Afonasin Eugene V. THE PILOT METAPHOR AND ITS ARTISTIC REFLECTIONS (A NOTE ON THE PLATONIC MOTIVE ON SOME CELTIC COINS) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2014. Issue 1 (1). P. 23-30

On the obverse of a rare gold quarter stater, struck c. 250–225 BCE in northern France and recently found near Ringwould, Kent, one sees the head of Apollo with a lyre and a bow (?) hidden in his curly hair, which proves that it was designed by a local master on the basis of a gold stater of Philipp II of Macedon (382–336 BCE). On the reverse of this small (13 mm) coin we see a strange long-haired Celtic deity: driving his sky-chariot, this god holds a huge hammer in his right hand. A big bee is depicted before the horse’s snout. This reminds of Sucellos, the Celtic god of agriculture, underworld and alcoholic drink, the “good striker,” usually depicted with a hammer in one hand and a cup in another, or, perhaps, the Roman Silvanus. It appears that this image became a prototype for another and quite extraordinary Celtic coin, struck in Normandy, France, c. 100 BCE, which displays a model ship as the victor’s prize in a chariot race. The head of Apollo (now crowned with a wreath) is again found on the obverse, but on the reverse a typologically similar divine charioteer holds – instead of a hammer – a model of a ship. A working hypothesis therefor could be that the image of a bee, also a conductor to the underworld, is simply replaced by the artist with an image of a ship, as if the divine traveler drives his chariot under sky at days and sails away and sinks below the horizon at nights. The image can further be placed both in mythological and historical context. There is quite reasonable to suppose, with D. Ellmers, that this special coin was issued as a gesture of propaganda, designed to show the coastal inhabitants that they are protected at sea and land, and to merchants that the passage through the Channel is safe. Parallel interpretations of the metaphors of pilot, helmsman, the observational tower and harmony, current in the Platonic tradition (Plato, Numenius, Olympiodorus, etc.), could to my mind also help to understand this unusual image. It is fascinating to observe how an unknown artist independently follows the steps of the Greek philosopher in his reinterpreting of a complicated mythological image in a political sense.

Keywords: Platonism, the heavenly traveler, body and soul, a passage to the underworld, the charioteer, pilot, kybernētēs metaphors, Sucellus, harmony, the Celtic ships

Kozhevnikov Mikhail Gennad'evich SPATIAL ICONS OF DEESIS AND ANGELIC LITURGY, IMAGE-PARADIGM OF HEAVENLY TEMPLE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 2 (20). P. 119-137

This article presents the research of features of hierotopy in apocalypses of medieval Russia. The concept of hierotopy was proposed by Alexei Lidov in 2002. This term means both a process of creation of sacred spaces (understood as a special kind of creativity) and a field of research, devoted to this process and related phenomena. Hierotopy initially was designed to study complex phenomena of iconography, temple architecture and religion. In order to describe previously obscure features and phenomena such terms as ‘spatial icons’ and ‘image-paradigms’ were designed. The term ‘spatial icon’ is understood as a dynamic sacred space created through religious ceremony, when a breathing environment of conducted ritual (with all its elements, participants and surroundings) is seen as a one complex spatial image. The most prominent examples of spatial icons are the ritual with Hoedegetria of Constantinople and medieval Russian ritual of “Donkey walk”. Imageparadigm is an initial sacred space ordered by God himself which is later recreated in other sacred spaces. We can see this phenomenon in attempts to recreate the image of the Holy Land in other places (like in the New Jerusalem monastery in Russia) or in a vision of byzantine temples seen as images of Heavenly Jerusalem. Later, hierotopical studies turned to investigate literature. However these studies rarely covered basic hierotopical phenomena such as image-paradigms and spatial icons. This article explores the image-paradigm of Heavenly Temple and two types of spatial icons. Image-paradigm of Heavenly Temple can be found in the Apocalypse of Abraham, Slavonic book of Enoch and in the Ascension of Isaiah. This image was initially designed in the First book of Enoch in which it echoes the structure of the Jerusalem Temple and the wilderness tabernacle, but also demonstrates its own specific characteristics which then are recreated in the images of Heavenly Temple in the apocalypses mentioned above. Spatial icons of deesis (“Descent of the Virgin into Hell”, “The apocalypse of Paul”) and heavenly liturgy (“The Ascension of Isaiah”, “Slavonic book of Enoch”) are different in their relation to Heavenly Temple. Angelic liturgy is always located in Heavenly Temple and is a remarkable part of this image. Deesis on the other hand isn’t linked to any particular location. They are also different in their relation to narrative as a whole and have a different function in its development. The expansion of deesis is consistent and gradual, deterministic in a turning of its stages. Development of this type of spatial icon sets up a culmination for a storyline and drives the plot itself (the wicked punished in hell receive mercy as a consequence of deesis’ development). Angelic liturgy, on the contrary, moves along a storyline, its culmination is more of a marker of a storyline’s culmination than the means of achieving it.

Keywords: hierotopy, spatial icon, image-paradigm, deesis, angelic liturgy, Heavenly Temple, medieval Russian apocalypses

Simyan Tigran Serzhikovitch THEMES AND MOTIVES OF VISUALIZATION OF THE ARMENIAN EPIC POEM IN THE COLLECTIVE AND CULTURAL MEMORY OF THE SOVIET ERA OF THE 1980S (based on the story collection for children “To Be Like David of Sasun” by Victoria Vartan and the film “The Road to David of Sasun”) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 4 (14). P. 11-27

The article presents the problem of visualization and its relation to memory types on the example of the series of stories by writer Victoria Vartan “To be similar to David of Sasun” and visual “translation”, that is, the film “The Road to David of Sasun” (1987). The theoretical premise of this article was the ideas of Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, which made it possible to trace and describe the types of memory (individual / subconscious, social, collective and cultural) on the in-text and extra-textual levels of the selected empirical material. The analysis showed that the Armenian national epic does not lose its vitalism and always manifests itself thanks to individual and social memory. In its turn, social memory is “refracted” into a sign form (artistic text, film text) and becomes an asset and part of culture, that is, cultural memory. Impact for the manifestation of the epic material was the didactic intentions of Victoria Vartan with the aim of inculcating the education of the future generation to universal values (humanism, readiness to help the weak and defenseless and the elderly, etc.). In addition the film, in turn, becomes an implicit propaganda tool for raising the spirit on the eve of the maturing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the late 1980s.

Keywords: individual memory, social memory, collective memory, cultural memory, visualization of the epic, Armenian epic, epic and cinema

Zagraevsky Sergey Volfgangovich HISTORY OF COLOR SOLUTIONS OF MEDIEVAL MOSCOW FORTIFICATIONS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 3 (5). P. 78-85

The author traces on the basis of documentary, architectural, archaeological and iconographic data the history of the colors of the fortifications of Moscow Kremlin, Kitai-Gorod, White City and Black City since the time of Yuri Dolgoruky until the mid XX century.

Keywords: architecture, Moscow, fortifications, color

Kozhevnikov Mikhail Gennad'evich PARTICULARITY OF POSITION’S MODIFICATIONS AND DIFFERENTIATION OF FOCUS IN JOSEPH BRODSKY’S POEM “THE GREAT ELEGY TO JOHN DONNE” // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 2 (4). P. 103-114

The article is devoted to investigation of literary work as a summary of different outlooks or positions of an author: modifications of outlooks (material and psychological) and focusing, consideration’s focus on object or on a complex of objects. The article deals with correlation between position’s modifications in a literary work and direction of reader’s consideration. In order to identify and to distinguish different types of such kind of modifications the article proposes the typology of position’s modification. The proposed typology differs with parallel speculations developed within narratology on it’s greater differentiation of the main types of modifications and, therefore, more detail analysis of a literary work. The analysis results are presented in the form of a two-level scheme demonstrating sequentially changing of viewpoint and focus.

