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| 101 | In this article the current situation and future possibilities of a modern Italian cinema are considered. In the term of “modern” we understand the relatively short period from 90th of the XX century till present days. Chronological coordinates are fixed, and we can talk about tendencies of revival of the Italian cinema as an art and as a communicative system which has its own canon and lexicon. The semiotic polyphony of visual imprints of events, persons, objects, and words can be profaned and facilitated taking into account the modern “mass consumer”. Therefore, we are talking about cinema in terms of loss, cheapness of the plan. We think that today we have a case of cinema directors successful works in which semiotics saturation of a cinema language allows speak about them in a high art category. The accent is emphasized on actual thematic preferences of a modern Italian cinema in this article. In each theme we illustrate almost each example of the last decade of the XX century and the beginning of XXI century. In our opinion, now the cinema directors tries to come into contact with the audience, counting on cultural unity with public, mutual knowledge of cultural codes, language of metaphors, symbols, and hints. Considering the major thematic directions of a modern Italian cinema, we can talk about two general tendencies, quite characteristic in general for the world cinematographic. First, it’s an attempt to save all considerable and talented issues that was already accumulated. Secondly, it’s an attempt to show that there are themes that request new approaches and a great courage from the art directors. Keywords: semiotics of cinema, cultural contexts, Italian cinema, history of cinema, language of cinema, Christian Metz, Yury Lotman | 1889 | |||||
| 102 | The academic discipline “Methodological bases of visual anthropology” is taught in the Philosophy faculty of the Tomsk State University for master’s degree students in the direction of “sociology” from 2012. Master students acquire the skill of system theoretical explication of anthropological meanings contained in the photographic image, as part of the study of this discipline. They demonstrate their competence in this area in the respective thematic essays devoted to the conceptual interpretation of photo selected by them. Here are some work of master student in sociology, devoted to the analysis of the photographic image from the perspective of visual anthropology. Keywords: photography, visual anthropology, analysis of images | 1883 | |||||
| 103 | Continental philosophy was often being characterized (most significantly by Badiou) as having a particular relationship with language manifesting in an acute sense of and purposeful usage of style. Yet the matter of tone has rarely been addressed as something significant. One of the rare examples is Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy by Jacques Derrida. Having long dismissed with the separation of “rhetorical decorations” and “conceptual content” Derrida proposes a certain tone as a defining characteristic of philosophy, capable of saving it from a crisis or killing it altogether. Another we encounter in the works of Gilles Deleuze who characterises style and even a concept itself as a “hue” or “colour” of a text (in L’abécédaire) and in relation to the notion of Stimmung (in Logic of Sense) in opposition to the language’s function of designation. The same notion – Stimmung, meaning “attunement’ or “mood’, linked to Verstimmung - “delirium” or “mis-tuning” - appears in Of an Apocalyptic Tone. Is philosophy itself a particular kind of tone or hue of a text? The answers to these questions, as I suggest, differ depending on which of the two approaches - Derrida’s “harmonic” one or Deleuzian “colouristic” one - takes to philosophical conceptual creativity. By analysing and comparing these two approaches this paper suggests a particular relation between tone (both in the sense of sound and of colour) and concept. It also suggests that a certain integration of these two approaches can be achieved through analysis of time (as rhythm and detour), as presented in Quentin Meillassoux’ Subtraction and Contraction. Keywords: tone, colour, Derrida, Deleuze, Meillassoux, envelope, sound studies, spectralism | 1878 | |||||
| 104 | Existing methods of representing the integrity and quality of urban spaces in visual perception are faced with the limitations of their use. The theories of visual perception physiology and theories of compositional structures and their harmonic relationships face a many additional conditions that level down their meaning in practice. We declare an alternative approach to analyzing the urban environment and explaining the principles of its visual perception based on the interdisciplinary theory of patterns. The essence of this approach tells the urban environment is historically formed on the basis of spatial formation models, archetypal models, and spatial prototypes. We call these templates as patterns. The concept of a pattern, which is widely used in various fields of science and practice, is adapted and updated within to urban planning in relation. We argue the principle of mosaicity of city area and folding the urban environment by “imprints” of spatial prototypes called urban units. The context of the notion “pattern” is considered: its etymology, history and essence of the pattern phenomenon in the interdisciplinary angle. Types of urban patterns and their basic properties are listed. The of the patternity space levels on which to fix and explain the influence of spatial prototypes are established. The principle mechanism of formation and patterns replication on the city area into the elementary spatial units is revealed on the example of a socialistic city, microdistrict and central blocks of the city. The differences in the mapping principles at different levels for this types of spaces are shown. We note the main problems of research in visual perception of the urban environment on the basis of the theory of patterns. The article uses the methods of theoretical definition of concept based on an interdisciplinary analogy. The study will provide use of the patterns theory to identify and diagnose a “genetic code” of city for its further translation or transformation. Keywords: pattern, urban morphology, integrity, mosaic, visual perception, city archetype | 1871 | |||||
| 105 | In this article, I continue the study of sacred topics of Russian cities. Comparison of syntactic functions and dedication’s semantics of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev and Constantinople is made in the article. The semantic link between the Old Testament character of God’s Wisdom and the composition of city in Eastern Christianity is picked. I revealed the fundamental idea which lies in the base of the town planning: the supernatural protection exerted to the city in response to his dedication to God. This dedication is visually expressed in the sacred complex consisting of the cathedral as an urban dominant and the gates in the city wall. I made a distinction between two meanings of the concept of Wisdom in Scripture and Tradition: 1) as a direct naming the person and 2) as the description of the name content. On this basis, I made a comparative analysis of the “sophia’s” icons, and I realized their general classification. The semantic analogy between the sacral dominants of Jerusalem, Constantinople and Kiev is demonstrated. It is proved that the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople has the same dedication as the Holy Sepulcher (Anastasis) of Jerusalem. On this basis, I conclude synonymy of these cathedrals, along with the identity of their syntactic positions in the urban text. Keywords: visual semiotics, Eastern Christianity, city, sacred architecture, visual organization of space, St. Sophia Cathedral, syntax, semantics, iconography, cultural semiotic transfer | 1866 | |||||
| 106 | The article discusses the challenges and opportunities posed by the visual turn and visual studies in the investigation of communication. The theoretical framework of the article was found in the modern concepts of multimodal communication. The article focuses on the role of a visual image in shaping our sociocultural experience and knowledge. The main research question is as follows: how communicative actors produce and interpret meanings through visual images. Visuality is considered as a semiotic resource of meaning making that is socially constructed and culturally given. The article looks at images as they are context sensitive and represent information from the sociocultural environment. The methodology of the present analysis is in line with social and cultural semiotics, and reflects the main principles of text and cultural linguistics. The findings and implications can be summarized as follows. First, the article sketches out a linguistic, or, to be more precise, text linguistic, view on multimodality and summarizes the main approaches to the visual medium of communication compared with language. The point of departure is a methodological shift within linguistics from logocentrism towards multimodality and visual resources of meaning making. In the research papers in the 2000s, linguists also legitimized the pictorial and multimodal turn. Visuality is now at the cross-point of research interests of many modern disciplines such as text linguistics, stylistics, cognitive linguistics. Multimodal texts are considered a crucial object to investigate the meaning making in its sociocultural embeddedness. Second, the suggested inquiry is in line with the issue of intericonicity and reveals the explanatory charge of visual intertextuality. I show that pictures, image-language links may emerge as rooted in certain sociocultural practices as a part of the cultural knowledge of communicators. That means they may be dependent upon the knowledge of previously encountered texts or meanings. Visual intertextuality is considered a form of intericonicity, which reflects the intersemiotic translation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. I show visual intertextuality in current Russian communicative practice as a means of meaning making through reference on images or image-language links. A conclusion looks at some requirements and directions for further research. Images may provide a new access point to investigation of the cognitive dimension of meaning making and its sociocultural dimension. They allow us to observe the forms in which socially shaped and shared experience is fixed. The visual resource provides an access to contextualization: images are context sensitive and context embedded. The use and interpretation of images gives a special angle for the active, social construction of reality through semiotic (visual) resources. Keywords: multimodality, visual intertextuality, intericonicity, sociocultural context | 1862 | |||||
