Simyan Tigran Serzhikovitch ARMENIAN EPOS IN SOCIAL AND COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET ERA (BY EXAMPLE OF KITSCH GOODS OF YEREVAN VERNISSAGE) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 2 (12). P. 92-108

The article is devoted to problems of interpretation and pictorial manifestation of the mystical concept farr-i izadi which was an integral part of the Mughal ideological programme. The crucial idea of this conception is to proclaim the divine origin of the Great Mughals’ power and their legal right to the heavenly patronage. Theoretical concepts and verbal formulas of farr-i izadi were visually represented in the official Royal portraits in the form of halo that adorned the head of a Mughal ruler. For allegorical portraits of the Mughal emperors were also developed more sophisticated pictorial forms.

Keywords: visual representation, divine light, king’s farr, holiness, halo, mughal painting, Great Mughals

Orlova Nadezhda Kh.. DOSTOEVSKY IN FRENCH CINEMA: THE BEGINNING OF THE TRADITION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 4 (14). P. 90-104

The article analyses the formation of the screen version of Dostoevsky works in the French cinema tradition. The chronological framework of the presented illustrations is outlined by two events in the history of French cinema. First – the early 30th of the XX century when the first adaptation “Crime and Punishment” by Fedor Otsep came out. Second – the late 60th when Robert Bresson offered his own reading and understanding of the Russian writer. It is shown that approaches to understanding Dostoevsky’s philosophy in cinematography are developed in the context of the overall history of the “relationship” of French visual arts with the Russian writer’s work. The play of “Crime and Punishment” presented at the end of the XIX century on the “Odeon” theatre is accepted here as a reference point. The problem of screen adaptation of Dostoevsky’s works is connected in this article with the polemics of film critics about the possibilities and prospects of translating literary classics into the language of cinema.

Keywords: semiotics of cinema, Dostoevsky, French cinema, French theatre, literature and cinema, film adaptation of literature

Petrenko Valeriya Vladimirovna FASHION IN THE FOCUS OF FRENCH SEMIOTICS OF THE PASSIONS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 78-83

This paper presents a prospects of new methodology for social and philosophical research of fashion on the example of the french semiotics of the passions of A.J. Greimas and J. Fontanille. The reception of their ideas shows the ways of future possibilities of investigations in the sphere of fashion and the fashionable consciousness. The thematization of the concept of the passion will make it possible the presentation of subject of fashion as the configuration of different emotional experience, which influences on choice of subject. The position of A.J. Greimas and J. Fontanille is analysed as the methodological base for description the structure of mind and discurse.

Keywords: fashion, semiotics of the passions, A. J. Greimas, J. Fontanille, thymus, subject of fashion

Krapchunov Daniil Evgen'evich THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN CORRELATIONS IN THE PERCEPTION OF RUSSIAN TRADITIONAL CULTURE FOR EXAMPLE OF SHROVETIDE RITUALS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 3 (5). P. 117-127

The analysis of Maslenitsa (Shrovetide) rites and festivities, the identification of the celebration mythologema through folklore, and its time connection with Easter do not support the common belief that Maslenitsa is an absolutely pagan heritage. Despite the fact that Maslenitsa traditions trace back to the all-European past, there are obvious reasons to reveal deep Christian symbols in this celebration that are seen through different verbal, visual and dramatic patterns. In the conditions of the recurring Christianization (churching) of Russia and the search for fundamental basis for the development of modern social and cultural practices the conceptual analysis of Maslenitsa and other traditional celebrations can give effective tools for identity construction.

Keywords: Shrovetide, Maslenitsa, Christian symbols, dual faith, traditional culture, rite, Easter, Maslenitsa festivities

Gizdatov Gazinur Gabdullavich, Burenina-Petrova Olga Dmitriyevna, Sopieva Bayan Abdujaparovna CULTURE AS A TEXT AND A PROJECT IN THE POST-SOVIET DISCOURSE (BY THE EXAMPLE OF KAZAKHSTAN) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2023. Issue 1 (35). P. 30-47

The article presents an analysis of the semiotic aspects of significant texts and visual samples in the discursive art practice of post-Soviet Kazakhstan from the 1990s to nowadays. Literary centricity as a universal property of the entire post-Soviet visual culture is revealed on the previously unstudied material, which has intermedial and intertextual specifics. Art discourse is analyzed on the thematic and rhetorical levels, using verifiable scientific methods for these levels (content analysis, critical discourse analysis, the deconstruction method). As a result, the art objects of post-Soviet Kazakhstan, with the texts included in them, are analyzed in the article in the local historical and political context. Three projects were identified: Eurasian, Pan-Turkic, and liberal. As given intertexts, they determined the social and cultural boundaries and assessments of Kazakhstani artists. The projects, as written and proved in the article, had their historical foundations and still determine the real policy. The art ideas which appeared within the framework of these projects find a modern medial reflection. The work, for the first time in the scientific literature, proves that medial experiments in the practice of Kazakhstani contemporary art (texts and performances by Sergei Maslov, Ziyakhan Shaigeldinov (Shai-Ziya), Yerbol Meldibekov, Elena and Viktor Vorobyov, as well as modern actionists) documented the process of what is happening, reflected the traumatic nature of reality itself. For the first and only time in the public space of the country, as the article shows, by means of art practice, these experiments have criticized the quasi-real world of Kazakhstan's social and cultural space. In the Kazakh contemporary art itself, there have always been a lot of texts and subtexts, which are often directly included in art objects or have created them. The article traces that these were such text samples that generated their own meaning along with a visual idea at a given point in time, which can be called the creation of discourse. The work also reveals that representatives of contemporary Kazakh art used the aesthetics of the absurd as a mechanism for transforming post-Soviet everyday life into a different and new reality, similar to how it happened in absurdist fiction of the twentieth century. At the same time, visual samples in Kazakhstani practice of the late 20th and early 21st centuries became real cultural aggregators, they replaced the written text and influenced its functioning in culture. The article reveals the still practically unexplored usage of the aesthetics of television intermediality in Kazakhstani contemporary art. Art projects and manifestos of Kazakh artists of the 1990s and the 2000s are presented as unique socio-political discursive texts that predicted the specific socio-political realities of the post-Soviet country.

Keywords: art project, discursive practice, literary centricity, intermedial, intertextual, cultural text, performance, post-Soviet, aesthetics of absurd

Semenyuk Xenia Anatolevna, Loos Dmitry M.. SCHIZOPHRENICS’ DRAWINGS INTERPRETATION: MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASPECTS OF THE STUDY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 4 (10). P. 109-124

Schizophrenia, which Deleuze and Guattari described as “the disease of century”, still strongly reinforces its position according to the WHO. Since 2000, the number of ‘schizophrenia’ diagnoses has increased by 40 %. The disease manifestations polymorphism is one of the main differential diagnostic problems. The lack of schizophrenia nosological unity is closely connected with the old question of the disease ‘essence’. However, attempts to build some kind of a correct recognition and interpretation of this mental disorder type still have not given results. Due to the fact that most doctors consider schizophrenia not as a single disease, and as a group of psychoses, with a similar picture of the flow, the diagnosis F20 (schizophrenia) is made on set of the disease most malignant manifestations. Art therapy is widely used in the patients rehabilitation practice; it gives a variety of artistic material for analysis of the schizophrenia signs, ‘language’ and ‘discourse’. The schizophrenic often substitutes one language for another – verbal language for the drawing language. The conceptual basis of this researching is the Timothy Crow (English psychiatrist) hypothesis, that schizophrenia is a language disease. The article identifies correlation between sign (drawing) and symptom (the signified). The surrealism art practices are interpreted in this researching as surrealism declares insanity as an artistic reality. Through using examples of Tomsk Clinical Psychiatric Hospital patient drawings, the insanes and the surrealists creativity comparative analysis is made in the article.

Keywords: schizophrenia, psychoanalysis, Lacan, surrealism, drawing, interpretation

Dolgikh Alla Alekseevna DEATH’S VISUALIZATION WAYS IN CINEMA AND MEDICINE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2014. Issue 2 (2). P. 110-117

In this article it’s going to be revealed, using philosophy (in particular using comparative analysis techniques), the relation between death visualization in medicine and death visualization in art as aspect of building symbolical death overcoming models with forces of art and science. There are two types of the sign situations displaying options of death overcoming by the person: they are scientific type (medicine) and cultural type (art, in particular the cinema). Two types of sign situations have being arising in the process of conflict between interpretations of death and life images that are generated in popular mentality of the modern person. Medical overcoming of death is illusory precisely as cinematic overcoming is, because the death is actually irresistible. The general conclusion of this article is the statement that the death phenomenon presented within philosophical and semiotics interpretation of cinema and medicine, in all contradictions, demands the further analysis in the direction of philosophical an- thropology and culture philosophy. It will allow to understand sociocultural appearance mechanisms of basic human’s behavior understanding models and also to extract the annexation chances of those models to various fields of culture and society.