Keywords: position, viewpoint, narratology, consideration’s directionality, counterpoint, focalization

Avanesov Sergey Sergeyevich BEING HUMAN AND BEING VISIBLE. NEAREST TASKS OF STUDYING OF VISUAL PARAMETERS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 4 (6). P. 118-130

In this article, I formulate the tasks of multidisciplinary research of “optical” aspects of culture. I argue the thesis that the solution of problem the systematic explication of the ontological meaning and existential status of the visual and semiotic aspects of culture as a communicative environment is needed in our time. This decision can become a conceptual basis for an approach of humanities to relevant theoretical descriptions of human. Such description is available in a new philosophical anthropology, which is based on the communicative definition of human being. Definition of the place, role and forms of visual semiotic activities in the cultural communicative structure of human existence – this is the first task of contemporary anthropological research. The importance of this task is determined by the prospect of productive convergence of semiotics and ontology in the field of anthropological knowledge. This convergence should become a methodological platform for theoretical foundation of human existence as a cultural communicative praxis.

Keywords: anthropology, ontology, human existence, the visual aspects of culture, communication, practice

Bernatonite Ada. K.. MOSCOW FILM FESTIVAL: FROM HISTORY TO THE PRESENT DAY (EXPANDING OF THE VISUAL SEMIOTIC FIELD) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 2 (16). P. 132-150

The article contains a number of problems concerning the history of the Moscow international film festival and the current situation associated with the expansion of the semantic field of contestant films. In the process of gathering statistic data on the program of the festival for 40 years I reveal the organizational and ideological aspects of changing the principles of selecting competitive films. Also I take into account the fact of participation in the program of famous directors and films. Besides I show how many times and which countries received the main prize, as well as which films left a noticeable mark in the history of cinema were shown at the Moscow film festival at different times. The article fully analyzes the specifics of the style and semantic component of the films shown at the last anniversary Moscow film festival. Result of analysis of contestant films reveals the stylistic and semantic trends that characterize the situation in modern cinema. It is found out that accentuation of patriotic feeling actualizes military theme, which connected with instability of social and spiritual situation in the world. Today there is a trend associated with the deepening of realistic tendencies in cinema. Cinema is often refers to classics, as well as to modern reality and is not afraid of experimenting.

Keywords: the film festival, the competition program, modern film process, the theme of war in cinema, emotional empathy, moral message, desacralisation, the screen interpretation of classical literature

Selezneva Antonina Vladimirovna, Smulkina Natalia Valentinovna, Yakovleva Alexandra Fedorovna THE IMAGE OF RUSSIA IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE CIVIC CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE YOUTH: A VISUAL DIMENSION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 2 (28). P. 110-129

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

Sukhanov Vyacheslav Alekseevich VISUAL AS AN ELEMENT OF THE AUTHOR’S CODE IN THE POETICS OF MODERN NOVEL // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 2 (4). P. 94-102

The article is devoted to the study of the functions of visual codes in verbal discourse. The problem of the codes of photography and cinema in the plot and the composition of the novel discusses on the basis of the modern Russian prose, the status of the visual in the narrative, the interaction of visual and verbal as a feature of the poetics of the modern Russian novel reveals. The use of the visual in the narrative of the novel is associated with the production of existential problems and serves to increase the semantic density of the plot, open in history. Update the language of literary text is due to the attraction of terms of photography and cinema, as metaphors of existence, these language elements begin to define the structure of the narrative.

Keywords: visual code, fiction narrative, modern Russian prose, poetics, composition, photography, cinema

Uruzbaeva Madina A., Berezkin Alexandr Yu., Maleeva Elena N., Kulebyakina Irina S., Petukhov Alexandr S. VISUAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PHOTOS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 2 (8). P. 124-137

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

Avanesov Sergey Sergeyevich JERUSALEM TOPIC: WESTERN SIBERIA / LOWER SILESIA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 4 (14). P. 65-89

This article is devoted to a primary analysis of the material obtained as a result of the study of the cultural space in Western Siberia and Lower Silesia in 2017. The study was carried out within the framework of the international project “Visual organization of urban space: preservation, translation, historical and cultural perspective” (Tomsk, Wroclaw). The task of this project: search and description of visual invariants of various cultural areas (in particular, Russian and Polish cultures) in the context of defining the forms of construction cultural, national, civil, religious, professional and other identities through means of visual presentation and communication, along the lines of a multidisciplinary analysis of cross-cultural processes. The author confirms the thesis about the presence of Jerusalem allusions (metaphors, citations) in the space of modern urban texts, using the example of Tomsk and Wroclaw. The correlation of the allegorical and literal in the construction of architectural allusions in Western Siberia and Lower Silesia is shown. The difference between the spatial images of historic Jerusalem and the Heavenly City is considered. The role of the sacred city center in the organization of the city space has been revealed. The role of the monastery court as icons of Heavenly Jerusalem (the new Eden) is substantiated. The semantic and structural connection between the Calvary and the mysteries of the Passion of the Lord is described on the example of the monastery ensemble of the Baroque period.

Keywords: city, urban space, sacred topic, Tomsk, Wroclaw, Jerusalem, architectural allusion, cloister, calvary, mystery of Passion

Atmanova Yulia Georgievna THE IMAGE OF YUSUF IN MUGHAL PAINTING: ON THE ISSUE OF READING PICTORIAL TEXT // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 2 (16). P. 195-204

The article is devoted to the study of the semantic, imaginative and iconographic component of the pictorial representation of the story of Yusuf in Mughal miniature painting of the 16th–17th centuries. In Muslim culture, Yusuf is a prophet and messenger in the Quran, as well as the main character of the famous poem “Yusuf and Zulaykha” of ʻAbd al-Rahman Jami. On the basis of the examples from the mughal pictorial art the author of the article consider the problem of existence in the Mughal cultural environment of the two artistic practices, the traditional visual embodiment of the image of Yusuf in the vein of Persian art and his pictorial and symbolic interpretation in the Mughal style. On the one hand, Mughal artists knew and skillfully applied iconography of the story of Yusuf which was elaborated in the Persian miniature painting. On the other hand, the conventional iconography and stylistic component could undergo certain changes in the Mughal painting. The Mughal pictorial interpretations corresponded to the refined aesthetics and philosophy of the Mughal court culture, as well as were consistent with the Mughal power ideology. Mughal miniatures with scenes from the story of Yusuf served not only as illustrations for the famous poem of Jami, but also decorated the divans of famous Indian poets and skillfully decorated Mughal albums-muraqqaʻ.

Keywords: interpretation of the pictorial narrative, Yusuf, Joseph, Mughal painting, The Great Mughals, India

Meshcheryakova Tamara Vladimirovna VISUALIZATION IN TEACHING BIOETHICS: ITS FORMS AND FUNCTIONS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 127-132

In the paper necessity of usage of visual approach to teaching course of bioethics is proved. It is caused by specific of teaching bioethics to first-year students of Medicinal university. Between different forms of visual means used at this course author especially notes the importance of films.

Keywords: bioethics, visual means, cinematography, cases of conscience, individuality

Smirnov Sergey Alevtinovich HUMAN DIMENSION OF CITY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 2 (20). P. 13-32

The article is devoted to one of the key problems of urban anthropology and urbanism, related to the theme of human dimensionality of the city. The author analyzes the concept of “human dimensionality”, discusses the introduction of this concept into science by the methodologist and philosopher of science M. K. Petrov. On the example of the genesis of the ancient city, the article analyzes three classes of criteria for the city’s human dimensionality: the city from the point of view of the sacred beginning that generates the phenomenon of the city; the city in terms of social measure and the birth of the ancient polis as a meeting of citizens (citizenship and the voice of a citizen as a measure of the city); and the city from the point of view of the physical, bodily space of the settling of the city. The article describes the phenomenon of the genesis of the city in the categories of urban planning and its first experience – Hippodamus’ City. In connection with the physical criterion of dimensionality, examples and practices of urban space exploration are discussed using various measures and dimensions related to the human body, starting with the ancient polis and ending with the modern experience of reviving the idea of the physicality of the city and such a character of city life as a pedestrian. The article discusses such measures as body, palm, span, foot, stage, step. The problem of the connection between the idea of human dimensionality and the idea of the dimensionality of being (by the example of Heidegger’s analysis of the Protagoras thesis about man as the measure of all things) is discussed. In conclusion, the author discusses the problem of the loss of human dimensionality in modern megacities and attempts to revive the dimensionality of a person in the city through a pedestrian figure (research and practice in urban pedestrian anthropology).