| 107 | The relevance of the study of ornament in a semiotic way is confirmed by the active research in the world semiotic science enriching its methodological reserve more and more. The results of studies on problems of ornament as a semiotic structure and ethnographic code since the mid-twentieth century are illustrated by dozens of works on the material of different cultures: Slavic, Balkan, and many others. However, it should be acknowledged that at the moment all the diversity, beauty, intelligence, plasticity, aesthetics and semantics of Kazakh (and wider Turkic) ornament are little known outside Kazakhstan. Many aspects of Kazakh ornament remain insufficiently studied from the standpoint of semiotic research, which will expand the horizons of understanding not only ornamental art itself as a “chronicle of culture”, but also its symbolic nature and code system. Ornament in such a reading appears as a special kind of language, a sign system that exists in structural unity with other structures of the cultural whole. On the one hand, ornamental design functions in the field of various types of traditional art and crafts: textile art and costume, wood and stone processing, jewelry, pottery, architecture, rock art, tamgas, and others; thus, considering ornament as a special kind of a sign system, we should also remember the polysemantic nature of ethno-sign codes. On the other hand, the internal structure of ornament correlates with other languages of culture: music, poetry (oral culture), writing, dance, etc., as well as with the phenomenon of Tengrian calendar, which is seemingly incommensurable in its functionality. The article presents the results of a study of the structural model of ornament in its correlation with the languages of other phenomena of Kazakh culture. Keywords: ornament, Kazakh culture, semiotic basis, ethno-sign code | 1861 | |||||
| 108 | We continue to consider a cinema of Italy in optics of gender researches. In this case standard cliches of “ideal” metaphors of the female are analyzed. Among them: subject of loneliness and victim, images of the seductive star and pure maiden, melancholy for beautiful mother and female courage. It is obvious that the format of article doesn’t allow even to list all considerable movies from the Italian cinema tradition. We dared to stop in several pictures in which a peculiar portrait gallery is presented, from our point of view, representatively. Keywords: cinema history, Italian cinema, gender researches, standard cliches, metaphors of the female | 1860 | |||||
| 109 | The article discusses a number of connected concepts including “practical skill”, “movement skill”, “metis”, “techniques of the body”, and “kinesthetic intelligence”. They share in common the representation of knowledge as often a non-verbal process, by half and large unconscious, based on muscular sensations as much as on brain and consciousness. The feature that they have in common can be termed “bodily knowledge”, an epistemological alternative to techne, or codified practical knowledge formalized in rules and instructions. Muscular feeling, or kinesthesia is at the foundation of bodily knowledge. I.M. Sechenov called it “dark”, or “opaque”, feeling on the grounds that this kind of sensations are rarely verbalized and reflected upon. Yet, inner sensation of the kind cannot be completely opposed to thinking. Using the poet and writer, Varlam Shalamov’s words, one may call them “sage skill”, a particular kind of knowing. Below there is a discussion of various meaning of the expression, “bodily knowledge”. Keywords: skill, movement skill, metis, techne, techniques of the body, kinesthetic intelligence | 1860 | |||||
| 110 | One of the essential features of education is emphasized in the article: a person’s adaptation to the symbolism of social reality. The modern transformation of social reality is accompanied by educational experiments made by leading universities. The combination of social and educational transformations, which is expressed in two experiments, is subjected to semiotic diagnostics. The substantiation of semiotic diagnostics is based on the interpretation of information characteristics as criteria for the self-organization of complex open systems. This substantiation is obtained within the framework of natural philosophy and is overcome based on bioethics, namely, on the interpretation of bioethics as discursive symbolism, in which the approach of interpretation of invariant rules from the perspective of variable and situational personal preferences has been tested. The procedures for semiotic diagnostics include: (1) elucidation of all “symptoms”, that is, the set of signs that are present in the analyzed effect; (2) elucidation of “syndromes”, that is, operators selected to implement the goals of the participants of the analyzed effect; (3) clarification of the goals that form the analyzed effect; (4) juxtaposition of the “anamneses” of the analyzed effects to clarify the precedents (if any) of the studied situation. Procedures show: (1) the semantics of the effect, (2) the syntax of the effect, (3) the pragmatics of the effect, and (4) the “diagnosis” itself. The limits for applying the developed procedures are determined. The requirement to formalize the manifestation of the effect in a four-dimensional space is assigned to the applicability limits. Models of bioethics and paradigms of education exist in such a space. The innovations presented by the Minerva Schools and the project (referred to as Janus in the article) of Stanford University are subjected to semiotic diagnostics. These projects represent an education-travel, exclusive in speed, which connects cultural landscapes with different “climatic” modes of cognitive management. Its purpose is to gain wisdom (rather than knowledge), expressed in acquiring a combination of experience in independent generation of knowledge and experience in the implementation of this knowledge in different socio-cultural contexts. The diagnosis is given in the title of the article. Keywords: semiotic diagnostics, procedures of semiotic diagnostics, information characteristics, efficiency, self-organization phases, positions of bioethics, visualization technologies in education | 1853 | |||||
| 111 | The paper discusses the role and functions of visual thinking within the context of modern education in physics and mathematics. Visual thinking is an intrinsic part of the thinking process of the work of specialists in the fields of exact and natural sciences. In connection with this, with the increase of environment visualization in the learning, professional and personal human activities, and with the growth of information flows and their impact on people, the modern role and possibilities of semiotic resources of mathematics and physics become of considerable relevance. The paper delineates the prospects of visual modeling with the help of mathematical and physical models, and of mental experiment in developing images, reflecting on them and subsequent operating them. On the basis of the analysis of Russian and foreign literature and arguments developed by the author, the paper substantiates the necessity of the development and extension of the theory of the semiotic component of education and its implementation. Semiotics expands the meaning of both theoretical and practical parts of mathematical and natural science education. The paper focuses on the analysis of the development of new approaches to the implementation of the semiotic component of modern education in teaching schoolchildren and in training teachers of mathematical and physical specializations. In teaching schoolchildren, the component is to be implemented by means of their inclusion into educational practices based on real situations appearing in professional activity of specialists working directly in the fields of mathematics, physics and in the spheres of their application. The approach to teachers’ training is based on visualizing their future professional activities in practical resolving problems within selected training situations. In connection with this, the author identified and substantiated the priority directions of the development of the semiotic component in physical and mathematical education. Dwelling on the concepts of visual thinking and on the provided grounding of the necessity of visual modeling in teaching schoolchildren and the relevant teachers’ training, the author identified and considered two basic processes in becoming a teacher (which are also the teacher’s professional activity functions): interiorization and modeling. The paper presents a variant of systematization of the semiotic component of the future physics and mathematics teachers’ competencies in their professional activities. The development of this semiotic component concerns such elements of competencies as knowledge, skills, values and attitudes, prevailing ways of performance. Mastering the competence of educational-professional information visualization by future teachers is to facilitate the increase of the quality of their training, to ensure their ability to perform educational activities in actualized regional practices, including innovative ones, and to design effective learning activities of their students in the visual space. Keywords: visual thinking, semiotic resources, semiotic component of the teacher’s competency, teaching physics and mathematics, modeling, mental experiment | 1838 | |||||
| 112 | This paper reveals the ideas of diversification management, and analyzes the possibility of their implementation as a conceptual basis for the management of general education organizations. Evolutionary and globalization world processes determine one of the leading trends, which is reflected both in the labor market conditions and in the conditions of the educational services market, and is characterized by the diversification of the workforce and the diversification of consumer preferences. This trend, reflecting certain difficulties and advantages of the development of public relations, can be applied by heads of educational organizations to improve management effectiveness in the context of using the human potential of the subjects of the educational process and ensuring the competitiveness of the educational organization. Most often the studies on this issue discuss the categories of “diversity management”, “diversity management” and “diversification management”. Migration processes and inclusion processes actualize the search for new content, methods and technologies of the educational process within the framework of the federal state standards of general education, since there are various schools, including multinational groups of students, and, consequently, parents. This trend requires a search for managerial, social and pedagogical strategies for the successful development of the school and of education quality in the new conditions. Today, the skills of the head of a general education organization, related to the successful management of personnel of different age, gender, physical abilities, ethnicity and race, are more in demand than ever. These skills in school management are no less important for interaction with other subjects of the educational process: students and their parents. The quintessence of organizational behavior in a modern school is the management of the diversity of subjects of the educational process, which requires acceptance of individual and sociocultural characteristics, special attention to them, as well as manifestation of tolerance towards them. Today, heads of general education organizations are forced to seek not only ways to “coexist” for teachers and support staff, students and their parents of different religions, nationalities, age and sex, but also ways to manage effectively the “potential difference”. Implementation of this goal is facilitated by the concept of diversification management, which serves as a methodological basis for the search for effective management strategies in the current situation. The paper was prepared within the framework of the research “Formation and Development of the Pedagogical Metatheory of Diversity Management in Educational Systems”, state task of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation No. 27.2617.2017/4.6. Keywords: general education organization, diversification management, competitiveness of organization, heterogeneous pedagogical staff | 1832 | |||||