Keywords: death, sign situations, medicine, cinema, zombie, philosophy

Gorbuleva Maria Sergeyevna VISUAL PROJECTIONS OF ETHICAL AND LAW PROBLEMS IN THE ACTIVITY OF RUSSIAN ANIMAL WELFARE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 1 (11). P. 76-85

The article attempts to analyze the expression of ethical and legal issues in the activities of animal welfare organizations. We consider the visualization of some problems embodied in a series of social projects (for example Tomsk animal welfare organization «Sodruzestvo»). We used the rules and principles of bioethics to find common vectors. In the article there is an effort to analyze animal welfare organizations and its activity and visual expression of the ethical and legal problems in this area. The growth of voluntary initiatives and animal welfare funds, the increasing interest in animals and their use by people in various fields and inhuman treatment detect the failure in the legislative field of regulating and their protection from cruel, inhuman treatment. Also there are questions about giving animals the same status and rights, and the conclusions about the division into those who receive more protection or does not have it at all. In considering this problem it is necessary to use foreign experience in relation to granting and protecting the rights of animals, the gradual movement of humanity in relation to different types of animals, depending on their use. Analysis of the animal welfare organizations, their goals, aims and work directions has helped to highlight some external and internal challenges. An example of the animal welfare social projects shows the solutions encountered difficulties in volunteers’ activities. Interrelations between symbolization of the volunteers’ purposes and the purposes of bioethics are revealed. To identify the discussed application’s characteristics were used rules and principles of bioethics. There are parallels between human rights protection during their medical treatment and the same rights in medical treatment of animals.

Keywords: bioethics, visualizations, volunteers, volunteering, animals welfare

Nam Elena V.. SPACE AND TIME IN THE SHAMANIC COSMOS: A SEMIOTIC PERSPECTIVE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 2 (16). P. 175-194

The article is a collection of the author’s thoughts on some new ways of exploring the categories of time and space in the culture of archaic and traditional societies, with the reliance on semiotic and structuralist theories. The process of becoming aware of time is connected with the acquisition of speech which creates a syntagmatic chain out of consecutive elements of language. The characteristics of space reflect the unfolding and establishing of temporal relationships. No less important in this regard are paradigmatic relationships – it was a combination of paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects that allowed primitive man to develop stable time units. During shamanic rituals, customary syntagmatic relationships are suppressed, thus the usual course of time is interrupted and its measure is changed. The spacial expression of this consists in the formation of alternative worlds. The author concludes that shaman’s altered states of consciousness are result from the altered connection between paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships in mental processes which, in turn, entails time and space being measured differently.

Keywords: paradigmatics, syntagmatics, duration, discreteness, altered states of consciousness

Pendikova Irina Gennadevna VISUAL CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE EXISTENTIAL PROBLEMS OF DAILY OCCURRENCE IN DESIGN GRAPHICS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 91-98

Paper is devoted to identification of process of the existential problems conceptualization in the main types and genres of modern design graphics – from objects of outdoor advertising and environmental design to the Internet memes which were widely adopted in connection with the development of IT. Conceptualization of the existential problems, demanding their visual fixing, promotes their judgment and at the same time designs the mechanism of management of existential conditions, than obvious psychotherapeutic effect of creativity of this sort is caused. Creation and distribution of Internet memes – universal communication which allows to find for mass forms of design graphics the status of a modern folklore genre.

Keywords: visual culture, visual communication, visual anthropology, conceptualization, graphic design, Internet memes

Khitruk Ekaterina Borisovna “MALE ISSUE” IN THE WORKS OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 2 (12). P. 146-154

This article explores the “male theme” in the works of Andrei Tarkovsky. Special attention is paid to the formulation of the problem of loss of male intergenerational communication in the film “The Steamroller and the Violin”. The conclusion is that immersion of boys in a “female” environment due to the feminization of education and the trend of the “loss of the father” in modern society leads to considerable complication of the process of male socialization. Feature film “The Steamroller and the Violin” is considered in the article as one of the first attempts in the art of meaningful approach to the production of “male issue” in modern society. This artistic interpretation of the issue of the loss of male intergenerational communication advocates a kind of prelude to the emergence of contemporary interdisciplinary field of social science – “men’s studies”.

Keywords: Andrei Tarkovsky, men’s studies, fatherhood, boy, man

Sazonova Nataliya Ivanovna THE RITE OF FOOT WASHING ON HOLY THURSDAY: SPATIAL ICON AND THE PROBLEM OF ITS ACTUALIZATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 3 (5). P. 54-70

The article is devoted to the history, content, and problems of actualization in modern culture rite of foot washing on Holy Thursday. Ritual plays gospel events of the Last Supper and is reborn in the liturgical practice of the Russian Orthodox Church at present. The article discusses the origin and history of the rite, as well as the specificity of its occurrence in the Jerusalem Church and in Russia. Analyzes the characteristics of the translation of spiritual values through the spatial icons in connection with the specific culture of the spoken word. Discusses the problems of actualization of spatial icons in cultures with extraordinary role of written discourse in connection with gradual increase of the detachment of parties from the meaning of the rite and its desacralization. It is concluded that spatial updating icons in modern conditions requires overcoming of man’s alienation from cultural phenomena, its status as a consumer of information, the transition from passive reception to active experience.

Keywords: rite of Foot washing, Orthodoxy, worship, spatial icon, the culture of spoken word, literary, written discourse, word, image.

Aleksandrov Evgeny Vasilievich FIVE COORDINATES OF VUSUAL ANTHROPOLOGY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2014. Issue 2 (2). P. 55-64

Dwelling upon a notion of the “dialogue of cultures” as the defining aim of Visual Anthropology, the author thinks that one of the most important tasks of films that follow this aim is providing authentic information. In the beginning of the article I treat the characteristics of the documentary filmmaking which were in focus of attention during the early stages of the cinema development before it shifted largely to feature films. The Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov laid the ground for the theory of cinema language understood as the language of documentary cinema. He declared and experimentally illustrated the main spatial and temporary coordinates of the cinema language. But his ideological attempt to “build a new man” did not allow to use his formal discoveries to transform the documentary filmmaking in the means of the dialogue with peoples on screen. A filmmaker from another continent, Robert Flaherty, made this step approximately at the same time. Not pretending to be a theoretician of cinema, Flaherty made a practical discovery which showed that documentary filmmaking may not only make artistic breakthroughs but also serve a means of communication allowing representatives of remote cultures remain on screen not as exotic aliens but conduct equal dialogue with viewers. The main task of the article was to show that formal categories of the film structure (spatial and temporal) may naturally be combined with such an irrational category as the ethical responsibility of the film author before the reality.

Keywords: visual anthropology, languages of cinema, dialogue of cultures

Sazonova Nataliya Ivanovna THE ACTION OF THE LAST JUDGMENT IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH SERVICE OF RUSSIA IN THE 17th CENTURY: TO THE PROBLEM OF TYPOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LITURGICAL ACTION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 4 (10). P. 53-65

The article analyzes one of the least studied liturgical actions – the action on the Last Judgment, celebrated in the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century. I consider the origin and content of the liturgical rite, the space of action, the specificity of its participants and features of the committing action. The specificity of the action space, the number and composition of its participants, the content associated with the ultimate fate of the world make the action of the Last Judgment the culmination of liturgical celebrations development. In this case the target action is achieved with a minimum of expressive means in combination with a large volume and a rich symbolic content. Revealed peculiarities of the action allow to raise the question of the typological characteristics of the liturgical action, as well as question of the ways and forms of ‘impersonation’ of the Sacred history events in the liturgical action and in divine service in general.

Keywords: liturgy, liturgical action, Last Judgment, sacred space, spatial icon

Krutkin Viktor Leonidovich THE CONCEPT OF "REPRESENTATION" AND THE LIMITS OF ITS APPLICATION IN THE STUDY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIENCE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 2 (24). P. 56-73

Representation is the presentation of one thing in another and through another. The purpose of the article is to consider the applicability of the principle of representation to photographic experience, the article discusses the reasons why images appear in culture. Images are not just a cast or a duplicate of an object. It is not just reproducing the forms of the already visible world, but rather producing forms that are just becoming visible in the world. After a talented draftsman, as well as a photographer, the world grows in terms of the visible. The scope of a person's communicative competence includes the task of not only learning to speak. To get used to light is to learn to see and to learn to be visible, and to use light in this sense is just as important as to use the alphabet. The mirror in culture anticipated photography. The mirror helped make the image that others wanted to see real. In the experience of perception, various activities intersect: bodily, figurative, and symbolic. The symbols are what passes between the subject of communication, they define the horizontal vector of the connection of people. Images are not necessarily involved in exchange and tend to be integral and continuous, just like sacred objects. The visual turn is not that scientists have suddenly "discovered" images for themselves and for others, and are ready to "close" the language world. The turn is the refusal to recognize the "natural" dominance of symbols in the turnover of visual images. Human sensuality was not lucky in the modern era. A person of this era was primarily expected to be able to rationally represent reality for its interpretation. If any formations other than "intelligence" were found on the human side, they had to be reduced to "non-intelligence" with ritual regrets. Emotions, feelings, and affects were identified as natural, but not cultural, entity. The article presents arguments that refute the assumptions that photography is a representative system of a language type. It is shown that judgments about "reading photos" are only metaphors, which means that the function of photography in culture is not limited to the transmission of information. Being as a visual system, photography is primarily addressed to feelings and emotions. The article considers the arguments of proponents of non-representative theory which reject interpretative methodologies. In the non-representative approach, emotions are considered as thinking. Such thinking unfolds in the categories of body (gesture) and affect, this thinking is different from verbal thinking. Thought is placed in action, and action is placed in the world, the cognitive and affective in experience are not in conflict. Representative and non-representative theories come from different styles of thinking, and the choice of this style determines the boundary of the representation principle.