Keywords: measure, human dimensionality, city, city measure, urban anthropology, antique polis, Hippodamus’ City

Shubina Aleksandra Vladimirovna META-CITY: THE IMAGE OF A CAPITAL CITY IN BRITISH POSTMODERN LITERATURE (ON THE WORKS OF PETER ACKROYD) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 2 (20). P. 138-151

The paper studies the phenomenon of a non-personal biography, a biography of a cultural object, based on the works of Peter Ackroyd, a modern British writer who became well-knows at the edge of 20–21 centuries with his biographical books about famous Britishers as well as meta-fictional historical novels. The work presents a vision of the biography of the city as a genre that provides for the author and the reader a way for personification of comprehension and experiencing of a national history and culture as an event of private life, thus transforming a historical fact into a piece of personal biography.

Keywords: image of the city, British literature, city narrative, national identity, memory, postmodern literature, cultural code

Shapovalov Mikhail Sergeevich NEW SIBERIAN JERUSALEM: ORIGINS, TRANSFER, TOPONYMICS IN THE XVII-BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 2 (24). P. 182-198

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

Bernatonite Ada. K.. THE SEMANTICS OF THE IMAGES OF FAMILY MEMBERS IN THEIR RELATIONS WITH THE GUEST IN THE TEXT OF P. P. PASOLINI’S SCRIPT AND IN HIS FILM “TEOREMA” // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 2 (12). P. 125-145

The article compares two texts of a different nature, but with a single semantic kernel: the script for the film “Teorema” and its screen implementation. The research is built through the analysis of the relationship between all the characters in the film with the central character, since the author (P. P. Pasolini) gives him both a deep content and a multifaceted symbolism. On the way of comparing the word and the frame, the following conclusion is made: what is written in the text of the script carefully and verbosely is visualized on the screen by mean and minimal speaking means, and vice versa – what several words are said about, expands in the visual text of the film and turns into a perfect and the finished thought. In Pasolini’s style, the word continues the frame, while the frame is a silent word, which means the word embodied in eternity.

Keywords: cinematography, semiotics of cinema, filmscript, Pasolini, initiation, mythological thinking, image of the desert, transformation, hierophanic representation

Orlova Nadezhda Kh.., Šroma Nataļja I.. “UBIVETS” (“MURDERER”) AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE POLYSEMIOTIC INTERPRETATION OF DOSTOEVSKY’S NOVEL “CRIME AND PUNISHMENT” // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 1 (19). P. 156-172

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

Chernyavskaya Valeria Evgenievna IMAGE AND VISUALITY IN SOCIOCULTURAL DIMENSION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 2 (28). P. 96-109

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

Shcherbinin Alexey Ignatevich IMAGE OF THE MOTHERLAND OR THE GHOST OF THE EMPIRE? // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 36-42

The paper deals with the deficit of constructive understanding of the phenomenon of “Motherland” in the context of nation building, of resource mobilization of the society. The author tries to methodologically prove the research of “Motherland” phenomenon. The author compares the current situation with the period of the Soviet nation creation of the mid 30s of the last century. Themes is also explored on the example of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and of the Crimea-Russia reunion. The possible charges and different solution scenarios are shown.

Keywords: Motherland, Russia, nation, construct, empire, Olympics, Crimea.

Avanesov Sergey Sergeyevich SACRED TOPICS OF RUSSIAN CITIES (6). SEMANTICS OF OVERGATE CHURCH // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 1 (19). P. 120-149

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

Shestakova Marina Anatolyevna VISUALIZATION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN NATURAL SCIENCES IN RENAISSANCE PAINTING // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 263-272

The “philosophical horizon” of modern European science was not formed exclusively by the efforts of the scientific community. The ground for the scientific revolution of the modern era was also prepared by the art of Alberti, Leonardo and other masters of the Renaissance. The Renaissance art theory and practice testify to the visual elaboration of the philosophical and conceptual guidelines which were later to become the basis of modern European science. This also includes such principles as geometrization of nature and science, overcoming of the Aristotelian and scholastic gap between physics and mathematics, between the natural and the artificial, between the superlunar and sublunar worlds. Renaissance artists fitted the celestial and the terrestrial into geometric shapes such as pyramids, triangles, etc. The theory and practice of Renaissance painting recognized geometry as a universal law valid both for the superlunar and sublunar worlds. The mathematical principles of nature were developed by Renaissance masters in the form of the theory of perspective and the theory of proportions. It should be noted that the Renaissance mathematical perspective did not derive from comprehending phenomena, but was brought into the real world as a compositional basis. This implies that Renaissance artists started from the a priori assumption of the mathematical order of nature and then tried to confirm this thesis at the visual level through representation of the corporeal world using the mathematical law of perspective and the theory of proportions. Renaissance artists realized that things made with men’s hands and those created by God are to the same extent subject to the same natural laws. The drawings of Leonardo can be interpreted as the visualization of engineering thinking which extends not only to mechanisms but also to natural objects and the human body structure. Leonardo’s anatomical studies can be regarded as engineering drawings which visually demonstrate the structure of the represented object. In this regard, the drawings of Leonardo foreshadowed the formulation of the mechanistic principle which turned to be one of the most important ones in modern European science, and which asserted the absence of a fundamental difference between the natural and the mechanical. The example of Renaissance painting demonstrates that fundamental philosophical conceptions as well as ideological shifts, transition to new fundamental ideas concerning space, time and the place of man in the universe, are simultaneously expressed in more than one way. In particular, they can be represented in visual images, in a sign-and-symbol form, in scientific conceptions, in philosophy, literature and art of a certain period. There are constant exchanges between different cultural practices as, for example, between philosophy, science and art: communication, exchange of information, translation from a sign and symbol language into a figurative one and vice versa, visualization of non-image information.

Keywords: visual, modern European science, Renaissance painting, theory of perspective, theory of proportions

Zamyatin Dmitry Nikolaevich THE GEOCULTURAL SPACE OF THE ARCTIC: LANDSCAPE VISUALIZATION AND ONTOLOGICAL MODELS OF IMAGINATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 1 (27). P. 48-94

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

Sokolov Roman Alexandrovich, Kostyria Maxim Alexeevich HISTORICAL MEMORY ABOUT ALEXANDER NEVSKY: SCULPTURAL VISUALIZATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 1 (27). P. 95-123

The origins of the later versions of Alexander Nevsky’s sculptural visualization were laid back in ancient times. It is important that, in the pre-Petrine era, the icon-painting canon mainly provided for the image of Nevsky as a schemamonk, but it was not the only possible one. It has been established with a high degree of certainty that the first image of Alexander that came to us is the previously non-attributed figure represented on the icon “Our Lady of Tikhvin with the Proto-Gospel Cycle and Saints” (first half of the 16th century). The change of the icon-painting canon to the “secular” version (1724) had objective prerequisites, since, before that, Alexander had been depicted in princely robes in monumental painting, miniatures, on hagiographic icons. The fresco from Saint Sophia Cathedral in Vologda has a “transitional” nature. The creation of the first sculpture of Alexander Nevsky (the “chest statue”, 1754) is associated with the name of Mikhail Lomonosov; two portraits of Nevsky also come from his mosaic workshop. This sculpture was preceded by a bas-relief portrait of Nevsky on his shrine (1747–1752, State Hermitage, St. Petersburg). In the 19th century, statues of Nevsky were erected on the southern gates of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg (I.P. Vitali, 1841–1846) and on the monument “1000th Anniversary of Russia” in Veliky Novgorod (M.O. Mikeshin, I.N. Schroeder, 1862). In the post-revolutionary era, the government refused to use the old symbols in ideological settings, and the hero of the Neva battle was forgotten. The renaissance occurred after the release of the film Alexander Nevsky by Sergei Eisenstein. This led to the emergence of a new version of the visualization of the prince – in the image of Nikolay Cherkasov. In the postwar years, this version was also reflected in sculpture (a monument in Pereslavl-Zalessky). However, in the Russian Empire and in the Soviet Union, too few sculptural images of the prince were created. Using the installation of a stele in Ust-Izhora (Archive of the St. Petersburg House of Scientists) as an example, it is shown that the reconciling of even small commemorative plaques was extremely difficult. Since the early 1990s, the situation has changed. Monuments to the prince and sculptural compositions associated with his name appeared in many cities of the country, which makes the task of typologizing them urgent. The earliest type is a “chapel”. It is a vertical architectural plastic composition completed with a “dome” and a cross. The prince himself is represented in the image of a warrior (Pushkin, Ust-Izhora, Kobyl’ye Gorodishche, partly the Leninskoye village). One more type adjoins these monuments – a “monk” (Gorodets). The sculptural images of this type can be correlated with samples of the icon-painting tradition, both of the pre-Petrine (“monk”, the scenes of life of hagiographic icons) and Petrine (“holy warrior”) eras, and with miniatures of illustrated chronicles. The remaining types of monuments represent Nevsky in the image of a warrior, in which the attributes of his holiness, with rare exceptions, play a secondary role. First of all, this refers to equestrian monuments (Pskov (Sokolikha Mountain), St. Petersburg (Alexander Nevsky Square), etc.). The article shows the relationship of these works with domestic and foreign artistic traditions. A widespread type of monuments to Alexander Nevsky is a sculpture in the form of a single figure (Gorodets, Kursk, Volgograd, Vladimir, etc.). Despite the fact that in most cases the connection with visualization trends that come from the depths of centuries is minimized in this type, it can still be traced, first of all, through elements of Orthodox symbolism. Only two monuments of this type – in Petrozavodsk and Alexandrov – represent Alexander Nevsky in the image of both a warrior and a saint.