| 113 | The article is aimed to describe the system of memory places existing in the cities of Siberia and being connected with the history of the Civil War (1918– 1922). There is determined the value of monument as an important systemforming component of the urban environment, expressing the value attitude of society, both to the global and local historical past. The importance of monument as a brand of a city and a region is emphasized. The conditions of functioning of the memorial as a memory place, expressing a variety of meanings and associated with the actual historical memory of the local community. The tendency of gradual oblivion of Civil war in Siberia and transformation of memorials in the historical places, which are not connected with live social memory is revealed. The main characteristics of the existing memorial infrastructure in Siberian cities related to the Civil War are established. These ones are a weak connection between the symbolic solution of monuments and the place of events that they perpetuate; separation from the modern scientific reflection on the Civil War in Siberia; fixation of the confrontation of ideological opponents and their principled intransigence; the lack of initiatives aimed at perpetuating the memory of the numerous non-heroic victims of the war. A series of proposals aimed at the transformation of the memorial infrastructure of the Civil War in the cities of Siberia in the context of the memorable date of the 100th anniversary of its inception there is made on behalf of the Novosibirsk community of historians. It is proposed to abandon the memorial symbols that express the reconciliation of opponents, because in fact it did not take place. There is a call to find new memorial forms that do not glorify the complex past, but express the humanistic sense of recognition of the tragedy, which should not be repeated. A new phase of memorialization of the Civil war in Siberia must be associated with the recognition of numerous unheroic victims among the civilian population, which are now forgotten. It is also noted that the actualization of the memory of the Civil war can help to solve the problems of branding of the cities of the region to create positive images of Siberia in the public consciousness of its inhabitants. Keywords: commemoration, memorialization, politics of memory, monument, consensus, Civil War, cities of Siberia | 1830 | |||||
| 114 | The concept “mediatization” captures fundamental changes in society due to the development of modern media. It is actively and widely used in modern research, but the conceptualization of mediatization processes takes different directions and differs in different countries. Meanwhile, clarifying the content of this concept and the research assumptions associated with its use is an important and independent task. The article analyzes the appearance and initial ideas of this concept: the idea of a special media logic, as it was understood by David Altheide, the idea of formatting based on the concept of the medium as the key to the message developed by the followers of Marshall McLuhan. The problematic aspects of this conceptualization are identified and presented. On the one hand, complex forms are analyzed as simple, which leads to incorrect analogies; on the other, they are related to the understanding of the medium outside of the material and organizational conditions necessary for its functioning. At the same time, it is shown that a number of critical arguments against these concepts related, for example, to ignoring the ethical dimension and the awareness of the message in the McLuhan model are invalid. The main views on the dating of mediatization processes are presented. The key premises of the introduction of the “mediatization” concept are identified; they are connected with the separation of reality itself and constructs of this reality, as well as the lack of a single logic for the formation of various mediatized social worlds. The direction of further evolution of studies using this concept is shown. It is associated with ideas of different media logics, not a single media logic, and is represented by three main approaches: (1) a strategy of understanding media as an institution whose influence transforms other actors’ logic; (2) a strategy of analyzing “mediatized social worlds” that is based on the ideas of semiotics, poststructuralist approaches to discourse analysis, and different interpretations of social worlds; (3) a “technological” strategy that demonstrates the connection between “media grammar” and the transformation of thinking habits. Keywords: media, mediatization, media logic, media format, mediated social world | 1827 | |||||
| 115 | This work is dedicated to the history of Academy in Athens in early and late periods of its existence. I will first consider Academy in the time of Plato and then switch to the Athenian school of Neoplatonism (“the House of Proclus”) in the period of late antiquity. Using both archaeological and written evidences, fortunately sufficient in case of both of these institutions, I intend to draw a picture of their physical location and structure. Such an attitude towards the history, typical to the Annales School, will help us to place intellectual life of the ancients in proper everyday context. There is one more reason why I have chosen these objects. One can say that these two institutions represent two different approaches to the way of life and the methods of education. On the one hand, one can see here the evolution of educational system from free discourses to more familiar for our educational system formal instructions. On the other hand, Plato’s Academy reminds us of the contemporary tendency of organizing scientific life far from the densely populated cities in the form of university’s campuses, which, to some extent, constitutes a return to the classical paradigm. Keywords: topography of Athens, Plato’s Academy, Gymnasium, Square Peristyle, exedra, Athenian school of Neoplatonism, Proclus, Marin, university | 1822 | |||||
| 116 | The authors reconstruct the concepts of university by John Stewart Mill and William Whewell. They argue that modernization of Russian society requires a deep reconsideration of the idea of university education, especially, in terms of the humanities. The analysis of the discussion between Mill and Whewell could contribute to the understanding of the spirit of Victorian England as well as of some significant controversies between liberals and conservators in their debate on the social purpose of the university. The authors claim that this debate is still relevant for the current Russian reform of higher education. In the first part of the paper the authors discuss anthropological assumptions that gave rise to Whewell’s and Mill’s differences in viewing the human nature as well as in the meaning of history. While following empiricism, Mill accepted the idea of tabula rasa. Hence, he argued that the university should firstly give space for self-realization of individuality. At the same time, Whewell considered the human nature as an inalienable part of cultural tradition. In accordance with this, the university should primarily provide connection of the times and integrity of intellectual tradition. The authors discuss the ideological attribution of Whewell’s ideas, namely, his so-called “traditionalism”. They argue that Whewell should not be considered as an old-fashioned hunker, since he claimed that tradition was to be saved as long as it generated some new fruitful ideas. The authors pay special attention to Whewell’s philosophy of history. He considered rises and falls of civilizations as a cyclic process, which was congruent to the periods of dominance of mathematics and philosophy in culture. Whewell argued that the decline of Greek culture was predetermined, when simple geometrical conceptions of the school of Plato were debased and weighed down by a cumbrous apparatus of crystalline spheres. The authors claim that this visual image comes from the basic presumption of Whewell’s philosophy of science: the development of scientific knowledge should be considered as an advancement in a clear and definite understanding of object. Hence, clearness and visual simplicity of model representations are the most reliable proof of knowledge enhancement. The authors analyze the historical context of the Whewell-Mill debate. They put Whewell’s ideas into the context of his reformist activity in Cambridge University. They argue that Whewell tried to adapt W. Humboldt’s model of the university to the context of Victorian England. In the final part of the paper, the authors discuss how Whewell’s ideas could be used for the modernization of philosophy education in Russia. They propose that the integration of the STS (science & technology studies) into the university programs in philosophy could make philosophical knowledge more relevant and attractive for scientists. This turn to the more “practical” (in Whewell’s sense) way of teaching philosophy could be used for the justification of the heuristic potential of philosophical knowledge in science as well. The authors conclude that nowadays this mode of self-representation of philosophy is the most relevant one. Keywords: Whewell, Mill, philosophy of science, reform, liberals, conservators, university, education, philosophy, Victorian Age, STS, social context of knowledge | 1818 | |||||
| 117 | In this article the principles of the Armenian epos visualization in urban space are analyzed. The material for the analysis is the work of the Armenian sculptor, People’s Artist of USSR Ervand Kochar. The thesis of this article is: Armenian epos is always in the field of the collective consciousness of Armenians and is visualized in the “high” art always reflexively and on a deep level – according to the “laws” of the art. The main methodological premise of understanding the material became semiotics and discourse analysis. The analysis of empirical material showed that the Kochar’s sculpture, dedicated to the epic hero David of Sasun, is a strong marker of the Armenian epos in the urban space and is many times multiplexed in the Soviet and post-Soviet period. In the historical perspective, analysis of the sculpture in the context of the epic has been interpreted in different ways at diverse times, and the “fate” of the statue and the artist Kochar became a prominent “sign” indicating the realities of the Soviet period and the post-Soviet Armenia. Keywords: epic visualization, urban space, public space, collective memory, the Soviet and post-Soviet era, the epic, the Armenian epos, postfolklor, semiotic translation, interpretation of the epics, equestrian statue, sculpture | 1816 | |||||