Keywords: image, technogenic media, the perception of photographs, representation, non-representative approach, cognitive, affective

Simsky Andrew Dmitriyevich THE IMAGERY OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL: A HIEROTOPIC APPROACH // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 3 (9). P. 9-24

This paper studies the iconicity of Gothic cathedrals using the hierotopic methodology developed by Alexei Lidov. The genesis of early Gothic church architecture is viewed as a newly emergent type of a sacred space, distinct from that of the preceding Romanesque period. Hierotopy analyzes the creation of sacred spaces in terms of “image-paradigms”, or guiding imagevisions, which both give form to the sacral ensemble as a whole and encapsulate its central meaning. The image-paradigm of Heavenly Jerusalem, as often associated with medieval cathedrals, occupies the central focus of the paper. I examine three principal sources of influence at work in the Gothic re-vision of this paradigmatic iconic image: the development of an urban way of life, the emerging notion of historical progress and the onset of secularization. I argue that the renewed architectural icon of the Holy City epitomized both the external features and the very spirit of the medieval city. Its rhythmic linear structure embodied the march of historical time (which continued to be viewed as sacred history and a way to salvation), and its composite make-up gave shape to the urban motto, “unity in diversity”, a de-facto foundational principle of Western civilization. By focusing in particular on the Gothic hierotopic project of the Saint-Denis cathedral, I discuss the motivations of those championing the new architectural style, and, more broadly, I compare Byzantine and Western visions of iconicity in order to bring to light characteristic features of the Gothic aesthetic.

Keywords: Gothic architecture, Heavenly Jerusalem, hierotopy, iconicity, image-paradigm

Šroma Nataļja I.. RIGA AS A CONTEMPORARY LITERARY TEXT // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 155-169

The idea of Michel Butor, expressed in the essay “The City as a Text”, about the historical correlation of the architectonics of the city with the literary genre dominating in this period allowed the author of the article to read the contemporary Riga text from the genre perspective. The choice of two texts of the Riga group “Orbita” – the almanac “Orbita No. 3” (2001) and the multimedia project “Poetic Map of Riga” (2012–2014) – is motivated by the history of the creative group “Orbita” (Riga poets Sergey Timofeyev, Artūrs Punte, Semyon Khanin / Alexander Zapol, Vladimir Svetlov and Zhorzh Uallik are in its core), their special geo-poetics that turns the Riga locus into the genius loci, and, finally, by their myth-creation that allows to view their texts as the Riga Text. The special architectonics of the almanac “Orbita No. 3”, which is an editing table that assumes the existence of more than three thousand variants of combination of photographs and texts, offers the reader a fundamentally unfinished, unready, developing text. The authors of the almanac assign the same characteristics to a contemporary writer and a contemporary city – these are two correlating motifs in “Orbita No. 3”. Defining Riga only in comparison (to Moscow, St. Petersburg, New York, Shanghai, etc.), the authors of “Orbita” articulate the problem of self-identification. The inability to answer the question of “who am I” gives rise to the only possibility to read your city in the genre of a fragment that fits easily into another – Moscow, St. Petersburg, provincial – in any city text. An art-project “Poetic map of Riga” by “Orbita” was carried out from September 2012 to December 2014 and was timed to the election of Riga as the European Capital of Culture. The result of the creative efforts of the international team from Latvia (the curator of the project and the author of the concept is Artūrs Punte), Estonia, Lithuania, Sweden, Finland, Russia and Great Britain was the virtual map of Riga, which contained the city locuses, represented in poetry (both already created by the time of the project began, and created during its implementation). From the conceptual point of view, the created art object represents the city-Gesamtkunstwerk. The idea of the city as a total work of art has spread to all areas of project activity. It can be seen in the broadest coverage of the city topoi both in the project works and their presentations, as well as in the synthesis of the arts in a variety of genre forms – video and audio poetry, installations and performances, computer graphics and traditional painting, sculpture, music, dance, photography and graffiti. Moreover, in the synthesis of professional and non-professional art, the synthesis of emotionalaesthetic and rational-logical approaches, and in the collective multilingual author. Riga-Gesamtkunstwerk falls out of the present (including the social present): it is endowed with the characteristics of an ideal past and gets its realization only in an ideal, utopian future.

Keywords: city text, Riga text, myth, topos, locus, “Orbita”, genre, fragment, Gesamtkunstwerk, culture project, multimedia genres

Varkhotov Taras Aleksandrovich, Alasania Kira Yuryevna, Bryzgalina Elena Vladimirovna, Gavrilenko Stanislav Mikhaylovich, Ryzhov Adrey Leonidovich, Shkomova Ekaterina Mikhaylovna TECHNO-SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC ETHOS: THE OUTLINES OF ETHICS OF BIOBANKING THROUGH THE EYES OF THE RUSSIAN SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY (BASED ON A SURVEY OF SPECIALISTS IN THE FIELD OF BIOMEDICINE AND RELATED RESEARCH ACTIVITIES) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 61-83

The paper proceeds from the visualization of the positions of scientists working in the field of high-tech biomedicine, and considers the transformations of science and scientific ethos basing on the example of biobanking development. It poses a question of a brand new social character of scientific practices generated by advanced technologies. Being in the process of technification and economic objectification, drastically changing, science is settling in the system of social practices from which it used to be absolutely separated before. In this respect, the paper addresses to biobanking as an example of a techno-scientific object that is gradually obtaining the status of the key component of biomedicine infrastructure and paramedical sciences development. The paper describes the special status of biobanks dealing with human biomaterials and having both biotechnological and biopolitical capacities that trigger an enormous controversy concerning ethical grounds for regulating biobanks as a techno-scientific branch and an emerging social institution. In this context, the paper focuses on the problem of responsibility of the biobank and related projects dealing with using human biomaterials and structuring relations with donors in the process of functioning. The paper emphasizes that the essential novelty of biobanks consists in their techno-scientific status combining social, technological and scientific components, and it naturally spreads upon the scientist’s ethos that cannot be called “classic” any more. So, the paper suggests paying special attention to the problem of the scientist’s responsibility and revision of the science ethos. Basing on the results of the survey conducted among the representatives of Russian biobanking (scientists, whose activities are linked to biobanking, developers and/or users of biobanks in research projects), the paper demonstrates some preliminary data showing the peculiarities of transformations of this kind. Designed by the authors of the paper in terms of the Lomonosov Moscow State University biobank project called “Noah’s Ark” (The National Depository Bank of Living Systems), the survey included both inquiry forms and feedback options that contributed to getting the most relevant answers from the respondents. As a result, the paper shows typical and non-typical attitudes representing the respondent audience views. Considering the survey, the paper concentrates on revealing the professional community attitude towards both the current status and perspectives of biobanking development in Russia. The qualitative research represented in the paper focuses on possible aims, top targets, usage potential, management issues, social risks and ethical regulations of biobanking.

Keywords: scientific ethos, status of scientist, ethics of scientific research, techno-science, biobank, biobanking, sociology of science

Atmanova Yulia Georgievna THE RADIANT FACE OF THE GREAT MUGHAL: THE CONCEPT OF FARR-I IZADI AND ITS VISUAL REPRESENTATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 2 (12). P. 9-29

The article is devoted to problems of interpretation and pictorial manifestation of the mystical concept farr-i izadi which was an integral part of the Mughal ideological programme. The crucial idea of this conception is to proclaim the divine origin of the Great Mughals’ power and their legal right to the heavenly patronage. Theoretical concepts and verbal formulas of farr-i izadi were visually represented in the official Royal portraits in the form of halo that adorned the head of a Mughal ruler. For allegorical portraits of the Mughal emperors were also developed more sophisticated pictorial forms.