Keywords: Alexander Nevsky, history of Russia, historical memory, Russian culture, history of sculpture, history of Russian art

Simyan Tigran Serzhikovitch MUSICAL AND CARNIVAL SPACE OF OLD TIFLIS (BY THE EXAMPLE OF VANO KHOJABEKYAN, VAGHARSHAK ELIBEKYAN, AGASI AIVAZYAN) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 2 (20). P. 63-80

The article analyzes the musical and carnival space of Old Tiflis since late 19th up to early 20th century. Mainly visual and artistic texts of Armenian artists and writers – Vano Khojabekyan, Agasi Ayvazyan, Vagharshak Elibekyan served as an empirical material for this article. In the course of the reasoning, the following thesis is substantiated: Old Tiflis was a multicultural, musical and carnival city, in which a dance language was formed (Kintauri, Bagdaduri). Old Tiflis was a ‘hybrid’ space in which ritual (sacral) and profane dances (kintauri, baghdaduri, lezginka, etc.) could be seen simultaneously. The article briefly presents the basic approaches to the analysis of the Tiflis text: the Tiflis text of Armenian literature, the Tiflis text of Georgian literature, the Caucasian text of Russian literature. The author explains the connotative difference between the designation of the toponym Tbilisi versus Tiflis, which is key in the discourse “Tiflis text of Armenian literature”. Old Tiflis was a multinational city in which musical instruments of the West (piano, violin, mandolin) and the East (drum, zurna, duduk, kamancha, etc.) ‘met’ and ‘lived’ together. Social ‘top’, the elite was oriented towards Western music and invested in teaching their children to play the violin, piano, etc., while the social ‘bottom’ (kinto, carachocheli) turned to the Eastern, Caucasian instruments and melodies. At this very juncture the language of social ‘bottom’ dances (kintauri, baghdaduri) was formed. The article presents also the functions of the Eastern instruments and the scope of their use. Duduk and zurna were the most ‘omnivorous’, used during weddings, revels, christenings, commemorations, and in oriental baths during rest and parties. The main ‘heroes’ of Old Tiflis were mainly the representatives of the social ‘bottom – kinto and carachocheli. The article also describes the inner world of kinto, his lifestyle, the psychological state of his soul and appearance. The material of Vano Khodjabekyan’s graphic drawings (“Clown in Ortachali”, “Drunk Bear”, “Cout in Boat at Kura”), Vagharshak Elibekyan’s “Meeting with the writer Raffi”, “Zurnachi” and paintings introduces the language of clothing and the spirit of revels. The Old Tiflis dance language is so vital and lively that it was retransmitted in Soviet cinematography (G. Danelia “Don’t Cry”, “Mimino”) and at the present stage, is presented by different dance groups all over the world (for example, Ramishvili & Sukhishvili). In addition to the profane dances, the article also presents a ritual (sacral) dance, when the groom dances on the burial stone of his deceased father (Khojabekyan “The dance of the groom on the burial stone of the deceased father and circular dance with unmarried friends”) is an echo of the archaic, mythologized thinking. The ritual dance shines through Armenian, Georgian and Caucasian dances. Chronologically this dance was documented for the first time in letters of an Armenian scholar and cleric Grigor Magister (XI century), but the last manifestation of such ritual dance performed by Armenian groom is seen only in graphic drawings of Khojabekyan on Old Tiflis whereas in other Western and Eastern regions it wasn’t perceived. An empirical analysis of the primary texts showed that Old Tiflis being a carnival and musical space where different values, customs and traditions of various peoples were ‘cooked’, had its urban flavor, the language of dances, feasts, and revels. Old Tiflis of the late XIX and early XX century still remained at the junction of the national, mythical and European mixture. Old Tiflis was an interesting example of cultural ‘interspace’.

Keywords: kinto, kintauri, baghdaduri, lezginka, sacral dance, ceremonial dance, dance of the groom on the burial stone, zurna, duduk, barrel organ (organ), reveling, visual semiotics, microhistory, urban anthropology, semiotics of the city

Surovtsev Valery Aleksandrovich, Rodin Kirill Aleksandrovich WITTGENSTEIN’S “REMARKS ON COLOUR”: FROM COLOUR LOGIC TO SOCIAL STUDIES OF COLOUR // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 2 (24). P. 25-38

The main theme in Wittgenstein’s “Remarks on Colour” is the logic (or grammar) of colour. We consider the logic of colour in the context of various reductionist projects in which logical relations between colour concepts are planned to be reduced to an objective definition of colour (it is the first variant of reduction and here we will take as an example a project of Jonathan Westphal) or are planned to be universalized within the framework of a certain explication (such may be the colour octahedron, etc.) (the second variant). When examined in detail, both variants show their own insolvency. We read Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour as a consistent criticism of any reductionist projects in the study of the relationship between colour concepts. In the first case (with Westphal) we adhere to the position of Elaine Horner. When considering universalistic reductions, we look in detail at the work of Gabriela Mras. In the final part of the article, we try to show how the universalist tendency (at the level of initial premises) influences some sociological and anthropological studies of colour (we briefly consider the works of William Rivers and Berlin & Kay). And our article can be taken as an additional commentary on the work of Martin Kusch.

Keywords: colour, colour concepts, logic of colours, language games, phenomenology, colour in sociology and anthropology

Ivankiva Marina Vladimirovna LITERARY CARTOGRAPHY: MAP AS A PARATEXTUAL ELEMENT IN BRITISH CHILDREN’S LITERATURE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 2 (28). P. 28-42

Since one of the first representations of the Earth in “The Map Psalter”, marine maps from the Age of Discovery and the first literary atlases, maps have held a special place in British culture. Since the map of the Treasure Island, which is considered to be a pioneer of the kind, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel of the same name, maps have always played a significant role in British children’s literature. A literary map, especially a map in children’s books, is an important paratextual element. Although the roles and functions of maps may vary greatly, the place of a map (most frequently it is an endpaper or a frontispiece) makes literary cartography the first visual element for the reader, which enables a map to set the setting, genre, and particular audience expectations. The fact that it is not an obligatory element of a book makes the presence of a map in a book an essential part of the author’s artistic vision and a key (para)textual element of the book. The five maps from the classic books written for younger readers between 1883 and 1926 may prove that maps perform multiple functions and play a greater role than that of beautiful drawings on frontispieces. The maps are the 17th-century marine map of the imaginary island from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; the actual map of India from Rudyard Kipling’s Kim; the map of Kensington Gardens presumably drawn by a child from James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens; the map of the Thames Valley inhibited by anthropomorphic animals from Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows. The analysis of these maps’ paratextual powers and textual-visual interactions leads to the conclusion that the five literary maps from the classic children’s books of the Golden Age period reveal the five potential ways of interaction between the textual and the visual: map as a plot device, map as a document, map as a narrator, map as the transcendent, and map as memory, correspondingly. The conclusion poses the following questions: What happens to maps during the act of translation from English into Russian or any other language? Is it possible to translate cartography? How crucial is the omission of a map? The answers to these questions are yet to be discovered.