| 118 | “Geographical imagination” is a very strange terminological combination. It might arouse suspicion in academically respectable geography as a consequence of epistemological dangers it presumably posed. The article examines the concept of geographical imagination in the research works of the distinguished British cultural geographer and historian of cartography Denis Cosgrove (1948–2008). Cosgrove has no advanced and systematic theory of geographical imagination, but it is the main focus of his studies. For Cosgrove, the question about geographical imagination is fundamental since, in his cultural geography, imagination becomes virtually a “transcendental condition” of every geographical act as an act of representing Earth and its parts in various geographical images (maps, paintings, landscapes, photographs, urban plans and city parks, digital representations). The article considers some basic characteristics of geographical imagination and the rich field of geographical image in Cosgrove’s cultural geography. 1. Geographical images are not some entities, spontaneously generated by the “productive capacity of imagination” in the interior of the “Cartesian Theater” and remaining closed within the borders of its scene. Geographical imagination is a name of a complex mechanism, whose work we find so hard to understand and describe (if this is even possible). In this work, hands, eyes, minds, and technologies are involved. The mechanism of imagination generates externalia (images of Earth). 2. Geographical images create new (empirically unimplementable) horizons of visibility, conspicuity, and intelligibility. For example, according to Christian Jacob, “the map presents a schema, visual as well as intellectual, that takes the place of an impossible sensorial vision”. 3. Geographical images are one of the “privileged places”, and also expressions, of graphic experiments, experiments of imagination, during which new ways of seeing and thinking Earth have been tested and are being investigated further. Geographical imagination is work on visual representations of not only the empirical order, but also conceptual structures. 4. Geographical images cannot be reduced to pure and neutral representations of geographic facts. In relation to the “factual” level, it demonstrates visual and semantic redundancy. For Cosgrove, the history of geographical imagination is also the history of “investment” in geographical images that human fears, hopes, desires, metaphysical speculations, religious pursuits, and moral sensitivity make. Considered as a whole, Cosgrove’s research in the field of cultural geography is one big act of an ontological, epistemological, cultural, and even moral rehabilitation of images. Keywords: imagination, geographical imagination, geographical image, geography, Denis Cosgrove, map, cartography, image | 1816 | |||||
| 119 | Visual Anthropology is a modern dynamic multidisciplinary “industry” of the humanities, based on research experience in the field of ethnography, sociology, history, cultural phenomenology, phenomenology of religion, social psychology, aesthetics and semiotics. The subject of visual anthropology’s research is a set of visual presentations of social and cultural communities and traditions. It is argued that the subject of visual anthropology are all forms of expression of social and cultural meanings, which are available for visual fixation and transmission. Visual images take up a significant segment of the culture as a social-communicative system. Currently, the image has become a leading medium of expression and transmission of important information. “Visual turn” in the culture which associated with the focus from the semantic aspect of the image to its syntax is recorded and described. Human ontology and culture fundamentally transformed in connection with this turn. The question about the “correctness” of the image disappears because of the elimination of its referential parameter. The image is now measured not by fidelity of reality, but on the effectiveness of its impact on the recipient: the priority shifts from its identity to its functionality. Since the entire anthropological reality is concentrated in this sort of images, the attitude to reality becomes technical, manipulative. Visual anthropology is actively formed as an integral research discipline, the focus of which are on visual acts – human action or set of actions (both synchronous and consecutive), relating to the visual image, i.e. is an active, aimed at the production, translation and use of a visual image. The rapid development of visual culture sector determines the relevance of research in visual anthropology and makes its one of the most dynamic areas of contemporary humanities. The author formulates a version of the epistemic structure description of visual anthropology as an integrated multidisciplinary research project. Keywords: anthropology, culture, visual image, the visual turn | 1815 | |||||
| 120 | The article describes the typical features of modern popular culture: the dominance of the hyper-real object, simulation, replication, visual representation. Some of the most common critical judgments about the nature and functions of popular culture are analyzed. It is shown that production of simulacra and of hyper-real objects can be connected with the ways of production of popular forms of social and cultural existence rather than with the implementation of escapist attitudes and replacing of reality with its counterfeits. Therefore, it should be assumed that hyper-real objects do not deny the reality as such, but only its forms that have lost their efficiency, cultural significance and value in the eyes of the community or its individual groups. It is shown that the foundation and the source of the typical features of popular culture should be connected with the demand and wish for visual ization. It is argued that it is not due to the primitiveness of the consumer or an escape to the world of illusions, but to the need for the desired fullness of feeling and suitable models of understanding the world, as well as schemes for organizing and managing one’s actions. In these terms, replication should be interpreted as a way of establishing and maintaining stability, balance, completeness of theclaimed cultural and social space. Keywords: popular culture, mass culture, simulacrum, hyper-reality, replication, visual representation | 1815 | |||||
| 121 | The article examines the theoretical issue of the palimpsest by looking at the art of the German neo-Expressionist painter Anselm Kiefer. In the context of semiotics and cultural semantics, the palimpsest is a new text written over the erased previous version, with the old meaning shining through the new. In an attempt to provide a semantic description of the palimpsest, the author finds crucial tools for its study in the notions of the stratification and intensity of the palimpsest as a multi-layered hybrid text, in which the logical structure of the text forms the basis for convergence of various microtextures and authorial utterances. Palimpsest texts have a certain narrativity of their own: it turns the reader or viewer towards finding textual references and quotes, searching for traces of the invisible and accounting for other existing discourses – thus revealing links between text and subtext, the visible and the invisible, form and content. The textual space of the palimpsest moves along a certain trajectory and features a certain kind of anaphora, as a combination of semantic constructs which differ in their level and structure. The author sees the palimpsest both as a research method which harks back to hermeneutics and to interpreting traces of past culture. At the same time, the palimpsest remains an artistic device. The narrative logic mandates removing layers of superimposed texts, one by one in a fixed order. The article focuses on studying such tropes as “trace”, “labyrinth”, or intertext. In the study of visuality in the palimpsest texts by Anselm Kiefer, the author emphasizes the morphology of artistic texts and shows how the verbal context can be interpreted on various structural levels, and how allusions and reminiscences can be discovered in the depths of the text, and the topoi of cultural memory can be marked. In the analysis of Anselm Kiefer’s Varus (1976) and Margarete (1981), the author concludes that, throughout the many decades of his work, Kiefer polemically assaults the nationalist rhetoric. He deals with important historical events and topoi of the traditional German mythology, trying to find true examples of heroic past and reconstruct the historical truth. Textual layers, seen as multiple borrowings, allusions and reminiscences, open the door into a new space of visual optics and interpretation zones. The mythologem of the palimpsest is closely linked to the narrative and its features, where textual references and direct quotes reveal new connections, which previously remained invisible. Keywords: palimpsest, Postmodernism, trace, intertextuality, visible/invisible, Anselm Kiefer, German mythology, cultural memory, Holocaust, Paul Celan, hybrid text | 1814 | |||||
| 122 | The article gives a conceptual distinction between the doctrinal and navigational methods used in anthropology. The first involves the desire for the essential and objective determinations of man. The second presupposes alignment of orientation and navigation practices with the aim of finding a event place for people in being. The author analyzes the experience of using the concept of anthropological navigation introduced by the author in concrete visual and pedagogical practices. The description of the tool of anthropological navigation, anthropoid cartoid, and the way of working with it is given. A distinction is made between the geographical cartoid and the anthropoid cartoid. The author analyzes the experience of developing cartoids for their application to specific situations related to building personal life trajectories. The first lessons of this experience are described. Keywords: anthropological navigation, anthropoid cartoid, geographic cartoid, resource map, place in being, trajectory of personal life, ontological topic of the self-determination | 1810 | |||||
| 123 | 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 | 1806 | |||||
| 124 | In this article the methodological aspects of the study of the place image are presented, the specific features of their formation are researched. Based on the review of the contemporary foreign and native literature, the specific features of quality and quantity methods in the branch of territorial marketing, place image policy and place branding are analyzed. A variety of research methods depicts a complex and interdisciplinary nature of the territory image policy research. The paper also shows the peculiarities of application of statistic, semantic and psychological methods of research. The image policy as a government strategy can be successfully implicated due to the usage of quality methods (interview, Delphi method, focus groups, the repertory grid technique) on the initial stage of creation of the place image and the usage of quantity methods (ranking, surveys, statistical methods) on further stages. Keywords: place image, place image policy, methods, marketing, management | 1793 | |||||