Keywords: visual representation, divine light, king’s farr, holiness, halo, mughal painting, Great Mughals

Gagarin Grigory Grigor'evich ORIGIN OF FIVE-DOMED CHURCHES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 1 (7). P. 115-121

Report on the origin of five-domed churches was read in the meeting of the Society of Ancient Literature in St. Petersburg on March 13, 1881. The text of the report was published in the same year by S. Dobrodeev’s printing house. Author of the report – Prince Grigory Gagarin (1810–1893), Russian painter, art restorer, architect, obergofmeyster of court of His Imperial Majesty, the vice-president of the Academy of Arts of the Russian Empire, Major-General. In his project Holy Ascension Cathedral in Alagir (Ossetia, 1851–1853) was built. He painted the Sioni Cathedral of the Dormition in Tbilisi. He is known for another study of this kind, published in 1887: “Collection of Byzantine and ancient ornaments, collected and drawn by Prince G. G. Gagarin”; this book is a collection of ornamental details and scenes typical for the Eastern Christian architecture, painting, miniatures and mosaics. The main text of the report “Origin of five-domed churches” is reproduced below in modern spelling and punctuation without finishing chronological list of Muslim dynasties and without illustrations, occupied the 6 sheets in the original edition. Author of the study explains the origin of the common type of Russian five-domed temple through traditions of Byzantine architecture, revealing the original pattern in ancient Constantinople temple of the Holy Apostles.

Pervushina Nina Andreyevna VISUALIZATION OF SYMBOLS EUTHANASIA IN MODERN MASS MEDIA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 1 (11). P. 66-75

Sociocultural transformations caused by the active development of convergent and biomedical technologies manifest themselves in changes in visual symbolism. The rapidly developing biomedical technologies have resulted to the fact that on the one side maintaining of the vital functions in a human can implemented for quite a long time, on the other side a person acquires a certain power over death and can choose the time, place and method of leaving the life. Because these technologies are connected with convergent technologies, they cover a wide range of spheres of a person life. This is the sociocultural transformation that is so obvious and unprecedented, it is impossible to overlook them. Bioethics become a sociocultural response to the biomedical technologies development. Bioethics is intended for protect the individual. So the changes in the symbolism are able to fix objectives of bioethics, that allows talk about designing of a desired future. In this regard, the reference to visualization of symbols euthanasia in modern mass media allows to achieve its goals in bioethics.

Keywords: biomedical technologies, bioethics, euthanasia, synergetic, attractor, sociocultural transformations

Krylova Vselena O. SCREEN METAANTHROPOLOGY AS A NEW METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO AWARENESS OF CINEMA AND TELEVISION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2014. Issue 2 (2). P. 101-109

For investigation the nature of cinema and television grounded methodological strategy of screen metaanthropology as the way of understanding a screen culture, within its phenomenas considered in ordinary, ultimate and transcendent human being. Screen metaanthropology develops principles of metaanthropology by N. Hamitov, cinemaanthropology of G. Chmil and includes in itself approaches to the screen culture of M. McLuhan and J. Baudrillard and some of the key concepts of V. Frankl and E. Fromm.

Keywords: cinema, television, screen culture, cinemaanthropology, metaanthropology, screen metaanthropology

Sazonova Nataliya Ivanovna THE PLAY OF DANIEL AND THE INTERPRETATION OF SACRED HISTORY IN THE LITURGICAL PRACTICE OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN XVI–XVII CENTURIES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 2 (8). P. 37-52

The article analyzes the interpretation of Sacred history to the rite of Play of Daniel performed in the Russian Orthodox Church in XVI–XVII centuries, examines the origin and content of the liturgical rite, the problem of the boundaries of the sacred and the secular in the Play of Daniel event, the problem of interpretation of the Trinitarian dogma, the particular interpretation of the events of Sacred history. It is concluded that the installation on the existential experience of the Sacred history has led to the mobility of the boundaries of the sacred and the secular in the Play of Daniel action that constituted a special view on Trinitarian doctrine and a special relationship to the events of Sacred history that is relevant to believers not only in Liturgy, but in everyday life. From the 2nd half of the XVII century there was a gradual desacralization of ritual in connection with the General trends of secularization and secularism that leads to the transformation of liturgical rite into a liturgical drama. However, the interpretation of Sacred history relevant to the present day continues to exist within the culture of the Old Believers.

Keywords: the Play of Daniel, Orthodoxy, Trinitarian dogma, spatial icon, sacred, secular, secularization, desacralization

Ardashkin Igor Borisovich ON VISUALIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION: THE ROLE OF SMART TECHNOLOGIES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 12-48

The paper touches upon the issue of knowledge and information visualization, and the epistemological status of this process in terms of progressive development and application of smart technologies. The issue of visualization in general, and the visualization of knowledge in particular, is a controversial question. Due to this reason, there exist a number of approaches to the understanding of visualization mechanisms. However, with all the variety of approaches, their similarity is found in the sense that visualization of knowledge is the subjective need of a person to clarify the content of knowledge and make it meaningful for him/her and others. To visualize knowledge means “to know”, “to recognize”, “to decipher” what it is filled with. Without such a component, cognition or knowledge (as a result of knowledge) does not exist. However, under the conditions of active use of smart technologies, a person faces an ever-increasing amount of information and the improvement of methods for its processing, storage and distribution. There is a need to clarify the issue of the similarity or difference of the nature of visualization of knowledge and information. This problem can be solved by the identification of the nature and characteristics of information and knowledge. During the course of the research, a number of philosophical and scientific concepts are considered. The appeal to the philosophical concepts of Plato and Aristotle allows drawing an analogy regarding the nature of information and knowledge through the diversification of differences in the nature of the world of ideas (eidos) and the world of things. It is stated that the resulting model comes across paradoxical consequences, which consist in the fact that information and knowledge are of different nature: objective and subjective, one of which loses its essence in the attempt to connect them with each other. It turns out that interaction is possible only when the nature of one of the phenomena is transformed into the nature of the other, and this does not allow modeling the process of interaction between knowledge and information in a clear form. A parallel is drawn with modern scientific approaches in the field of natural sciences and computer science (Heisenberg, Shannon, Wiener), which come to similar results in studying the nature of information and knowledge, which see the information basis (model) of the world, similar to the Platonic world of ideas, in mathematical programs. It turns out that knowledge has a subjective nature, a person forms knowledge, and visualization is a natural form and stage of the process of cognition. Information has an objective nature, therefore, acts as an appropriate basis of our world. Visualization in this regard is not a natural form of the functioning of information, in contrast to knowledge, because it exists independently of a person. It becomes possible to visualize information only when it is transformed into knowledge and changes its nature. Smart technologies present the process of inverse knowledge, during the course of which the subject as a source of knowledge forms intentions of the external world in relation to its meanings. Smart technologies, whose main function is that their developers are assigned the function of the subject, direct the cognitive process in the opposite direction: from the subject to the external world, trying to transform knowledge into information (the most vivid example of such a transformation is artificial intelligence). In this case, visualization does not play such a significant role as in knowledge.

Keywords: visualization, knowledge, information, epistemology, idea, thing, smart technologies

Avanesov Sergey Sergeyevich SUBJECT AREA AND EPISTEMIC STRUCTURE OF VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 11-20

Visual Anthropology is a modern dynamic multidisciplinary “industry” of the humanities, based on research experience in the field of ethnography, sociology, history, cultural phenomenology, phenomenology of religion, social psychology, aesthetics and semiotics. The subject of visual anthropology’s research is a set of visual presentations of social and cultural communities and traditions. It is argued that the subject of visual anthropology are all forms of expression of social and cultural meanings, which are available for visual fixation and transmission. Visual images take up a significant segment of the culture as a social-communicative system. Currently, the image has become a leading medium of expression and transmission of important information. “Visual turn” in the culture which associated with the focus from the semantic aspect of the image to its syntax is recorded and described. Human ontology and culture fundamentally transformed in connection with this turn. The question about the “correctness” of the image disappears because of the elimination of its referential parameter. The image is now measured not by fidelity of reality, but on the effectiveness of its impact on the recipient: the priority shifts from its identity to its functionality. Since the entire anthropological reality is concentrated in this sort of images, the attitude to reality becomes technical, manipulative. Visual anthropology is actively formed as an integral research discipline, the focus of which are on visual acts – human action or set of actions (both synchronous and consecutive), relating to the visual image, i.e. is an active, aimed at the production, translation and use of a visual image. The rapid development of visual culture sector determines the relevance of research in visual anthropology and makes its one of the most dynamic areas of contemporary humanities. The author formulates a version of the epistemic structure description of visual anthropology as an integrated multidisciplinary research project.

Keywords: anthropology, culture, visual image, the visual turn

Semenyuk Xenia Anatolevna EXPRESSIONISM VS DADAISM: TWO IMAGES OF THE EXISTENTIAL TRAGEDY OF THE EARLY XX CENTURY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 84-90

2014 is the centenary anniversary of the First world war, The Great War, La Grand guerre. It was a war ruined not only the bodies but also the minds of Europeans. Art is an area of culture that is most keenly anticipates and reflects all civilizational changes. On the events of the First world war it responded through the avant-garde. Among the range of avant-garde trends were two (expressionism and dadaism) that are stronger then others reacted on existential component of the processes. The purpose of this paper is to show two avant-garde experience of the early twentieth century (expressionism and dadaism) as two types of reactions to cultural consciousness on the existential crippling events of war. According to the author the response of these art movements were diametrically opposed – the tragic fight with reality by Expressionism and escapism and denial of reality by Dada.