Keywords: literary map, paratext, illustration, children’s literature, visual culture, translation

Avanesov Sergey Sergeyevich SACRED TOPICS OF RUSSIAN CITIES (5). THE CATHEDRAL AND THE GATE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 1 (15). P. 70-92

In this article, I continue the study of sacred topics of Russian cities. Here I define the syntactic meaning of the architectural ensemble “cathedral – gate”. The article shows that the main semiotic function of the cathedral is the visual designation of the city sacred center, which expresses the idea of the beginning and center of the inhabited world. Being structured in a certain way in its internal volume, the cathedral also acts as the dominant architectural element that gives orderliness to the entire urban space. The dynamics of the cathedral interior, spread over the city as a whole, gives the urban topic the property of “transitivity”, movement, spatial unevenness. Such heterogeneity of the urban living environment is optically expressed as a hierarchical “condensation” of sacred space from the periphery to the center (concentricity). The direction of this increase in sacredness is set by two positional dominants – the main entrance to the city and the cathedral. In Kiev of Yaroslav the Wise, these positions are occupied by the Cathedral of St. Sophia and the Golden Gate. This urban planning “scheme”, which is reproduced in all Russian cities and monasteries, corresponds to the spatial structure of the Garden of Eden, the Israeli “marching camp”, historic Jerusalem and the Heavenly City. The Russian city, organized according to the described “type” (Aldo Rossi), is a multi-layered spatial icon, an architectural representation and a concrete embodiment of archetypal sacred space.

Keywords: visual semiotics, Eastern Christianity, city, sacred architecture, visual organization of space, center, concentricity, cathedral, gate

Gorbuleva Maria Sergeyevna THE VISUAL PART OF BIONIC TECHNOLOGIES IN PROSTHETICS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 92-109

The article reviews the development of prosthetic limbs (arms and legs), particularly, their visual transformation over the time. Traumas are imprinted on the spiritual and physical condition of a particular individual, people “with disabilities” can lose jobs or significantly reduce their productivity. The possibility of reparation by means of prosthetics definitely has a positive effect both for the individual and society as a whole. Prosthetics develops in parallel with the development of technology and allows people with “disabilities”/“additional requirements” to have a full life: cope with everyday life, work, sports, travel, have hobbies, participate in the Paralympics, etc. Bionics (or biomimetics) is an applied discipline, which studies the applications of principles of organization and functioning of living matter in the creation of technical systems and devices. Bionic prostheses (biological prostheses) are artificial analogues, which structurally and functionally imitate the operation of the lost organ. In the article, the author mainly focuses on prosthetic arms and legs. There is a number of challenges in creating artificial organs and limbs under the apparent progress in bionic prosthetics: the imperfection of the design, limitations in signal transmission, high price. General trends in prosthetics give scientists, technicians, physicians, anthropologists, philosophers and other researchers hope and reason to make both optimistic and negative predictions associated with the introduction and development of technology, computers, robotics, and prosthetics. This entails issues not only in technology, but also in philosophy and ethics. Do technological effects on humans (NBICS technologies, creation of laboratory creatures, hybrids, chimeras, cyborgs and the extension of the modifications of human nature) have a therapeutic nature, or do they aim at improving humans in the eugenic trans-humanist sense? We observe how today’s reality and visions of the future are formed by semiotic means. Visual symbolism is a dominant tool in these processes. We can conclude that this domination leads to new ways of adaptation: adaptation to the preservation of one’s own identity with the aggression of the visual environment. Thus, there are new people with a different personality that need new forms of protection. The author refers to bioethics as an interdisciplinary system, which is designed to protect and respect life, personality and autonomy. It is important to treat patient’s autonomy with respect as the basic rule and principle of bioethics. In defining this principle, it is necessary to consider that respect for autonomy is in many ways attention to individuality. People can determine their identity and destiny due to scientific discoveries. The assumptions and conclusions are made concerning the increased value of the visual component of modern bionic prostheses. In the past, prostheses were designed mainly to hide, to disguise, to compensate for the lost functions, but now they also become an important part of visual expression, attraction of attention, even epatage.

Keywords: bionics, bioethics, bionic prosthesis

Orlova Nadezhda Kh.. YES, I AM GUILTY IN UNREASONABLE HAPPINESS... (M. BULGAKOV AND A. TARKOVSKY: PARALLELS OF DESTINIES) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 3 (13). P. 86-98

In this paper the example of the two brightest artists of Soviet Culture by Mikhail Bulgakov and Andrei Tarkovsky’s analysis of the historical parallels between the strategies of survival in post-revolutionary intellectuals of 1920s–1930s and in the so-called period of thaw 1960s. In the years become popular innovation, the diversity of genres and techniques, personality. However, the official ideology of rigidly delineated boundaries of the “originality”, building a hierarchical vertical Party – Spectator – Author. It is shown that common to both periods was a sense of the dynamics of life, optimism, innovation, talent and amazing confidence in their creative powers. Cultural needs at different times and different places of the problem to the artists, but the relationship with the ideological “zone” are being built all the same laws of hierarchy and censored. It is emphasized that it becomes common place and getting into the lists of the most unreliable of independent, original, refusing to coincide with the mainstream. In this sense, “The Passion of Andrew” to a certain extent repeats the fate of Bulgakov’s plays. With respect to the two artists worked two opposite forces. On the one hand, the query time, pushed them to the surface, was in need of their creative talent and courage. On the other hand, this prevented the passion to notice that the life of Soviet people and all the built-in ideological dogma, going beyond that is dangerous. Revealed that the dominant strategy in a changing ideological situation in relation to the striking individuality, creative initiative, innovation, was the official silence and quiet the ban. Both biographies are manifested in full measure. As a conclusion they say that to Tarkovsky and Bulgakov now apply these definitions, as a legend, a model of responsibility and fidelity to the vocation.

Keywords: Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrey Tarkovsky, cinema of 1960, Soviet culture, official ideology, revolution of 1917, censorship

Fedotova Natalia Gennad'evna VISUAL CARRIERS OF CITY’S CULTURAL MEMORY (ON THE EXAMPLE OF VELIKY NOVGOROD) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 2 (20). P. 42-62

The article is devoted to the study of the features of visual carriers of the city’s cultural memory, which are one of the types of symbolic intermediaries that connect citizens and urban environment. The relevance of the research of cultural memory of the city is confirmed by the increased scientific interest to the problems of commemoration and mechanisms of structuring social forms of memory, and to the determination of collective ideas about the city. The functioning of the of the city’s cultural memory is supported by memory carriers as units of storage of the city’s culture significant elements (symbols, images, myths, etc.), which symbolically mark the urban environment. The author focuses on the visual carrier of the city’s cultural memory, which role is to accumulate, reproduce and translate the cultural meanings of the city, forming a visual matrix of urban memory. The methodology of the study of the city’s cultural memory is not yet formed, but the author gives a number of techniques to identify significant cultural meanings as fragments of urban memory. In addition to the use of cognitive, semiotic and sociological categories in the study, a certain methodological potential refers to a communicative paradigm that focuses on the analysis of the processes of generating cultural meanings of the city and their representation in the space of the city. The specificity of the functioning of the city’s cultural memory is illustrated by the example of the author’s 2016–2018 study of visual meanings of Veliky Novgorod, which transfer the key layers of urban memory. The author suggests to consider four main groups of translators of visible information about the city’s past as visual carrier of city’s cultural memory. The author identifies and substantiates features of visual carriers of the city’s cultural memory. The obtained results can be a starting point for further studies of the city’s cultural memory. The applied significance of this research is part of the intellectual capital that can be used by urban elites of each particular city in solving the problems of the policy of the city’s cultural memory associated with the creation of collective ideas about the city, including the image of the city.

Keywords: city, city’s cultural memory, commemoration, visual memory, cultural meanings

Fedorov Viktor Vladimirovich, Fedorov Mihail Victorovich, Korotaeva Zinaida Vladimirovna THE SEMANTIC POTENTIAL OF ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE ENVIRONMENT // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 4 (6). P. 47-64

Architectural and landscape environment (spatial text) is considered as an important component spaces of social life. We discuss the possibility to extend submission to the spatial text by including natural formations. It is shown that the architectural value of the text occur in the process of operating architectonic, domain-functional and socio-symbolic codes. These codes serve as means of existence of the variety of functions of architecture. An appeal to the primary and secondary codes of interested and prepared subject is a complex condition of perception, understanding and assigning values of the architectural environment.

