually exclusive structural characteristics and social-political implications (discontinuity).

Keywords: distributed / non-distributed imagery, political implications of perceptual experience, culturalization of matter, image theory, visual culture.