Keywords: Expressionism, Dadaism, World War I

Dumnova Elnara Mikhaylovna PHILOSOPHY AND ARCHITECTURE IN THE CONTEMPORARY SOCIOCULTURAL SPACE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 4 (6). P. 65-75

The article presents analysis of the problem of interaction and mutual influence of philosophical and architecture worldviews. Theoretical and methodological foundations of the of the paper were laid by semiotic conceptions of U. Eco, Ch. Jenks, existential-phenomenological conceptions of M. Heidegger and P. Virilio as well as works of postmodernist philosophers. The change in perception of space and its reorganization via architectural forms is viewed in the light of sociocultural transformation of the “fluid” modernity. Regularities in development of philosophical knowledge and architecture are revealed by the example of the ideas of postmodern philosophy embodying in new architectural forms, representing various trends of non-linear architecture. In general, postmodernism is viewed as a philosophical and world outlook foundation of the contemporary architecture.

Keywords: philosophical worldview, architectural worldview, space, perception, non-linear architecture, postmodernism, poststructuralism

Kiejzik Lilianna, Orlova Nadezhda Kh.. SEMANTICS OF THE ICON, REVEALED IN FRIENDSHIP: FATHER SERGIUS BULGAKOV AND SISTER IOANNA REITLENGER // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 202-213

The article analyzes the formation of a Russian, Soviet artist Julia Nikolayevna Reitlinger (Sister Ioanna) as a master of icon painting. A key role in this turn of her art classes was played by a meeting with the philosopher Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov (Father Sergius Bulgakov), ordained in Russia in 1918. The depth and content of these relationships have undoubtedly played a huge role in their lives. And, of course, reflected in the creativity of both. Julia Reitlinger believed from the first meeting Sergius was his spiritual master. This meeting determined her path to a religious worldview and to icon. In 1935 she became a nun in the world named Sister Ioanna. It is shown that the spiritual friendship that linked them to the end of their life was expressed in the work of Sister Ioanna as the master of icon painting. The semantics of the icon embodies the idea of duality. For Bulgakov and his spiritual daughter, this idea of duality also expresses the experience of friendship as a deep spiritual union, as a reflection of the image of a friend. The entire creation of the artist Julia Reitlinger contains much of icon semantics. And the friendship with the spiritual father is also full of the riches of the palette that Sister Ioanna uses in her work. We can say that this is a unique event in their life, as a metaphorical miracle-working icon, created together by a philosopher and an artist. Here and metaphysical depth, and the idea of God, and the inverse perspective, in which the place is open to the other. And even the tragedies of their life paths symbolically repeat the depth of sadness that we see in the faces of the saints. At the same time, these are bright faces full of love, faith, hope. We can say that in these bright colors friendship with Fr. S. Bulgakov and the artist’s whole life path are realized and visually manifested.

Keywords: Julia Nikolayevna Reitlinger, Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov, semantics of the icon, friendship, Russian emigration, Orthodoxy

Orlova Nadezhda Kh.., Kobzeva Elena Viktorovna THEMATIC ACCENTS AND SEMIOTIC CONTEXTS IN MODERN ITALIAN CINEMA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 2 (12). P. 109-124

In this article the current situation and future possibilities of a modern Italian cinema are considered. In the term of “modern” we understand the relatively short period from 90th of the XX century till present days. Chronological coordinates are fixed, and we can talk about tendencies of revival of the Italian cinema as an art and as a communicative system which has its own canon and lexicon. The semiotic polyphony of visual imprints of events, persons, objects, and words can be profaned and facilitated taking into account the modern “mass consumer”. Therefore, we are talking about cinema in terms of loss, cheapness of the plan. We think that today we have a case of cinema directors successful works in which semiotics saturation of a cinema language allows speak about them in a high art category. The accent is emphasized on actual thematic preferences of a modern Italian cinema in this article. In each theme we illustrate almost each example of the last decade of the XX century and the beginning of XXI century. In our opinion, now the cinema directors tries to come into contact with the audience, counting on cultural unity with public, mutual knowledge of cultural codes, language of metaphors, symbols, and hints. Considering the major thematic directions of a modern Italian cinema, we can talk about two general tendencies, quite characteristic in general for the world cinematographic. First, it’s an attempt to save all considerable and talented issues that was already accumulated. Secondly, it’s an attempt to show that there are themes that request new approaches and a great courage from the art directors.

Keywords: semiotics of cinema, cultural contexts, Italian cinema, history of cinema, language of cinema, Christian Metz, Yury Lotman

Sirotkina Irina Evgenevna “SAGE SKILL”: IN WHAT SENSE CAN ONE SPEAK OF “BODILY KNOWLEDGE”? // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 2 (24). P. 225-250

The article discusses a number of connected concepts including “practical skill”, “movement skill”, “metis”, “techniques of the body”, and “kinesthetic intelligence”. They share in common the representation of knowledge as often a non-verbal process, by half and large unconscious, based on muscular sensations as much as on brain and consciousness. The feature that they have in common can be termed “bodily knowledge”, an epistemological alternative to techne, or codified practical knowledge formalized in rules and instructions. Muscular feeling, or kinesthesia is at the foundation of bodily knowledge. I.M. Sechenov called it “dark”, or “opaque”, feeling on the grounds that this kind of sensations are rarely verbalized and reflected upon. Yet, inner sensation of the kind cannot be completely opposed to thinking. Using the poet and writer, Varlam Shalamov’s words, one may call them “sage skill”, a particular kind of knowing. Below there is a discussion of various meaning of the expression, “bodily knowledge”.

Keywords: skill, movement skill, metis, techne, techniques of the body, kinesthetic intelligence

Afonasina Anna Sergeevna A “HOUSE PHILOSOPHER”? A NEW INTERPRETATION OF ONE ANCIENT RELIEF // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 2 (4). P. 44-54

Describing Pythagoras’ activities in Croton Iamblichus summarizes the content of his public speeches addressed to young men, to the Thousand who governed the city, as well as children and women of Croton. The earliest evidences about the Pythagoras’ speeches, available to us are found in an Athenian rhetorician and a pupil of Socrates Antisthenes (450–370 BCE), the historians Dicearchus and Timaeus, and Isocrates. In the present paper I consider the content of the Pythagoras’ speeches, preserved by Iamblichus, in more details, in order to suggest a new interpretation of the famous grave relief from the Antikensammlung, Berlin (Sk 1462). The relief, found in an “Olive grove on the road to Eleusis” and dated to the first century BCE, presents an image of a sitting half-naked bearded man with a young man, also half-naked, standing behind his chair, and a group of peoples consisting of a child, an older man and a woman, standing in front of him. Our attention attracts a big and clear image of the letter “Psi” above the scene. The comparison of the content of Pythagoras’ speeches with the picture given on the relief allows us to interpret the image as following: we suggest that the sitting man, undoubtedly a philosopher, could be a Pythagorean or Pythagoras himself; he is attended by his pupil and gives speeches to different groups of peoples, symbolically represented as a young man, a public agent, a woman and a child. Admittedly, the letter “Psi” symbolizes the Pythagorean teaching about psyche (the soul), and the relief itself, contrary to general opinion, was initially designed to adorn a school or a private building rather than a funeral monument. An alternative interpretation suggested is that the sitting figure could be a wandering physician.

Keywords: the images of philosophers, Pythagoras, plastic art, schools in antiquity, Asclepius

Orlova Nadezhda Kh.., Shalagina Elizaveta Anatol'evna PORTRAIT OF WOMENS: REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE ITALIAN CINEMA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 2 (4). P. 82-93

We continue to consider a cinema of Italy in optics of gender researches. In this case standard cliches of “ideal” metaphors of the female are analyzed. Among them: subject of loneliness and victim, images of the seductive star and pure maiden, melancholy for beautiful mother and female courage. It is obvious that the format of article doesn’t allow even to list all considerable movies from the Italian cinema tradition. We dared to stop in several pictures in which a peculiar portrait gallery is presented, from our point of view, representatively.

Keywords: cinema history, Italian cinema, gender researches, standard cliches, metaphors of the female

Melik-Gaykazyan Irina Vigenovna, Melik-Gaykazyan Maria Vigenovna, Tarasenko Vladimir Feliksovich PROJECTIVE CONSULTING ON THE “AXIS OF SYNTACTICS” // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 169-185

From the bioethics point of view, the implementation of a matching model and a match model for management under the conditions of goal competition in “markets without money” (Alvin Roth) is discussed. These conditions actualize the development of semiotic tools for management. The circumstances under which the creation of semiotic management is both wisdom, not embodied in methodological procedures, and craft, understood as a technology for replicating mastery, are clarified. A form combining wisdom and craft for semiotic diagnostics of social innovations is suggested. This form is referred to by the authors as projective consulting. The qualification of the proposed consulting as “projective” is an appeal to the fundamentals of projective geometry. The requirements of these fundamentals lead to a discussion of the axes which set the space of goal symbolizing. A modification of the Lotka-Volterra model receives the interpretation of a match between the competing symbolizations of goals, and allows to set an “axis of syntactics” to fix the pace of the code conversion of goals.