Keywords: architectural environment, architectural text, semantics of architecture, semantic universe, codes

Ardashkin Igor Borisovich, Surovtsev Valery Aleksandrovich REVISITING THE ISSUE OF SMART TECHNOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGY AND VISUALIZATION: DOES SMART EDUCATION LEAD TO SMART EPISTEMOLOGY? // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 9-35

The article discusses how the use of smart technologies affects educational and cognitive processes, how semiotically and epistemologically presented the assessments of the role of smart technologies in relation to the phenomena of education and cognition are. By smart technologies, the authors understand modern, basically informational, technologies of various profiles, the main task of which is to perform semiotically and epistemologically the functions of a subject, to replace a person in various spheres of life (where and as far as possible). The authors note that, in assessing the role of smart technologies, some criteria are often ignored and the role and importance of others are exaggerated. To summarize, it can be argued that the quantitative criteria for the application of smart technologies prevail over the qualitative ones, thus allowing the substitution of the essential characteristics of smart technologies to be less significant (secondary), which gives rise to certain unjustified expectations and effects. In particular, the authors analyzed one of these pseudo-effects: the educational situation, when a student is studying a particular discipline within the framework of online learning (smart technologies make this possible), begins to be semiotically visualized as epistemological. This is due to the fact that the online learning format puts a person in front of the need to “discover” knowledge independently for themselves, without having the appropriate methodological training and full-time support from the teacher. The problem is that, in a large number of studies, this situation is viewed as a definite achievement, but, as further evaluation of the results of smart learning shows, students whose methodological training is already associated with a certain methodological “baggage” cope with this role while most students only worsen their learning outcomes. It is noted that, epistemologically, such a characteristic of smart technologies as a functional replacement of a subject is directly correlated with the position of a number of constructivist trends in epistemology and cognitive sciences, according to which “knowledge without a subject” is allowed. The combination of the designated parameters of smart technologies application in education and epistemology allows a number of researchers to admit the conclusion about the possibility of the formation of smart education and smart epistemology as “objectless” ways of learning knowledge and cognition. It is shown that such a scenario is permissible, if not to separate the concepts of information and knowledge, the processes of cognition and information. It is shown that, if this requirement is ignored, the concepts of knowledge and knowledge itself lose their meanings, because knowledge as a process is a way of relating knowledge and information, which is impossible in an outer-subject form. It is concluded that smart technologies, in the context of their application in education and epistemology, should be considered as an additional tool, whose function can be reduced to performing routine, but not heuristic, creative basic actions that remain the subject’s priority.

Keywords: smart-technologies, epistemology, education, cognition, subject

Pirogov Sergey Vladimirovich METHODOLOGICAL STRATEGIES AND CONCEPTS OF CITY ANTHROPOLOGY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 3 (21). P. 254-267

The report discusses methodological tools for overcoming the extremes of the positivist and hermeneutic strategies for studying the city. Attention is drawn to individual differences between cities and urban life phenomena. The possibilities and subject areas of typology, phenomenology, topology as conceptual approaches to studying the individuality of cities are analyzed. The author introduces the concepts of studying the individuality of cities: topoi of the urban environment, everyday practices of citizens, the habitus of the city. It is shown that in the topological perspective the city looks like a “puzzle” of vital worlds, as a composition of qualitatively defined places – topoi. The concept of everyday practices of citizens is considered as a connecting link, a medium between the structure of the city and the meanings of its inhabitants. The methodological idea of the city habitus is to bring together different aspects of city life into a single model, showing their interdependence: gestalts, narratives, production and consumption practices, economic trends, cultural schematizations. The report substantiates the value of the concept ‘city habitus’, explores the observed circumstances of the city habitus existence and the conditions for its formation.

Keywords: image of city, topos of city life, everyday practices, types of cities, city habitus

Barash Raisa Eduardovna, Antonovskiy Alexander Yu.. REBELLIOUS MAN, BE VISIBLE, OR PERISH! VISUALIZATION OF THE SEMANTICS OF PROTEST COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL NETWORKS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 36-59

The modern era can rightly be called the era of criticism. All that can be done can be done better; therefore, almost any achievement or decision, primarily of politicians and entrepreneurs (but not least of all of scientists, designers, architects, writers and even people of art), is accompanied by protest or criticized. Achievements or decisions either affect personal rights, or threaten the environment, or damage cultural, gender, national or religious identities. At the same time, protest should be presented in a bright visual form. Any protest slogan should receive an additional symbolic refinement or extension. Symbols can be understandable or require few thinking efforts; and both these conditions should not harm the overall transparency of the protest function. These symbols of protest oppose metaphorically encoded video sequences to the complex party programs. The decoding of protest symbols is not difficult (“anything goes”) and provides a general understanding and unity of the protesters (or its illusion that, in general, does not change things). The symbolic visualization of the unifying values of protest (e.g., of the collective rejection of suffering or of the rights loss) and its decoding compensate the lack of a generalized symbolic means of communication, which is a guaranteed means of achieving communicative success. Such a symbolic visualization would ensure that any participant of protest communication has their contact request accepted, that is, addressed to other participants. Such communicatively generalizing symbols or media (power, truth, money, faith) belong to classical macro-systems (the ones of politics, science, economy, religion), which allows these systems to solve the main communicative problem, to provide collective actions, and to coordinate common interests and decisions. But protest communication, on the contrary, is dispersed into several heterogeneous key topics. The debate on these topics integrates communities and institutionalizes these communications into such social movements as feminism, environmentalism, anti-globalism, etc. However, unlike the clear communicative symbols of the political and economic systems, the absence of such a generalizing symbol in protest communication is not a competitive advantage. In the article, the authors consider the communicative and symbolic resources of protest communication that have been developed during the Internet network epoch as a functional compensation for its thematic fragmentation in the absence of a single unifying symbol.

Keywords: visualization of protest communication, system-communicative approach, activism, social networks

Fedotova Natalia Gennad'evna VISUAL MARKERS OF THE URBAN IMAGINARY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 1 (23). P. 121-139

The article is devoted to the study of visual markers of urban imaginary, which provide the accumulation and representation of collective memories of the city, and structure the process of imagination of the city. The relevance of urban imaginary research is confirmed both by the increased scientific interest in the phenomena that symbolically and mentally determine urban reality, and by the episodic nature of urban imaginary research in Russia. Urban imaginary opens the possibility of an interdisciplinary view of the city as a global text, generated by the structuring of collective imagination and formed by the dynamics of urban meanings in time and space. The work focuses on the fact that people come into contact only with fragments of the city, and in the conditions of informatization, digitalization of reality, the city as a whole exists, first of all, in the imagination of people, which approximates and reduces the symbolic code of the city. The key thesis of the work is the statement that the most important symbolic representative, thanks to which urban imaginary is structured in a particular city, is visual markers of the urban imaginary, which have an exceptional imaginative and generating effect. The author addresses the process of urban imaginary construction, reveals the typology and specificity of Russian cities visual markers that act as symbolic mediators. The dominant markers considered in the article are natural, symbolic, architectural, personalized visual markers, which may have different configuration in each city and differently structure urban imaginary. The result of urban imaginary’s visualization process, which translates collective representations of the city, is an urban image. Based on the symbolic and partly virtual nature of urban imaginary, it is emphasized that the process of representation of the city and the constructed image today have more significance than the city really is. The results can be a starting point for the further urban imaginary research, including applied research. They are part of the intellectual capital that can be used by urban elites in the symbolic struggle of cities for space and mobile resources, as well as in solving the problems of increasing the competitiveness of Russian cities.

Keywords: city, urban studies, urban imaginary, visual markers.

Atmanova Yulia Georgievna THE EULOGY OF BADSHAH JAHANGIR: CULTURAL, HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT IN THE MUGHAL VISUAL PANEGYRIC // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 2 (8). P. 53-70

The article is devoted to problems of the interpretation of the Mughal allegorical portrait. The author discusses the complex process of transformation of verbal signs into visual signs on a material of the pictorial panegyric. The article addresses the issues connected with various aspects of the visualization of concepts and motifs common in the Mughal culture. It is also shown that the formation of the royal portrait was influenced by political and socio-cultural realities of the time. Their introduction into visual text contributed to the actualization and concretization of the literary mythologems that formed the basis of the Mughal ideological programme.