| 125 | Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge where the most significant scientific breakthroughs take place in the 21st century. They are significant both for the development of convergent technologies and for the dissemination of interdisciplinary and integrative trends in research that connect areas previously thought of as completely incompatible, including natural sciences and the humanities. The author shows that in cognitive science, despite the highly theorized and narrowly special focus of many its areas of research, visual images are quite often and productively used. Some of them, such as a cognitive map, cognitive niche, cognitive landscape, cognitive field that echoes the concept of a dynamic field in Gestalt psychology, the wandering around the field of meanings, a search tree are discussed in the article. A special role is also played by mental imagery, which forms a basis for the work of productive imagination and creative thinking, studied in cognitive psychology. It is substantiated in the article that such visualization tools are essential not only as initial “scaffolding” for the development of theoretical concepts, but also for clarifying the nuances of the meaning of complex scientific constructions. In addition, in today’s cognitive science, the phenomenological approach and the so-called “first-person methodology” are gaining popularity, taking into account that the meaning of theoretical constructions begins to live and work, being unpacked in the lifeworld of each particular personality. Thus, the inseparability of figurative visual knowledge and abstract verbal knowledge gets additional justification through the understanding of the inseparability of the ordinary and scientific knowledge. Keywords: visual thinking, visual images, imagination, cognitive map, cognitive niche, cognitive landscape, meaning, phenomenal consciousness. | 1790 | |||||
| 126 | The paper examines the phenomenon of the "Siberian Jerusalem" based on both materials of religious and secular texts of Siberian authors of the XIX – early XX centuries and documents of the regional archives. Special attention is paid to the analysis of Jerusalem and Palestinian toponymy in Siberia. The author aims to analyze the genesis of the phenomenon of Siberian Jerusalem: its semantics, the relation between the concepts of Siberian and New Jerusalem if such a relation exists. In terms of methodology, the article relies on developments in the field of hierotopy (A. M. Lidov) and cultural-semiotic transfer (S. S. Avanesov). The author comes to the conclusion that Jerusalem during the XVII–XXI centuries remained one of the space-forming sacred symbols of Siberia. At various times, in the social-religious and academic discourse, Tobolsk, Yeniseisk, Tomsk, Kainsk, Novokuznetsk were attributed to Siberian Jerusalem. Siberian pilgrimage and religious texts of the XIX – early XX centuries point to the fact of separation of the concepts of the Old and New Jerusalem in the consciousness of the Siberians. Siberian Jerusalem can be regarded as the image of the New Jerusalem, a continuation of the iconization of Moscow Russia. Until 1917, residents of the territory beyond the Urals recognized Tobolsk as Siberian New Jerusalem. The status of Tobolsk was reinforced by the cultural-semiotic transfer of the Jerusalem topos to Siberia in the form of an idea (Tobolsk as the center of the Universe), an image (the Tobolsk Kremlin complex) and liturgy ("the procession on the donkey"). The construction of Siberian Jerusalem was accompanied by an active transfer of the symbols of Jerusalem to Siberia, which was reflected in the toponymy of the region. Reconstruction of the origin of names reveals several sources of the creation of Palestinian toponymy in Siberia such as church construction, gold mining and the Jewish presence. Keywords: Siberia, New Jerusalem, Siberian Jerusalem, cultural and semiotic transfer, Siberian pilgrims, Jews in Siberia, Orthodoxy | 1784 | |||||
| 127 | As shown by current research in the field of metaindividual psychology of art, emotional response to some action/event can have different forms of realization and manifest not only in the verbal form, pantomime or behavioral strategies, but also in visual art. The analysis given in the paper is an attempt to show the forms of manifestation of the Mughal dynastic pride on a specific empirical material and to explore meanings and value which could be assigned to the material objects of Timurid art and Mughal culture. The pictorial manifestation of dynastic pride of the Great Mughals was predominantly implemented in the field of visual propaganda (state regalia and miniature painting). Keywords: dynastic pride, heirloom, family tree, genealogical seal, dynastic portrait, Great Mughals, Timur, Timurids | 1775 | |||||
| 128 | The article reveals the principal stylistic and semantic features of screen adaptation of Russian classics by the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. The emphasis is on the transfer of texts Leskov and Dostoevsky on screen. Andrzej Wajda analyzes the nature of female and male love, as well as the aspect of obsession with the idea. Using the devices of Kabuki theater in adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel ‘Idiot’, Andrzej Wajda expands the semantic field of death’s and love’s aesthetics. The specificity of the Slavic soul is attained through the combination of different cultural stratums. Keywords: screen adaptation, Andrzej Wajda, Kabuki theater, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Russian classical literature, Slavic soul, obsession with the idea, destructive power of love | 1773 | |||||
| 129 | The geocultural space of any region is formed as a result of the interaction of two weakly separable elements – geocultures developing in the given territory and cultural landscapes. The full development of a geocultural space involves the formation of a unique ontology of imagination, which creates a cognitive “foundation” for the construction of appropriate models. Ontological models of imagination characterize the possibilities of an expanded representation and interpretation of the cultural landscapes of a region. The visuality of a cultural landscape is a complex formation in which visual reactions and reflections are the result of multiple imaginations – both personal and group. The geocultural space of the Arctic, in its visual-discursive dimension, is complex, since the tradition of the “colonial view”, coupled with the tendencies to analyze postcolonial practices and to decolonize various Arctic discourses, creates an ambivalent discursive field of relevant visual practices and policies. The existential situation of post-exoticism, typologically characteristic of the Arctic regions, is a field of ontologization of multiple visual practices that consolidate rhizomatic procedures of geocultural distinctions. As a result of a field study of the coastal territories of North-Eastern Chukotka, the most visually intensive key landscape assemblages have been identified: 1) sea hunting, 2) traditional holidays of sea hunters, 3) “pristine” nature. Landscape assemblages are represented by various visual dispositives. Visual dispositives are understood as consistently reproducing and phenomenologically fixed visual landscape (geocultural) images that characterize the specifics of certain landscape assemblages. As a result of the study, five key visual dispositives have been identified that determine the specific forms of the reproduction and development of both geo-cultures themselves and the corresponding cultural landscapes of these territories: 1) the dispositive of sea hunters, the most borderline and fractal; 2) the dispositive of holidays of the traditional culture of sea hunters; 3) the dispositive of destruction and ruin associated with both the extreme natural conditions of the region and the era of the Soviet and post-Soviet development; 4) the dispositive of the “natural”, “pristine” space associated with the low development of the territory, and 5) the dispositive of multi-naturalism, manifested in the features of the visual environments of Chukchi settlements (villages, urban-type settlements, small towns). These dispositives, intertwining and interacting, create multiple, constantly transforming landscape assemblages. Within the framework of the presented visual dispositives, the phenomena of Arctic post-exoticism and internal exoticism are formed, which fix the impossibility of returning to the pre-colonial “landscape optics”. Keywords: geocultural space, Arctic, geoculture, cultural landscape, landscape visualization, ontological models of imagination, landscape assemblage, visual dispositive, post-exoticism | 1772 | |||||
| 130 | The article examines the psychological and sociopolitical features of Russia’s young generation, which determine the characteristics, ways and means of forming the civic consciousness of the youth. The category “civic consciousness” is understood as a complex of value, cognitive, reflexive, motivational and emotional characteristics of a person that determine their stable and conscious self-identification as a citizen and are expressed in a person’s relationship with the state and society. The structural and substantive characteristics of the image of Russia in the minds of young people are given from the standpoints of the theory of political perception and developments of political psychologists in the field of studying the political consciousness of young people, various aspects of the theory of identity in terms of understanding civic identity as the basis of the political self-determination of the individual. The image of Russia, which is a complex of ideas about it as a country and a state, the modern youth has is explored in its visual dimension through young people’s drawings representing their ideas about Russia in the form of images. The study used the projective drawing technique “Russia in the form of a house”, which, like any other similar diagnostic technique, aims at identifying deep and poorly perceived features of the perception of the surrounding reality and oneself in the world. The main focus is on the semantic content of the plots presented in the drawings, their symbolic content, the emotional sign of the images. Data were generalized according to the parameters of the cognitive complexity and congruence of the images. The target group of the study consisted of young Russian citizens aged 15 to 30 within three age groups – 15 to 17, 18 to 23, and 24 to 30 years. In the course of the study, 540 drawings were collected and analyzed (180 drawings by respondents of each age group) in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Krasnodar and Primorsky krais, in Moscow, Tver, Lipetsk, Omsk oblasts, in the Republics of Crimea and North Ossetia-Alania (at least 50 drawings in each region). Based on the results of the study, the authors identify general tendencies of the perception of the country, which determine the civic identity of young people, and the distinctiveness of the image of Russia in different age groups in the structure of the younger generation. Several interrelated directions (outlines) of structuring the image of their country are also described, including different aspects of young Russians’ ideas about Russia: personal-emotional, power-state, civilizational. The authors note that great difficulties in the development of civic identity are manifested in the younger age group of the studied Russians. The analysis of the image of the country in the structure of the civic consciousness of youth based on visual data, particularly materials of projective drawings, made it possible to confirm the existence of the dependence of civic identity on how the young correlate themselves with the perceived community – Russia as a sociocultural and political entity. The conclusion is made that the use of visual methods in youth research seems to be promising, including due to the specific “clip” nature of the youth’s perception of the sociopolitical reality and the significant role of visual means in the youth’s communication in the social environment and the virtual space. Keywords: image of Russia, civic consciousness of youth, millennial generation (Y), homeland generation (Z), civic identity, political and psychological approach, visual methods | 1768 | |||||