Keywords: bioethics, matching, Lotka-Volterra model modification, projective consulting, “axis of syntactics”

Syrov Vasiliy Nicolaevich ON THE SPECIFIC FEATURES OF MODERN POPULAR CULTURE: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE KNOWN THINGS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 3 (5). P. 97-116

The article describes the typical features of modern popular culture: the dominance of the hyper-real object, simulation, replication, visual representation. Some of the most common critical judgments about the nature and functions of popular culture are analyzed. It is shown that production of simulacra and of hyper-real objects can be connected with the ways of production of popular forms of social and cultural existence rather than with the implementation of escapist attitudes and replacing of reality with its counterfeits. Therefore, it should be assumed that hyper-real objects do not deny the reality as such, but only its forms that have lost their efficiency, cultural significance and value in the eyes of the community or its individual groups. It is shown that the foundation and the source of the typical features of popular culture should be connected with the demand and wish for visual ization. It is argued that it is not due to the primitiveness of the consumer or an escape to the world of illusions, but to the need for the desired fullness of feeling and suitable models of understanding the world, as well as schemes for organizing and managing one’s actions. In these terms, replication should be interpreted as a way of establishing and maintaining stability, balance, completeness of theclaimed cultural and social space.

Keywords: popular culture, mass culture, simulacrum, hyper-reality, replication, visual representation

Melik-Gaykazyan Irina Vigenovna, Melik-Gaykazyan Maria Vigenovna MINERVA AND JANUS: SYMBOLS OF WORSHIP OF VISUAL EFFECTS IN MODERN EDUCATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 172-193

One of the essential features of education is emphasized in the article: a person’s adaptation to the symbolism of social reality. The modern transformation of social reality is accompanied by educational experiments made by leading universities. The combination of social and educational transformations, which is expressed in two experiments, is subjected to semiotic diagnostics. The substantiation of semiotic diagnostics is based on the interpretation of information characteristics as criteria for the self-organization of complex open systems. This substantiation is obtained within the framework of natural philosophy and is overcome based on bioethics, namely, on the interpretation of bioethics as discursive symbolism, in which the approach of interpretation of invariant rules from the perspective of variable and situational personal preferences has been tested. The procedures for semiotic diagnostics include: (1) elucidation of all “symptoms”, that is, the set of signs that are present in the analyzed effect; (2) elucidation of “syndromes”, that is, operators selected to implement the goals of the participants of the analyzed effect; (3) clarification of the goals that form the analyzed effect; (4) juxtaposition of the “anamneses” of the analyzed effects to clarify the precedents (if any) of the studied situation. Procedures show: (1) the semantics of the effect, (2) the syntax of the effect, (3) the pragmatics of the effect, and (4) the “diagnosis” itself. The limits for applying the developed procedures are determined. The requirement to formalize the manifestation of the effect in a four-dimensional space is assigned to the applicability limits. Models of bioethics and paradigms of education exist in such a space. The innovations presented by the Minerva Schools and the project (referred to as Janus in the article) of Stanford University are subjected to semiotic diagnostics. These projects represent an education-travel, exclusive in speed, which connects cultural landscapes with different “climatic” modes of cognitive management. Its purpose is to gain wisdom (rather than knowledge), expressed in acquiring a combination of experience in independent generation of knowledge and experience in the implementation of this knowledge in different socio-cultural contexts. The diagnosis is given in the title of the article.

Keywords: semiotic diagnostics, procedures of semiotic diagnostics, information characteristics, efficiency, self-organization phases, positions of bioethics, visualization technologies in education

Chervonnyy Mikhail Aleksandrovich VISUALIZATION IN TEACHING MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN AND IN TRAINING FUTURE TEACHERS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 235-250

The paper discusses the role and functions of visual thinking within the context of modern education in physics and mathematics. Visual thinking is an intrinsic part of the thinking process of the work of specialists in the fields of exact and natural sciences. In connection with this, with the increase of environment visualization in the learning, professional and personal human activities, and with the growth of information flows and their impact on people, the modern role and possibilities of semiotic resources of mathematics and physics become of considerable relevance. The paper delineates the prospects of visual modeling with the help of mathematical and physical models, and of mental experiment in developing images, reflecting on them and subsequent operating them. On the basis of the analysis of Russian and foreign literature and arguments developed by the author, the paper substantiates the necessity of the development and extension of the theory of the semiotic component of education and its implementation. Semiotics expands the meaning of both theoretical and practical parts of mathematical and natural science education. The paper focuses on the analysis of the development of new approaches to the implementation of the semiotic component of modern education in teaching schoolchildren and in training teachers of mathematical and physical specializations. In teaching schoolchildren, the component is to be implemented by means of their inclusion into educational practices based on real situations appearing in professional activity of specialists working directly in the fields of mathematics, physics and in the spheres of their application. The approach to teachers’ training is based on visualizing their future professional activities in practical resolving problems within selected training situations. In connection with this, the author identified and substantiated the priority directions of the development of the semiotic component in physical and mathematical education. Dwelling on the concepts of visual thinking and on the provided grounding of the necessity of visual modeling in teaching schoolchildren and the relevant teachers’ training, the author identified and considered two basic processes in becoming a teacher (which are also the teacher’s professional activity functions): interiorization and modeling. The paper presents a variant of systematization of the semiotic component of the future physics and mathematics teachers’ competencies in their professional activities. The development of this semiotic component concerns such elements of competencies as knowledge, skills, values and attitudes, prevailing ways of performance. Mastering the competence of educational-professional information visualization by future teachers is to facilitate the increase of the quality of their training, to ensure their ability to perform educational activities in actualized regional practices, including innovative ones, and to design effective learning activities of their students in the visual space.

Keywords: visual thinking, semiotic resources, semiotic component of the teacher’s competency, teaching physics and mathematics, modeling, mental experiment

Avanesov Sergey Sergeyevich TOMSK AS A VISIBLE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2014. Issue 1 (1). P. 97-99

The author of the essay speaks about photography as a way of perception and comprehension of the urban cultural landscape on the example of Tomsk. The author writes about the city as a special communicative space, which has a visual form, contains cultural meanings and gives anthropological effects.

Keywords: photography, city, Tomsk, visual environment

Shcherbinina Nina Garrevna MONUMENTAL SCULPTURE AS A VISUAL DECONSTRUCTION OF “RUSSIA” // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 43-50

The paper deals with the problems of bringing sense into political communication that is performed in semiotic understandable language of monumental sculpture. The core of such a communication is to construct the semantic world that acquired a linguistic form of heroic political myth in our political culture. But J. Derrida’s method allows us to confirm that during the institutionalization of visual images the deconstruction of Russia as a sign takes place. In the paper some examples of this kind of “game” of political symbolics are given. In general, there are two main visual forms of monumental designation of Russia: these are the heroic symbolization of political power and the implementation of “national unity idea”. Both forms demonstrate the deconstruction of the sign “Russia” in text and in context sense. As a consequence visual phenomena have lost namely the communicative properties

Keywords: deconstruction, visual political communication, language of monumental sculpture, semantic world, difference, text, context, sign, Russia.

Khanova Polina Andreevna SPECTRAL PHILOSOPHY: DERRIDA AND DELEUZE ON TONE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 2 (24). P. 39-55

Continental philosophy was often being characterized (most significantly by Badiou) as having a particular relationship with language manifesting in an acute sense of and purposeful usage of style. Yet the matter of tone has rarely been addressed as something significant. One of the rare examples is Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy by Jacques Derrida. Having long dismissed with the separation of “rhetorical decorations” and “conceptual content” Derrida proposes a certain tone as a defining characteristic of philosophy, capable of saving it from a crisis or killing it altogether. Another we encounter in the works of Gilles Deleuze who characterises style and even a concept itself as a “hue” or “colour” of a text (in L’abécédaire) and in relation to the notion of Stimmung (in Logic of Sense) in opposition to the language’s function of designation. The same notion – Stimmung, meaning “attunement’ or “mood’, linked to Verstimmung - “delirium” or “mis-tuning” - appears in Of an Apocalyptic Tone. Is philosophy itself a particular kind of tone or hue of a text? The answers to these questions, as I suggest, differ depending on which of the two approaches - Derrida’s “harmonic” one or Deleuzian “colouristic” one - takes to philosophical conceptual creativity. By analysing and comparing these two approaches this paper suggests a particular relation between tone (both in the sense of sound and of colour) and concept. It also suggests that a certain integration of these two approaches can be achieved through analysis of time (as rhythm and detour), as presented in Quentin Meillassoux’ Subtraction and Contraction.