Keywords: mughal miniature, allegorical portrait, visual panegyric, badshah Jahangir

Dogo Dunja BUILDING THE IMAGE OF RUSSIAN POLITICAL CONSPIRATORS IN EARLY SOVIET CINEMATOGRAPHY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 2 (4). P. 69-81

In my paper I aim at comparing the images of two radical 19th century revolutionists such as Sergei Gennadevich Nechaev and Stepan Nikolaevich Khalturin with the ambivalent portraits of these historical characters that appeared in the Russian and Soviet press before and after the 1917 Russian Revolution. According to a number of publications, Nechaev’s figure was given a special position by the Soviet intelligentsia of the 1920s. Also Khalturin became, at the time, particularly popular for having been the leader of the Russian workers’ movement. Main questions asked in my Paper include, but are not limited, to the following: how Russian Populists were featured through cinema? By what specific visual devices in the two fictional films shown throughout the 1920s – such as “The Palace and the Fortress” and “Stepan Khalturin” (both directed by Aleksandr Viktorivich Ivanovsky) – were the stories of the recent revolutionary past reorganised in relation to the projects predominating in the Soviet post-revolutionary present? I shall specifically focus the paper on how the characters of Nechaev and Khalturin were treated by the well-known historian Pavel Eliseevich Shchyogolev, who made use of new sources (emerged from the former archives of the Tsarist secret police departments) for composing the screenplays of the above-mentioned films.

Keywords: soviet history, film history, building the visual image, Russian populists, Sergei Nechaev, Stepan Khalturin

Bobrova Angelina Sergeevna THE LOGIC AND POSSIBILITIES OF AN ICONIC ANALYSIS OF REASONING // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 1 (27). P. 7-24

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

Tretyakova Tatiana E.. VISUAL EVENT AS AN EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 1 (15). P. 134-156

The author present the results of the research into the change of mediation in the contemporary educational communication. I observe how those changes lead towards the change of the traditional role and functions of a teacher and educational communication in an educational event in particular. The objective of the presented research is to detect the interdependence between semiosis of education and the type of mediation in an educational situation. The author presents are opportunities and risks of innovative educational technology. In its basis is the ideology of the educational experiment of American scientists Gregory Bateson and Sigmunt Bauman. The training session is organized as a visual event. The mediator in the educational conflict is a static image (photo). Everything that happens in the classroom is fixed on the voice recorder. The second stage of my research work became the analysis of educational situations transcripts. At that stage we draw upon the practices of discourse analysis focused upon the relations between the participants of communication demonstrated in discourses. I believe that the interest to such ‘local’ (occurring in a classroom) could cast a light upon the nature of such interaction but also reveal the micro-processes occurring in educational community and practices.

Keywords: iconic turn, visual stimulus, educational technology, visual artifact, educational event, educational conflict, presupposition, communicative strategy, communicative transgression, educational experiment

Schmitt Reinhold, Petrova Anna Aleksandrovna, Blunck Maximilian ON THE VISIBILITY OF RITUAL MEANING IN COMMUNION: PREREQUISITES AND IMPLICATIONS REGARDING ARCHITECTURE-FOR-INTERACTION AND SOCIAL TOPOGRAPHY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 2 (20). P. 93-118

The article starts by outlining the theoretical and conceptual foundations in the field of multimodal interaction analysis, which, based on its spatiallinguistic orientation, deals with the meaning of space for the constitution of social meaning. Conceptually, we refer to the ideas of architecture-forinteraction and social topography. Empirically, we look towards the entire range of visually perceptible physical expressions of the Communion participants. We also focus on the spatial prerequisites and the space-related knowledge of the visitors, which becomes evident in their situational behaviour. From our point of view, Communion is not only a ritual in worship but also a task of coordination and positioning. We analyse video excerpts of two Communions in Lutheran-Protestant worship. The central question is: How do the people who hand out the sacrament to the participants take part in the procedure themselves (self-supply)? The video excerpts are from Germany (Rimbach and Zotzenbach, South Hesse). We see self-supply as a situational reproduction of institutional structures and relevancies. Methodologically, we first analyse an example in detail, in which we elaborate constitutive aspects of self-supply and the associated implications in the sense of an arising communitisation of the faithful. The subsequent analysis is carried out from a comparative perspective with reference to the results already obtained. The analyses lead to two basic models. Firstly, we identified a two-phase model in which first the churchgoers and then separately the institution’s representatives celebrate Communion. Structurally linked to this model is the is the diverging presence of those who have already completed the ritual, divergence resulting in two ensembles with their respective interaction space. The churchgoers watch the pastor and his assistants perform the ritual themselves. Secondly, we were able to formulate an integrative model in which the pastor celebrates Communion as one of the community. This preserves cohesion among all churchgoers and there is no ritual display of the institution’s representatives as in the two-phase model. As for model-shaping factors, two aspects become particularly clear: The first are the opportunities which the architecture-forinteraction, i.e. the concrete space for the Communion, provides. The second is the number of participants who perform the ceremony under these spatial conditions. Both aspects have a direct impact on the organisation of Communion, the movement within the church space and, indirectly, on the structure and implications of self-supply.

Keywords: visibility of ritual meaning, worship, Communion, multimodality, multimodal interaction analysis, coordination, socio-spatial positioning, architecture-for-interaction, social topography, interaction space

Popova Lyudmila D.. ARKHANGELSK SPATIAL ORGANIZATION IN THE PAST AND TODAY: COMPARATIVE STUDY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 145-154

The paper deals with Arkhangelsk town-planning features in the historical and cultural perspective from the end of the 16th to the beginning of the 21st century. The Pomorian city is represented as the condensed essence of a holistic ideological and semantic program which peculiar to the Russian medieval city. Arkhangelsk is developing in the tideway of the general Russian architectural tradition and of its creative interpretation of various styles techniques and motifs: from baroque to modern. The primary focus is on the eclecticism and art nouveau periods. In the eclecticism era the Novgorod, Moscow, Yaroslavl and especially northern folk architecture traditions became a significant basis for them. At the beginning of the 20th century the eclecticism yielded precedence to the Arkhangelsk art nouveau, manifested here in the pre-revolutionary period. It was focused mainly on a strictly rationalistic and functional direction. The trading houses, built according to designs of S. A. Pets with their distinctive architecture and the Belyaevsky’s wooden house with the filled with decor street façade, that combines carved paneling and open log became exceptions. The techniques of Russian wooden architecture with the forms of the art nouveau and the traditional Scandinavian architecture surprisingly combined here. All presented art styles that followed the tastes of the time remained deeply national. At the beginning of the 20th century, interest in innovative phenomena of Western European art coexisted with a deep interest in the artistic culture of the Russian people, its traditions. “In Russia, a fertile passion for its past woke up” (I. Evdokimov). In the 20th – 21st centuries, these traditions are being interrupted, which will lead to the disappearance of the historical city face.

Keywords: Russia, Pomorye, Arkhangelsk, ‘grad’-city, monastery, traders’ market, architecture, art styles

Fereński Piotr Jakub WHAT DOES THE CITY SAY? SEMIOTIC AND AXIOTIC READING OF URBAN SPACES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 11-26

Cultural / culturologic studies (referred in the text as “culturology”) that being developed in Poland and Eastern Europe since 1970s, has the ambition of showing the phenomena or processes hidden behind a directly visible reality – tying them to the symbolic and axiological spheres. However, nowadays increasingly often the discourse based on values, norms, rules and meanings is enriched with issues related to ownership structures, social distinctions and relations of power. The author of the article tries to show this dialectic of various ontological orders on the example of urban studies. In functioning of city infrastructure, the basic role undoubtedly is played by “utilitarian values”. But while looking at the city as a work (something that remains in constant creation), artistic, aesthetic and ethical values seem to be the most important. The first two types (which include, inter alia, modernity, originality, beauty, order, context, chaos, ugliness, devastation), are present both in the process of shaping the urban space itself and in the formation of the styles of life occurring in it – including both everyday practices and bottom-up, spontaneous creative acts. Some of values are individual (happiness, freedom, religiousness anonymity, responsibility, care for the public good), and some are collective (community, equality, democracy, security, multiculturalism, local identity, living standards, nature, ecology). The diverse character of the social fabric of a city means clashing together various interest groups organized not only around the pursuit of power and profit but also convictions, ideologies, beliefs, and tastes. How proves Fereński, urban areas should, therefore, be seen/read as spaces of axiological disputes, strongly related to politics and economic determinants.