| 131 | The article accentuated the problem of clarifying the meaning of the basic anthropological terms. Science сonvention in anthropological terminology is one of the conditions for the development of knowledge about a man, because it ensures the maintenance of a communicative nature of anthropology. An analytical approach is required to solve this problem. This approach takes into account the historical and cultural transformation of the meaning of the term, the impact of the context of its use on its value. The article analyzes one of the key anthropological terms: “personality”. The author finds that the term was originally associated with visual semantic connotations that persist or evolve along with the development of anthropological reflection. Thus, in the ancient culture the word πρόσωπον depending on the time, the circumstances and the context means the following: 1) an appearance; 2) a face; 3) a mask; 4) a character; 5) a role; 6) an actor. The Latin persona has these meanings. In the Christian culture, this word loses its “theatrical” meaning. Token of the term πρόσωπον are now concentrated around the two semantic points: a) an appearance; b) a particular subject (“who”). The shift in emphasis from the “person-mask” for “person-hypostasis” reflects a radical transformation of thinking about a man associated with the transfer from ancient cosmological paradigm for Christian personalist platform on the basis of which a person as visible acquires a special existential depth and unique value. Keywords: anthropology, term, meaning, personality, visual aspects | 1766 | |||||
| 132 | The study presents the main concepts of Parajanov’s cinematic poetics, which is deeply bound with the filmmaker’s Weltanschauung: a mixture of ancient, medieval and modern civilizational models, of Oriental and Western, Christian, Islamic and pagan patterns of behaviour, of mythic-archaic, soviet and postmodern anthropological models, that melt together in harmony only in the unique topos of Transcaucasia. Keywords: immersion into myth, language of stage convention, Byzantine man, the invisible war, postmodernism, cinegenic arche-types, sacred in motion, cinematic archeography | 1764 | |||||
| 133 | The article examines the effect of the victory in WWII on the status of the Stalinist regime and on the representations of power in Soviet war films. Already in the last stages of the war (e.g., Fridrikh Ermler’s The Great Turning Point) the experiences at the frontline and on the home front were being transformed into a narrative of Victory, which started to replace the Revolution as the focal point of the myth of creation of the Soviet nation; the creation of a “useful past” was initiated. These moves were then fixed in a range of socalled “feature documentaries” that were supposed to recreate on the big screen the history of victorious “Stalinist blows”: Igor Savchenko’s The Third Blow, Vladimir Petrov’s Battle of Stalingrad, Mikhail Chiaureli’s The Fall of Berlin. These films had a particular kind of poetics and were very different from the pre-war Staliniana, giving a visual form to the transformed myth where Stalin was no longer just Lenin’s confidant, best pupil and heir, but where he was the only saviour of the country and the winner in the great war. Keywords: late stalinism, soviet cinema, Great Patriotic War, representation of power, Fridrikh Ermler, Vladimir Petrov, Mikhail Chiaureli | 1764 | |||||
| 134 | The article considers the phenomenon of the Cuzco School of painting (one of the most original phenomena of cultural life not only in the Andean region, but also in Latin America in general during the colonial period) as a reflection of the worldview of the Indians of the colonial period. Indians themselves created paintings, although under the control of the Spanish clergy, in order to Christianize the local population, which makes these visual sources important. Despite the significance of the topic and the number of studies devoted to it, many aspects of the problem have not yet been fully interpreted. In many ways, this applies to ideological and worldview aspects. In this regard, the author analyses Cuzco paintings in semiotic, rather than purely artistic, terms: what aspects of the worldview are behind a particular symbol and motif. To solve this problem, the author analyzes a number of paintings of the Cuzco School (the most promising for the research) in order to identify the worldview elements – reflected in the images, motifs, and colors – the paintings contain. It is impossible to conduct such an analysis without using comparative data from other sources on the peculiarities of the Indian worldview, especially written ones. The simultaneous creation of both groups of sources allows drawing relevant parallels with respect to the same research objects. For the convenience and clarity of the analysis, the author typologizes worldview elements based on the principle of origin. Traditionally, they can be divided into Indian, Spanish-Christian, and mixed. The author also gives a brief overview of the main artistic traditions that influenced the formation of the school (Spanish Baroque, Indian beliefs and elements of art, etc.). The analysis of the artistic and stylistic features of the works from the point of view of their ideological content allows drawing the following conclusions. Firstly, many of the symbols and motifs of the Cuzco School go directly back to pre-Hispanic Indian beliefs. Secondly, many of these symbols and motifs are not explicit yet can be read without much effort. Thirdly, the Spanish-Christian elements are largely external, declarative in nature, with a number of concessions to pagan motives. All this suggests that the worldview of the Indians of the colonial period was complex and multi-faceted in its composition. At the same time, it is important to note that none of the worldview systems appears in its original form because of the dramatic process of the collision of these two systems and the creation of a new one on their basis. Nevertheless, based on the analysis of the paintings of the Cuzco School, there is reason to believe that in this mosaic system of the Indian worldview, pre-Hispanic elements can be considered pre-existing. All this testifies to a genuine synthesis of worldviews and to the mestizo character of the Cusco School as a cultural and social phenomenon. Keywords: Cuzco School, history and culture of Peru, colonial period, religion | 1760 | |||||
| 135 | Urban morphology of the city center is considered as an integral phenomenon. Their topology localization, structure and semantics of own text is represented in the observers reflection. I attempt to reveal the essence of the integrity as characteristics of a system in architectural context and show the types of its manifestation in the various examples. The article describes а syntax of urban morphology and its influence on the perception of centrality. Keywords: integrity, city center, urban morphology, perception, urban environment | 1759 | |||||
| 136 | The paper deals with the problems of bringing sense into political communication that is performed in semiotic understandable language of monumental sculpture. The core of such a communication is to construct the semantic world that acquired a linguistic form of heroic political myth in our political culture. But J. Derrida’s method allows us to confirm that during the institutionalization of visual images the deconstruction of Russia as a sign takes place. In the paper some examples of this kind of “game” of political symbolics are given. In general, there are two main visual forms of monumental designation of Russia: these are the heroic symbolization of political power and the implementation of “national unity idea”. Both forms demonstrate the deconstruction of the sign “Russia” in text and in context sense. As a consequence visual phenomena have lost namely the communicative properties Keywords: deconstruction, visual political communication, language of monumental sculpture, semantic world, difference, text, context, sign, Russia. | 1751 | |||||
| 137 | Great playwrights, whose names are associated with the “golden age” of the ancient Greek theater, often put on tragedies on the same subjects and even with the same names. Turning to the existing interpretations or creating new ones, they tried to teach a lesson to the city and instruct its audience-students on a certain interpretation of the current events. The polemic between the authors of the ancient Greek tragedies gave an additional flavor to the theatre agons, and the polemic between the modern researchers studying it has created a space for an interdisciplinary dialogue on the features of the ancient visual culture, amongst other things. In the article, a comparative analysis of three versions of the mythological plot about Orestes and Electra, presented in the tragedy by Aeschylus “The Libation Bearers” and the tragedies of the same name “Electra” by Euripides and Sophocles, is carried out. These ancient Greek playwrights represent a hierarchy of the significance of the main characters – the brother and the sister, who are carrying out a plan of vengeance for the death of their father Agamemnon, through the hierarchy of their virtues and life principles. The comparison of the three tragedies is carried out according to a scheme that allows you to see these hierarchies: 1) at the beginning of the tragedy, where the first meeting of Orestes and Electra, during which they begin to try to assert their right to instruct themselves and others, takes place; 2) at the moments when the heroes come into conflict in point of who has the right to instruct under the supervision of the gods as the supreme instructors, and in what subjects; 3) at the end of the tragedy, when the heroes see the results of their instructions. The city, in which the tragic action unfolds, is either narrowing down to the particular family, where everyone thinks of himself as a mentor to the others, or expanding to the intellectual and political community of citizens who can be instructed by the example of their rulers. Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles offer the reader / spectator different “formats” of visual instructions in which the divine will and human desires are combined. In addition to the ancient Greek literary tradition, the mythological subjects about Orestes and Electra were reflected in the material culture (ancient Greek vases, relief images and bronze artifacts), which is another level of visualization of the instructions, this visualization being primary to the theater in some cases, and secondary in others. The tradition of depicting the mythological scenes about Orestes and Electra on the artifacts had taken shape long before the theatrical productions of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, partly predetermining their “discourse of the word’ and “discourse of the image”, and being partly transformed under their influence. Keywords: anthropology of city, visual instructions, theatrical visualization, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Electra, discourses of word and image in the ancient Greek drama | 1751 | |||||