Keywords: tone, colour, Derrida, Deleuze, Meillassoux, envelope, sound studies, spectralism

Gashenko Anton Evgenyevich PATTERN THEORY IN URBAN ENVIRONMENT FORMATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 3 (21). P. 75-88

Existing methods of representing the integrity and quality of urban spaces in visual perception are faced with the limitations of their use. The theories of visual perception physiology and theories of compositional structures and their harmonic relationships face a many additional conditions that level down their meaning in practice. We declare an alternative approach to analyzing the urban environment and explaining the principles of its visual perception based on the interdisciplinary theory of patterns. The essence of this approach tells the urban environment is historically formed on the basis of spatial formation models, archetypal models, and spatial prototypes. We call these templates as patterns. The concept of a pattern, which is widely used in various fields of science and practice, is adapted and updated within to urban planning in relation. We argue the principle of mosaicity of city area and folding the urban environment by “imprints” of spatial prototypes called urban units. The context of the notion “pattern” is considered: its etymology, history and essence of the pattern phenomenon in the interdisciplinary angle. Types of urban patterns and their basic properties are listed. The of the patternity space levels on which to fix and explain the influence of spatial prototypes are established. The principle mechanism of formation and patterns replication on the city area into the elementary spatial units is revealed on the example of a socialistic city, microdistrict and central blocks of the city. The differences in the mapping principles at different levels for this types of spaces are shown. We note the main problems of research in visual perception of the urban environment on the basis of the theory of patterns. The article uses the methods of theoretical definition of concept based on an interdisciplinary analogy. The study will provide use of the patterns theory to identify and diagnose a “genetic code” of city for its further translation or transformation.

Keywords: pattern, urban morphology, integrity, mosaic, visual perception, city archetype

Pervushina Nina Andreyevna THE LIMITS OF APPLICABILITY FOR VISUAL INFORMATION PERCEPTION’S PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 140-146

The possibility to the limits of applicability for psychological theories of visual information perception are investigated. The perception of visual information is seen as a part of the information process (generation, coding, storage, transfer of information, etc.). The information process interpreted within the context of post-non-classical paradigm (V.S. Stepin). This kind of perception interpretation corresponds to the methodology of information-synergetic approach developed by I.V. Melik-Gaykazyan. Therefore, the main theses and models of informationsynergetic approach are chosen as bases for the classification and the limits of applicability for psychological theories of visual information perception.

Keywords: visual information, the perception of visual information, post-nonclassical paradigm, syner-getic, information-synergetic approach

Robezhnik Liubov V.. LANDMARKS IN THE CONTEMPORARY CITY ENVIRONMENT: ARCHITECTURAL AND DESIGNER’S INTERPRETATION AND PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERSTANDING // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 114-127

The article focuses on questions of orientation in the contemporary city environment. The current paper analyses scientific approaches of landmarks design, dominant forms and emphasis. The article describes the influence of ideological concepts on the creation process of focus places in the city environment. Landmarks are interpreted as considerable components of the urban communicative structure. Contemporary variations of the urban space perception are noted. Basic scientific models of the perception process are analyzed. A city considers as the text in this article. The landmark is correlated with afterimage of the environment which remains in our memory. The author points out that architectural objects are losing the role of unconditioned city landmarks. There were given examples of unarchitectural landmarks in the city environment. Terms “the dendrologycal landmark” and “the superlandmark” are introduced. The modern interpretation of a landmark as a commercial order is revealed. The article describes the possibility of the emergence of coloured landmarks in a city. The necessity of the reciprocal action and the reciprocal influence of color and plastic in the landmark generating is emphasized in the article. Special attention is paid to the role of landmarks in the process of the city scale formation. Design of night landmarks as the alternative to daily landmarks with the help of the art lighting is discussed. The distinction between the speciality of passenger perception and pedestrian perception is emphasized in the article. The article describes peculiarities of the formation and perception of transport hubs in a city. The paper also deals with orientation problems of handicapped people in the city. The analysis allowed us to identify the main factors which influence the landmark generating in the contemporary city.

Keywords: specialities of perception, landmark, architectural environment, architectural composition, dominant form, emphasis

Antimonov Alexandr Konstantinovich, Bormotova Sofya Andreevna, Dunaeva Daria Olegovna VISUAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PHOTOS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 1 (11). P. 104-117

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

Pisarev Alexander Aleksandrovich ON THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE MUSEUMS: WHAT DO EXHIBITS VISUALIZE? (A CASE OF THE HALL OF AFRICAN PEOPLES IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 202-221

The paper is devoted to the visuality of exhibits in science museums. The author begins by briefly outlining the specificity of science museums as places of epistemological accumulation and collective empiricism, and a range of problems associated with the museum representation of working objects of science. Problems are divided into two blocks. A case study of the exposition of the Hall of African Peoples of the American Museum of Natural History shows the multidimensionality of the content that could be broadcast by the exhibits. Firstly, it is shown that the scientific accuracy in the reproduction of nature was the key principle in the creation of the dioramas in the Hall. However, this principle was interpreted by the key participants of the production in different ways. There were two incompatible interpretations. According to one, belonging to the founder of the Hall, taxidermist C.E. Akeley, following nature meant recreating its harmony and perfection. This meant that not specific individuals were represented, but a perfect archetype, under which the animals that best met criteria of perfection were carefully selected. This epistemic orientation is close to what L. Daston and P. Galison called truth-to-nature. The oother interpretation belongs to James Perry Wilson, the leading artist of the exposition at a late stage of its production. He strictly followed the materials accumulated during the African expeditions, meticulously reproducing each landscape. This required the suppression of subjective interpretation in order to give the word to nature itself. Such an orientation is closer to mechanical objectivity. The contradiction between these interpretations, however, was rather virtual since they direct different elements of the dioramas. Moreover, the entire exhibition as a whole implements Akeley’s idea. D. Haraway discovers the dual nature of his idea. Analyzing the entrance group of the museum, the design of the exposition of the Hall of African Peoples, as well as the peculiarities of the dioramas and their creation, she shows that although Akeley sought to reveal the virgin world of Africa, he turned the exposition into a screen for his own moral and political notions. The central motive of these ideas is the resistance to the decline of nature by way of its conservation in the Hall and the resistance to the decadence and the disintegration of social ties in a modern industrial city. At the same time, the selection of animals for dioramas and their representation beyond any scientific neutrality expressed patriarchal and organicist ideas about the structure of the social world. The analysis shows that the expositions and exhibits of science museums require a comprehensive analysis that takes into account not only the representation of scientific content, but also a broader context, including ideas about the role and place of science and scientific knowledge and the moral and political conditions of production and functioning of exhibits.

Keywords: science museum, exhibit, visuality, representation, nature, moral, organicism, epistemic virtue, social philosophy

Gorbuleva Maria Sergeyevna, Pervushina Nina Andreyevna, Tokareva Anna Nikolaevna PROSPECTS OF EDUTAINMENT IN PEDAGOGICAL BIOETHICS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 312-325

Currently, animation technologies have become the leading element of edutainment. Since edutainment is intended more for children’s education, the preference of this technology becomes clear. Entertaining and surprising forms have also found their application in adult education, in particular, in the creation of various resources for “digital” education. Such a spectrum of implementation of edutainment (from the education of children to the education of adults) poses the problem of determining the boundaries of the application of the visualization methods used. The diagnosis of these boundaries has a semiotic essence. Positions and methodological initiatives of pedagogical bioethics are relevant for the diagnosis of these boundaries. These positions and initiatives are dictated by the definition of the relationship between ethical, communicative, and value limits of various loci in the educational space. The limits are established in order to protect individual life orientations of subjects of training and education. The noted circumstances correspond to the directions of modernization in education: the development of modern children with their own view of the world, with their peculiarities of perception and assimilation of new experience, knowledge, and skills. The circumstances also meet the social needs of modern education: the formation of individuals with unique abilities, first of all, the ability for unique reception, acceptance, and interpretation. The development of these abilities and, consequently, the formation of the skills of playing different communicative roles and the independent choice of one’s role becomes a way of adaptation to the conditions of uncertainty in social scenarios, that is, to the conditions of the present and the predicted future, in which the life of a modern person takes place. As an element of edutainment, animation is a universal educational tool maximally adapted to broadcasting game interactive teaching methods. Animation is very important to improve the effectiveness of visual learning. In addition, it is rather difficult to choose a type of visual art that overlaps the thesauri of students, their legal representatives, future teachers, and teachers as much as animation does. The presented accents in the established resonances of edutainment and pedagogical bioethics made it possible to determine the conditions for the development of educational visualization technologies. These conditions are: (1) visualization serves only for clarification, but not for evidence; (2) competing theories should be at the core of development; (3) the design result embodies the consensus of theoretical competition.

Keywords: animated cartoon, animation, reception, acceptance, interpretation

Horujy Sergey Sergeevich CONTEMPLATION AND COMMUNION: TWO PARADIGMS OF SPIRITUAL PRACTICE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 3 (5). P. 11-27

Comparative analysis of the relation of contemplation and communion as two fundamental activities in the field of religious experience is performed in ontological, theological and historico-philosophical aspects. It is shown that the dominance of one or the other of these activities is the key structural characteristics of spiritual practices and traditions. In the prism of this relation, the relation of hesychasm (including hesychast theology of Divine energies by Palamas) and neoplatonism is reconsidered and new arguments demonstrating the radical divergence of these two spiritual schools are brought forth. The phenomenon of contemplation of the Light of Tabor in the higher stages of hesychast practice is interpreted on the basis of its connection with the event of Transfiguration of Christ as presented in the New Testament. This connection stated by hesychasts and recognized by Councils of Orthodox Church makes it possible to characterize hesychast experience as a special kind of contemplation unknown to Hellenic and other traditions of contemplative mysticism: it is not so much contemplation as communion, which represents here a specific modality of personal being, Personality discovered in Christian experience. I call this contemplation the “contemplation in the image and likeness of Transfiguration” and describe it briefly.