Keywords: culturology, culture, visual culture, urban space, city, style of life, values, axiology, economy, politics

Kapustin Aleksandr V.., Avanesov Sergey Sergeyevich EDUCATIONAL AND RECREATIONAL SPACE: AN EXAMPLE OF THE “GREEN LAMP” IN TOMSK // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 1 (15). P. 157-170

The semiotic analysis of local urban space on the example of the library “The Green Lamp” in Tomsk is made in this article. Motivation, goals, as well as the history of the visual construction process and transformation of a specific communicative locus on a big city scale are considered here. Such characteristics of the social space of the library-cafe, as dynamism, structural variability, creative style, orientation to personal comfort, cultural environment as a place for organizing events are shown in this article. This example allows to see how the personal initiative of the citizens can become the driving force of the real transformation of the urban space. This initiative gives life dynamics to the space of the city, forms comfort zones, constructs stylistically unique communicative loci in which a big city approaches the human format.

Keywords: urban space, visual construction, microurbanism, communication, library-cafe, Tomsk

Simyan Tigran Serzhikovitch SERGEI PARAJANOV AS A TEXT: MAN, HABITUS, AND INTERIOR (on the material of visual texts) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 3 (21). P. 197-215

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

Smirnov Sergey Alevtinovich IMAGE OF THE CITY: FROM MAP TO CARTOID // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 4 (14). P. 28-48

The article describes the situation of changing perceptions of the human habitat by the example of city images and city plans. It is shown that the image of an ideal utopia city is inferior to the image of the city as a way of life and habitat. As a result, there is a transition from attempts to accurately image and seize the city and space in maps and schemes that metrically preserve the image object on a scale, to describing the city and space in the idea of the cartoid. The cardoid here is understood as a sign-symbolic image of the mode of action when a person masters space. The author shows that the cartoid as an idea and method naturally arose in the situation of the need to describe a person’s navigation, if necessary, to routing them their progress and mastering the space. The article gives examples of maps and cartoids of specific cities and territories.

Keywords: city, city image, city anthropology, city space, map, cartoid, navigation, region

Smirnov Sergey Alevtinovich PHILOSOPHER IN THE CITY: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE PLACE. Article 2. Georgy Shchedrovitsky // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 1 (23). P. 140-160

The article continues a series of works devoted to the study of the connection between the life of a philosopher, on the one hand, and his place of residence, on the other. The author shows how the “works and days” of a particular philosopher, in fact, through the events authored by the philosopher, form the biography of his habitats, which previously were little known. It is concluded that the biography and autobiography of the philosopher lies not only in his ideas and written works, but also in leaving event traces in the habitats, which then, after the departure of their carrier, begin to speak for him and tell his biography. In a previous article, the problem of the autobiography of a place was discussed by the author on the example of the life of M. M. Bakhtin. In this article, the author considers this topic on the example of the domestic philosopher and methodologist G. P. Shchedrovitsky. The article shows that G. P. Shchedrovitsky built his life and developed methodology as a mission, as a cultural task. Shchedrovitsky’s biography is distinguished by the fact that he built it as an extraterritorial trajectory, actually embodying the idea of personal navigation. On the material of personal testimonies and testimonies of other authors, as well as autobiographical texts of G. P. Shchedrovitsky, the author shows examples of such event traces that G. P. Shchedrovitsky left. It is shown that in different places previously unknown to the scientific world, pockets of thought and action were suddenly created, and these places became new intellectual centers.

Keywords: visual space, autobiography, philosophical autobiography, philosopher’s biography, city, place, event, evidence.

Pervushina Nina Andreyevna A SEMIOTIC DIAGNOSTICS OF STUDY KITS IN THE ERA OF NEUROPEDAGOGY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 194-205

People are compelled to change their approach to education because of the current trends: the uncertainty in the world of the future occupations, the idea of education throughout life, education for the purpose of personal growth. These trends allow one to navigate in a rapidly changing world and to easily learn a new specialization; they force a person to receive a more “extensive” education, on the one hand, and a more “compact” education, on the other. In any case, in a short period of time, a person needs to learn a large amount of information, to acquire new skills. It is necessary to use time effectively. Therefore, it becomes very important to increase the effectiveness of education, the methods of transmission and perception of information that must be learned. All this together makes it appropriate to use educational technologies related to personality development and students’ active inclusion in the educational process. The complex of these factors requires the creation of study kits that would competently organize visual education on the basis of neuroscience research. Semiotic diagnostics of these kits shows how to correctly combine and use them without harm to the individual, taking into account the physiological, cultural characteristics, and personal needs. For effective training, it is necessary to take into account the individual characteristics of the brain, the individual needs of a person, especially the transmission and perception of information. The purposeful organization of the educational process is the embodiment of knowledge about how the brain learns: writing lecture notes by hand, the need for periodic repetition of information. Modern man’s overload with information makes them return to reading paper books, writing lecture notes on paper, using markers and studying in a library for successful effective learning. Visual information is remembered better. Much of the information in the learning process is represented visually, at least in the form of lecture notes. Thus, it is relevant to determine the optimal ratio in the use of types of visual educational aids and study kits.

Keywords: semiotics diagnostics, neuroscience, neuropedagogy, synergetics, perception of visual information, education

Simyan Tigran Serzhikovitch VISUALIZATION OF THE ARMENIAN EPOS IN THE URBAN SPACE (BY EXAMPLE ARTASHES HOVSEPYAN) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 4 (10). P. 23-31

The principles of visualization of the Armenian epos in urban space are analyzed in the present article by example of Armenian sculptor Artashes Hovsepyan. Thesis of this article is: Armenian epos in the Soviet and post-Soviet period in the collective consciousness is active, and its visualization and presentation in the ‘high’ art is an occasion for reflection and activation of Armenian epos reception in the Armenian socio-cultural world. The main methodological premise of understanding of the material become semiotic ideas of Charles Sanders Pierce and discourse analysis. The analysis of empirical data has shown that the bas-reliefs by Artashes Hovsepyan, dedicated to the Armenian epos, can be seen not only in the public, social and cultural space of the city, but also in the museum (metro station ‘David of Sasun’, Brandy Factory, Cafesjian Art Center), i.e. in the open space for local residents and tourists. Comparative-typological analysis of the primary text (epos) and visualization (bas-relief, cartoon, graphics) show that every form of art ‘speaks’ with his language. The multiplication of epic text is ‘an extension’ of perception Armenian epos in the Armenian society, which in turn helps to keep the epic text in the light field of the recipient consciousness. Factual material ‘high’ art has shown that it was taken only from the second (Mher the Elder), the third (David of Sasun) and fourth (Mher Junior) epic branches. But, of course, the third branch has been and remains the most favorite branch with David of Sasun as the most beloved hero of the collective memory.

Keywords: epic visualization, urban space, public space, collective memory, Soviet and post-Soviet era, epos, the Armenian epos, postfolklor, semiotic translation, interpretation of the epos, Artashes Hovsepyan, bas-relief

Borisova Tatiana Stanislavovna THE PLACE AND THE FUNCTIONS OF TEXT INCORPORATIONS ON THE MULTIFACETED ICONS IN THE CRETAN AND RUSSIAN BAROQUE TRADITION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 3 (13). P. 71-85

The present paper deals with the relationship between the visual image and the poetic text in the emblematic message of the hagiographic art of baroque. Specifically two different traditions of the 17th–18th centuries, namely the Cretan and the Russian, were studied by the typical examples of the icon “Μέγας εἶ, Κύριε” (“Great Art Thou, O Lord”) by Ioannis Kornaros and the iconographic type of the “Living cross”. The comparative analyses of the function of the poetic text – the homonymous prayer of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem and the religious poem of Silvestre Medvedev – on these icons revealed that in spite of the obvious differences there are certain common features which correspond to the general trends of the changing role of the icons in the European spiritual and social context.

Keywords: talking icons, emblem, Baroque, Cretan school, Ioannis Kornaros, Silvestre Medvedev, Living Cross, St. Sophronius of Jerusalem