| 138 | Chimera it’s not just one of the specific creature known on the heritage of ancient Greek culture. Today chimeras newly created in the laboratory and in the new forms of culture. Since the main goal of bioethics is to protect the individual, then we must accept and defend different forms of individuality. Bioethics, forcing to change the attitude towards animals, captures the change in the relationship of man to himself, to his life. This sympathy is change feeling of the past, in which some existential values do not seem viable, not relevant for the development of moral reasoning a person’s life. These “dead” values like “stuffed”. Keywords: chimera, taxidermy, bioethics, symbols, existential values, visual forms, volunteers, volunteering. | 1748 | |||||
| 139 | The possibility to the limits of applicability for psychological theories of visual information perception are investigated. The perception of visual information is seen as a part of the information process (generation, coding, storage, transfer of information, etc.). The information process interpreted within the context of post-non-classical paradigm (V.S. Stepin). This kind of perception interpretation corresponds to the methodology of information-synergetic approach developed by I.V. Melik-Gaykazyan. Therefore, the main theses and models of informationsynergetic approach are chosen as bases for the classification and the limits of applicability for psychological theories of visual information perception. Keywords: visual information, the perception of visual information, post-nonclassical paradigm, syner-getic, information-synergetic approach | 1745 | |||||
| 140 | In the article it is investigated the place of a literary heritage of Dostoevsky in the Lithuanian verbal and visual culture. We chose two directions for our research: 1) the translations of books of the writer on the Lithuanian language; 2) “translations” (adaptations) of novels of Dostoevsky in the Lithuanian theatrical tradition. In the first part of article authors analyze different approaches to the translations of texts of Dostoevsky on the Lithuanian language. It is shown that in modern Lithuania almost all works of the great writer are translated; however there are problems and perspectives. In the second part of article we reconstructed in a historical retrospective the experience of theatrical experiments with texts of the writer in Lithuania. It is obvious that the Lithuanian national theater used on available literary translations. It is shown that the history of the Lithuanian theater isn’t thought without Dostoevsky’s heroes today. It is possible to tell surely that many performances according to Dostoevsky’s books were included into gold fund of theatrical tradition of Lithuania and World Theater. Keywords: Dostoevsky, theatrical tradition of Lithuania, Lithuanian national theater, adaptations, Dostoevsky’s heroes, Vilnius theater of the Russian drama | 1745 | |||||
| 141 | The present research deals with the smart cities as a phenomenon of the 21st century and as a new paradigm in the history of the city, which has challenged industrialism and urban archaism. The problem is analyzed in the light of new managerial, social, and technological practices from various parts of the world. The paper demonstrates obstacles and difficulties of the introduction of this project in a city with objectively high intellectual potential. Structurally in the article an image of the future “smart cities” is revealed through analysis of the formula of “smart city”: “smart authority – smart community – smart technologies”. The emphasis is on increasing the leading role of smart communities. The transformation from a technocratic approach to a humanitarian approach is shown. This is reflected not only in the evolution of the concept and world practices of “smart communities”, but also in changing the vision of the mission of the “smart cities” themselves in our era. Keywords: smart cities, smart communities, Russia, image, creativity | 1738 | |||||
| 142 | In this article, I continue the study of sacred topics of Russian cities. The difference between the concepts of the “new Jerusalem” and the “new Rome” with reference to the early Russian city (on the example of Kiev) is substantiates in the article. The analogy between David, Constantine and Vladimir, on the one hand, and Solomon, Justinian and Yaroslav, on the other hand, as organizers of the sacred city space, is considered and argued. The continuity of architectural dominants in the process of implementation of the Constantinople / Jerusalem’s spatial topics in Kiev (Church of the Tithes – St. Sophia Cathedral) shows in this paper. Semiotic analysis of the image of the Virgin in the apse of Kiev Sophia in the context of the cathedral interior was made by the author. The conducted research allows to make the following conclusions. First, in the syntactic aspect, the picture of the Virgin Oranta is compositionally incorporated into a single visual system with the image of Christ Pantocrator in the dome of the cathedral; this system produces communicative internal temple space. Secondly, the semantics of the image of the Virgin includes such Her meanings as the Queen (the level of denotation), the Church, the Temple, the Eucharist and the City, or the “Indestructible Wall” (the level of connotation). Thirdly, in the pragmatic aspect, the Virgin-Oranta acts as the initiator and mediator of the collective prayerful performative action oriented towards Jesus Christ as Divine Wisdom, that is, Sophia. It is this altar image that is the semantic center and visual core of the city space of Kiev as the “new Jerusalem” and, consequently, the semantic center of the space of the entire Russian state. Keywords: visual semiotics, Eastern Christianity, city, sacred architecture, visual organization of space, cultural semiotic transfer, St. Sophia Cathedral, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, iconography, performative image | 1734 | |||||
| 143 | In this article, I continue the study of sacred topics of Russian cities. Here I consider the issue of the functions of the church over gate in the structure of the city as a sacred text. I argue that the architectural composition “city gate + temple” originated in Old Russia and does not have Byzantine historical prototypes. The construction of the Golden Gate in Kiev was part of a unified program for creating urban sacred space (hierotopy). The explanation of this program in accordance with the ‘idea transfer’ model removes the question of the Byzantine prototype of the Kiev Golden Gate. The semantics of the Russian overgate church has a multilayered character. First, such a temple expresses the idea of supreme patronage, or divine protection. Secondly, the overgate church demonstrates the idea of the triumph of Christianity over paganism, of order over chaos. Thirdly, the overgate church is an optical means for expressing the conformity of a city (or monastery) with historical Jerusalem or Constantinople. Fourthly, the gate with the temple (especially with the temple dedicated to the Virgin Mary) is a visual presentation of the dogma that God became man, that is, about the entry of God into the empirical world. Finally, fifthly, the sacred gates with the temple on them function as a structural analogue of the gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Accordingly, that city (or monastery) into which these gates lead is perceived as the “spatial icon” of the Heavenly City, which will descend from above at the end of times. The overgate church has a special meaning due to its numerous semantic links with the Most Holy Theotokos, as well as due to its syntactic relations with the main city cathedral. Such semantic connections are established, among other things, on the basis of the Christian reception of certain “urban” texts of the Old Testament. The overgate church is a necessary spatial and visual element of the sacral symbolism of the Eastern Christian cities. Keywords: visual semiotics, Eastern Christianity, city, sacred architecture, cultural and semiotic transfer, visual organization of space, city gate, overgate church | 1733 | |||||
| 144 | The article contributes to the debates on logical diagrams and reasoning studies. Diagrams in logic are multidimensional, multimodal, and language free (reasoning does not need a certain language to be introduced). They emphasize structural peculiarities and, consequently, tell us about reasoning in a way that causes difficulties for the algebraic approach. The article lists historical landmarks in developing such schemes (from Juan Luis Vives to Charles S. Peirce, and other contemporary investigations) and pays attention to the essential aspect of diagrammatic constructions, namely, their iconic nature. For a long time, diagrams had a supportive function; they were used as a tool for “dull-witted students”, but later they became an object of research. Today both diagrammatic approaches are developed and the essence of diagrams is studied. From a semiotic point of view, diagrams are icons. It means they are signs that resemble their objects. In contrast to symbols, icons represent information; they make it observable. Briefly, if symbols connote, icons denote. However, this detailed definition has to be substantially clarified. That is why issues of the second and third sections introduce the variety of iconic signs and characteristics of an iconic analysis, respectively. Different diagrams have different specific iconic features: Leonhard Euler’s schemes possess meaning-carrying relationships, John Venn’s circles (or cells) demonstrate the elimination of “unnecessary information”, while Peirce’s approach introduces the procedure of transforming premises into conclusions. Strictly speaking, if the conclusion is observational in Euler’s diagrams, Peirce’s constructions shift this observational advantage to the process (transformation with the line of identity is observational). First of all, these differences can be explained with various types of icons (image, diagram, and metaphor), but also, which is even more important, with levels of iconicity (optimal and operational). In addition, contemporary scholars propose to distinguish two types of logical languages (“type-referential” and “occurrence-referential”). If we admit that different diagrams belong to different kinds of languages, we get another clarification of diagrammatic variety. The icon and iconicity specification provides possibilities for applying diagrams in investigations on the nature of reasoning in the near future. Indeed, these logical schemes can study reasoning from various perspectives and answer such questions as “How does reasoning flow?”, “What is the logical essence of reasoning validity?”, “How does reasoning provide new knowledge?”, etc. Keywords: diagrams in logic, Euler, Venn, Peirce, icon, iconic analysis, reasoning | 1733 | |||||