Keywords: hesychasm, neoplatonism, communion, contemplation, personality, Transfiguration, Light of Tabor

Krutkin Viktor Leonidovich URBAN LANDSCAPE AS PALIMPSEST OF CULTURE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 27-42

The concept of “landscape” initially develops in geography, it reflects the physical space. Geographical descriptions clearly distinguish mountain peaks, ridges, marshes and plains, but neither the space nor the time of the landscape can be understood separately from social practices. In Modern times, the idea of landscape is associated with the aesthetic experience of landscape painting. The wider poetic and dramatic meaning of the landscape is emphasized in romanticism. In environmental movements, ethical disputes about human responsibility are added to this topic. Globalization reveals the importance of landscape in shaping people’s identity. The effect of the landscape is compared with the influence of ideology. Artifacts are represented by things, surrounded by words and visual events, they form the thingness, symbolic and figurative layers of the landscape. Palimpsest is a phenomenon in the history of writing, when new layers were written on top of the former. The urban landscape is a space of practices in which various artifacts play the roles of media, they give the products of activity an objective form, set the canvas of public space.

Keywords: artifact, cultural geography, landscape, mediation, technologies of objectification, gesture, symbol, image, media

Krasilnikova Ekaterina I.. COMMEMORATION OF THE CONFRONTATION: THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEMORY’S LOCI ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR IN THE CITIES OF SIBERIA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 57-75

The article is aimed to describe the system of memory places existing in the cities of Siberia and being connected with the history of the Civil War (1918– 1922). There is determined the value of monument as an important systemforming component of the urban environment, expressing the value attitude of society, both to the global and local historical past. The importance of monument as a brand of a city and a region is emphasized. The conditions of functioning of the memorial as a memory place, expressing a variety of meanings and associated with the actual historical memory of the local community. The tendency of gradual oblivion of Civil war in Siberia and transformation of memorials in the historical places, which are not connected with live social memory is revealed. The main characteristics of the existing memorial infrastructure in Siberian cities related to the Civil War are established. These ones are a weak connection between the symbolic solution of monuments and the place of events that they perpetuate; separation from the modern scientific reflection on the Civil War in Siberia; fixation of the confrontation of ideological opponents and their principled intransigence; the lack of initiatives aimed at perpetuating the memory of the numerous non-heroic victims of the war. A series of proposals aimed at the transformation of the memorial infrastructure of the Civil War in the cities of Siberia in the context of the memorable date of the 100th anniversary of its inception there is made on behalf of the Novosibirsk community of historians. It is proposed to abandon the memorial symbols that express the reconciliation of opponents, because in fact it did not take place. There is a call to find new memorial forms that do not glorify the complex past, but express the humanistic sense of recognition of the tragedy, which should not be repeated. A new phase of memorialization of the Civil war in Siberia must be associated with the recognition of numerous unheroic victims among the civilian population, which are now forgotten. It is also noted that the actualization of the memory of the Civil war can help to solve the problems of branding of the cities of the region to create positive images of Siberia in the public consciousness of its inhabitants.

Keywords: commemoration, memorialization, politics of memory, monument, consensus, Civil War, cities of Siberia

Sharov Konstantin Konstantin VISUAL SEMIOTICS OF FEMININE FASHION: A CONCISE ANALYSIS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 1 (19). P. 173-195

In the paper, the structure, composition and properties of feminine vestimentary fashion as a visual symbolic system, are studied. It is found out that the system of female fashion cannot be deduced as a simple derivative of the costume design either in synchronic or diachronic (historical) aspect. The methodology used in the work includes techniques and methods of semiotic analysis proposed by R. Barthes, Prince N. Trubetzkoy, L. Hjelmslev, A. Martinet and Ch. Peirce. It is shewn that throughout the history the semiotic potential of fashion has always been unevenly distributed between the two genders. The man has always considered clothing exclusively as an object of use and necessity, while on the basis of the costume design, the woman was able to create a complex visual semiotic system of fashion completely separate and unrelated to the costume design directly. The real clothing, conditioned by its goals and purposes, does not mean anything. Women’s fashion, by contrast, means and represents, encodes and transposes the meanings and denotes and connotes the signifiers. Feminine fashion simulates symbolic and social reality and builds a new world of the imaginary, drawing horizons of appearances and expanding the semantic foundations of the phænomenology of clothing. In general, female fashion system is as complex as the real clothes are simple. Even in the extreme case of nudity, female nakedness transforms to a semiotic system. An approach to the classification of visual signs of women’s fashion is proposed, according to which these signs with respect to mobility can be a) static, b) dynamic and c) static-dynamic. According to the message of meaning aimed at the recipient, the signs can be divided into: i) semantic signs, ii) signs-ciphers, which, in turn, are divided into ii, α) purely cryptographic signs and ii, β) simulacra, and iii) signs-imperatives. It is revealed that the semiotic chains built by women’s fashion can be of four levels: 0) the level of expediency, 1) main denotative level, 2) level of symbolic ritual tradition (level of initial connotation of meanings), 3) level of fashion mythology (an aggregate of many levels of subsequent connotation of meanings).

Keywords: fashion, feminine fashion, vestimentary code, visual vestimentary sign, semiotics of fashion

Poleva Elena Aleksandrovna VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUES IN FORMATION OF TEMPTATION MOTIVE IN VICTOR ASTAFIEV STORY “THE HORSE WITH THE PINK MANE” // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 3 (21). P. 182-196

The article analyses the plot of the story by Victor Astafiev “The Horse with the Pink Mane” in correlation with archetypic (biblical) motive of “temptation of wife”. The temptation motive is included, as a rule, into the subject structure designated in literary criticism as “a contract of a person with a devil”. The plot is formed by several motives. Based on work of Valeri Tyupa, we can distinguish the following: temptation and casting-off of a person from the world order; partnership with infernal helper-wrecker; remorse, the intercession of a sinner and, as consequence, their reunion with the world order. The plot of the story by Victor Astafiev, as a whole, follows this invariant scheme. When analyzing the story, a special attention is given to visualization techniques that make out the temptation motive at different levels of the poetics of the story. First, the spatial organization of the story is interpreted, in which the semantics of an ascension and descent / fall is developed, as well as harmonious coexistence with the world and the loss of “world order”, casting-off from a paradise house. Second, the techniques of the creation of characters’ images are investigated. It is noted, that, first of all, this is an autobiographical story about the childhood created on the basis of the poetics of psychologism. However, the writer uses “double coding”: the image of Sanka is one of a rural hooligan boy but simultaneously refers to the image of the serpent / “demon” (“blood-shot” eyes, a head with bumps, foul language, advances with the “evil spirit” and so forth). In the story by Victor Astafiev, as well as in the Bible story, there is the problem of a free will linked not to the tempter (he doesn’t have to make a choice) but to the tempted one (autobiographical hero Vitka). A symbolical allusion plan is extremely important for understanding of the author’s concept of the work: introducing a private, household history in a biblical context, the writer expresses confidence, that a fatal choice is made by each person, and a small temptation has essential consequences (loss of harmony with the world, despair, destruction of a soul). It is essential that the central character of the story though does not feel the correlation of his life with the biblical story (the author conveys this correlation), draws a conclusion about malignancy of his choice. In the context of the development of a temptation motive in the story, the images of wild strawberry and spice-cake in the form of a horse are interpreted. Fall and purifying remorse of the main character is shown by Victor Astafiev by the episodes of tasting of wild strawberry and “crying out” the strawberry tears accordingly. The image of spice-cake on the form of a horse is polysemantic. The ambivalent semantics of a horse is accented in it: on the one hand, a symbol of liberty, a victory of low passions over spirituality/moral principles, on the other hand, a horse is a solar symbol and the image of Saint George’s helper. The image of a horse serves in the story to the expression of the author’s thought that the same means can be used in harm and in the blessing. Sanka by manipulating Vitka’s desire to receive a spice-cake (associated by him with permissiveness, freedom), inclines him to a temptation, to a deceit; and grandmother Katerina Petrovna gives him a horse with the pink mane not only to punish him by shaming but also loving him. And this grandmother’s gift and forgiveness gives a moral lesson for Vitka and metaphorically marks the victory of “angels” over “demons” in the soul of the small hero of the story. Effective means for “fishing of people” is not an intimidation but forgiveness and love, not a whip but a spice-cake.

Keywords: poetics of the visual, spatial poetics, Victor Astafiev, Siberian literature, the image of a child in literature, temptation motive