| 145 | The paper deals with the positioning of the city in a new communicative situation. The social construction of the city’s reality in the form of a discussion on its distinctive features has begun to play a special role. The branding is achieved through giving and maintaining a brand values. Through this communication, a city acquires an identity, distinguishing it from other cities. Today, the very nature of positioning changes when the message in post-modern conversation is given the character of the intertext. Then branding is the management of brand communication in order to make it recognizable and successful. This means that the brand value is communicated to it not only by the brand managing authority, but also by the actively perceiving party. Identity here is the resultant constructive activity of society, forming an adequate model of a sustainable image of the brand of the city. Keywords: city brand, city image, new communicative situation, positioning, branding, conversation / discussion, social construction of the city as a brand | 1731 | |||||
| 146 | The ways of constructing of local urban spaces by the means of visual presentation are analyzed in this article. I use the concept of space as a cultural-anthropological construct having a communicative (sign) nature. I show that the local spaces of a city as a complex semiotic system are organized in the process of zoning (division into specific zones) of the common urban space with simultaneous visual marking of the specific specialization of the formed zones. I establish here three types of visual-semiotic acts forming local urban spaces: a) creating of space, b) transforming of space; c) transfer of space. The creation, the transformation and the transfer of urban loci are practical means of influencing overall look of the city, accessible to the inhabitants of the city. These means are illustrated by examples of the formation of local spaces of Tomsk. Keywords: city, space, zoning, visual constructing, visual semiotics of city, participation in culture | 1726 | |||||
| 147 | The article is devoted to the great film director Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990), his Habitus (sociocultural behavior), and unique personality. Special attention is paid to the semiosis of privacy and of social space. Parajanov’s photographs, as well as textual and visual artifacts (collages, movies, letters, and scripts) are comprised the main empirical material for the present paper. The methodological basis for the description was theory of Pierre Bourdieu and semiotic metalanguage. In the course of describing the Habitus of S. Parajanov, the author presents him as a representative of cultural border, a hybrid human, since Parajanov was a carrier of different cultures (Armenian, Georgian, Russian, and Ukrainian). A special place in the article is given to the interior of his Tbilisi apartment, the “real” component, as well as to the syntagmatic series of cultural artifacts. Special attention is also paid to the semiotic space of the toilet, its ironic, humorous and political context. The visual material provided an opportunity to analyze the structure of the Italian courtyard in Tbilisi, as well as the performances, the photo session of the great director in his own social space. S. Parajanov turned his vivid space into a holiday, aestheticized food, invented performances for guests. An important point for describing Parajanov’s Habitus was also prisoner “atavism”, a subculture of the Soviet camp, as well as a description of its hierarchical status in the zone. The reasons of the “aggression” of the Soviet establishment against. S. Parajanov are outlined and described as being connected with his playful-political performance (greetings of the demonstrators through L. Brezhnev’s eye) and a speech in front of cultural figures which “prepared” the ground for the fabricated criminal case, culminating in an eventual five-year term in a strict regime colony. An analysis of the empirical material showed that the great director worked not only while making masterpiece films, but also in the utilitarian space. His Tbilisi apartment was not only a living space, but also a creative laboratory, a workshop, a wardrobe room, and finally, a theater. Parajanov’s habitus and biography are a brilliant example for describing the repressive Soviet power of not only the Stalinist, but also the Brezhnev era, which was intolerant in relation to creative individuals. The «volcanic» nature of S. Parajanov became a prerequisite for the destruction of genre and value traditions. His outrageous, humorous, ironic thinking created performances, breaking the boundaries of the real and virtual. It was in this context that his apartment turned into a theater, a museum and a studio. With his way of thinking he destroyed the generally accepted functions of the private space; the toilet was turned into a museum, a gallery for the presentation of his diplomas, a space of outrageous, ironic and humorous texts (some sort of a “luggage room”). Parajanov’s self-irony, irony, sarcasm, extraordinary outrageous thinking became prerequisites for playing with the Soviet “sacred” values, for creating an anti-text of his era, and it was also a generator of his unique cultural habitus, performances and poetics. Keywords: Sergei Parajanov, semiotics of behavior, semiotics of interior, private space, semiotics of toilets, hierarchy of thieves, microhistory, Old Tiflis | 1726 | |||||
| 148 | The article discusses the ways of visual transfer of Jerusalem and the Holy Land cultural realities on the Russian Christian culture. The specificity of this culture maximally expressed in the temple action. The relationship of the liturgical time with a real topography of the Holy Land as the place of the events described in the Gospel is investigated in this article. It demonstrates the meaning of the liturgical action as a pilgrimage to the holy places of Jerusalem and the surrounding area. The meaning is expressed in the semantic connection of historical events, its Palestinian localization and the liturgical “reproduction”. A temple area’s Palestinian “marking”, which is complemented by the iconic (sacral-visual) line is noted. When the liturgical tradition based on the Palestinian topic is transfered, reverse movement arises, i.e. the liturgically fixed topical markers are spread on space surrounding a temple. In consideration of the typological affinity name and image, the author draws attention to the iconic images as anagrams. He offers to define visual spatial complexes presented in such images-anagrams as “anatopy”. This images involve all semiotic features of anagrams, which indirectly marks a historical reality and its eschatological sense. Keywords: temple space, iconic image, anatopy | 1721 | |||||
| 149 | During the 20th century, the prose of F. M. Dostoevsky became more and more established as a “theatrical genre” on the Latvian stage. At the beginning of the century and during the years of the First Republic (1920–1940), Riga’s theatregoers were offered stage versions of almost all of Dostoevsky’s novels. This process was facilitated by the attentiveness of the Riga Russian Theater to the classical repertoire as a whole, as well as by the presence of a number of prominent Russian actors – Mikhail Chekhov, Gregory Khmara, Vasily Kachalov, etc – in Riga. At this time, the Riga theater of Russian drama made several productions based on original dramatizations of Riga directors Mikhail Muratov, Rudolf Ungern, Elena Roshina-Insarova. In the Soviet period, the search of theaters in Latvia focused on two polar tendencies – polyphonic or monologic Dostoevsky. The stage version of the novel “Crime and Punishment” was carried out in 1978 by a playwright and director Mark Rozovsky, a poet Yury Ryashentsev and a composer Eduard Artemiev. The play “Ubivets” (“Murderer”) is a polycode text, a deconstruction of the polyphonic nature of Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”. According to the author’s genre definition at the time of writing, the play should be understood as a literary and musical performance (a musical). Applying the concept of M. M. Bakhtin for the composition of the play, Rozovsky deconstructs the novel into elements of the future polyphony. The word of Dostoevsky becomes two-voiced due to the combination of prose and poetry texts, to the linking of musical and literary languages, as well as through the synthesis of a high individual voice and the lower, penny dreadful, poly-voiced element of the crowd-choir. The visually stage text unfolds through the semantics of carnival, farce performance, town square performances, through the visualization of signs of culture of blessed fools and street aesthetics. Keywords: F. M. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Mark Rozovsky, dramatization, M. Chekhov’s Riga Russian Theatre, Latvian theatre tradition, visual semiotics, polycode text | 1720 | |||||
| 150 | This anonymous text, published in Moscow in 1863, is devoted to the theological and semiotic analysis of the paintings program of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, preserved by the middle of the 19th century. Judging by the note of the publishers, this text was written by the author of “Letters on Divine Service of the Eastern Church”, published by the first edition in St. Petersburg in 1835, – by Andrey Nikolaevich Muraviev, known Orthodox historian and art historian, traveler, writer, Chamberlain of the Russian Imperial Court, Chief secretary of the Holy Synod, an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. A. N. Muraviev was born in 1806 in Moscow, died in 1874 in Kiev, where he lived permanently, resigning. It was A. N. Muraviev who saved the historic center of Kiev in the second half of the 19th century, including the architectural ensemble of St. Sophia. In 1864, he became chairman of the missionary St. Vladimir Brotherhood established on his initiative; he was also the trustee of the St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Kiev. A. N. Muraviev was the author of numerous works devoted to the history of the Orthodox Church, pilgrimage, apologetics and art history. His “Letter on Divine Service” withstood 12 editions (the last – in 1993). The following text contains a description of the mosaics and frescoes of the St. Sophia Cathedral, with interpretation of their historical, dogmatic, liturgical and symbolic meaning. The author consistently explains the “cause and significance” of key iconic images and compositions of the cathedral, individual images and their details, regularly comparing them with the iconography of St. Sophia of Constantinople. Keywords: St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev, interior, iconography, symbolics | 1719 | |||||