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CHIMERAS IN MODERN CULTURE, OR AN EXPERIENCE RESEARCHING OF “TAXIDERMY” OF EXISTENTIAL VALUES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 99-104

Chimera it’s not just one of the specific creature known on the heritage of ancient Greek culture. Today chimeras newly created in the laboratory and in the new forms of culture. Since the main goal of bioethics is to protect the individual, then we must accept and defend different forms of individuality. Bioethics, forcing to change the attitude towards animals, captures the change in the relationship of man to himself, to his life. This sympathy is change feeling of the past, in which some existential values do not seem viable, not relevant for the development of moral reasoning a person’s life. These “dead” values like “stuffed”.

Keywords: chimera, taxidermy, bioethics, symbols, existential values, visual forms, volunteers, volunteering.

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

SYSTEMATIZATION OF THE IMAGES OF ANIMAL WELFARE ACTIVISTS’ GOALS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 103-124

Each cultural period has its own style which represents the main idea and purposes expressed by visual and discourse forms. Thus, it is possible to see how the created symbolism imprints the understanding of a period, “positive” and “negative”, the benefits and right trajectories for life. The paper addresses to bioethics as a cross-disciplinary system which was made to protect and respect life, its identity and autonomy. Thus, changes in symbolism can also reflect the purposes of bioethics for a projection of possible options of the future. We can see how verbal symbolism of bioethics works for the growth of requirements which answer the ideas of social altruism. In the recent decades, not only quantitative, but also high-quality growth of charity foundations, organizations, volunteer associations and societies of help in various spheres (health care, ecology, law, sport, culture, etc.) is observed in Russia and around the world. In this paper, a question is raised about the sphere of protection and help for animals. Versions and areas of work of animal protection movements are considered. The analysis of visual expression, motives, coloristic and symbolical visual expression of the organizations is carried out. Conclusions are drawn on the character and the concept of this activity. The main directions of modern concepts of animal protection are animal welfare, that is control of psychological and physical well-being of animals, and animal rights, whose supporters promote the inadmissibility of separate kinds of traditional use of animals by the person in the economic activity. As a result, several directions of animal protection directly or indirectly connected with the main problems are formed: exploitation of animals, use of animals, control over animals, welfare of animals, rights of animals. In practice, work with problems concerning animals is developing so that there are organizations, volunteer movements, charity foundations, initiative groups working in the following directions: organization of promotion, events, actions for informing and changing the society’s ideas concerning animals, for developing a humane attitude (animal welfare) to them; theoretical, legal work on protection and release of animals (animal rights); work on rescue of animals: endangered species, pets or animals injured in accidents, in the wild nature (animal rescue); organization of animal shelters, support funds, natural parks, work on rehabilitation of animals, return to the habitat (adoption, shelters, rehab). There is also a specialization in animal species: pets or partners (cats, dogs, etc.), farm animals (cows, sheep, etc.), trade types (fur industry of etc.), animals in experiments (mice, rabbits, monkeys, etc.), wild animals (animals from woods, sea fauna, etc.), rare and endangered species (pandas, tigers, etc.). Thus, “animal activists” are the general concept which unites various categories of people who can initially have various understandings of the good, but are united by the purpose of protecting animals from excessive suffering. The concept “animal welfare” is quite a broad concept based on an ethical position of animal activists who are convinced that each animal has advantages, and each animal must be respected and protected. Investigating symbolism and visual designations of animal protection and areas of organizations’ activities, it is possible to allocate some groups, features and subjects. The organizations’ work with different species of animals (pets, animals as partners, farm animals, wild animals, marine animals, etc.) can also be reflected visually. The color scale is quite diverse: it is either all colors of the rainbow, or one or two primary colors (black and white, blue, green, red and their shades, orange and yellow). As a general conclusion, it is possible to speak about the visuality of volunteering. It expresses the spirit, the main directions and concepts of work of volunteer organizations of animal protection: care, assistance, responsibility, humanity, protection, mercy, respect for all living beings. Animal activists work to minimize the infliction of harm to the surrounding nature and animals which people uses or which depend on them, and, whenever possible, they pursue benefit and advantage for the nature.

Keywords: animal welfare, volunteers, images, symbols, visuality, bioethics

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

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

Keywords: bionics, bioethics, bionic prosthesis

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

THE GOOD, BAD GREEN COLOUR // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2023. Issue 1 (35). P. 140-162

The author explores the symbolism of the green colour. Biologists, chemists, botanists, florists, zoologists, artists, and other scientists have standardized, created catalogs, descriptions of colours and shades to eliminate possible errors and facilitate work. Scientists in various fields of knowledge have been interested in this topic for a very long time and comprehensively, ranging from how and in what order people recognized and named colours to assumptions about how a particular colour can affect a person or large groups of people in different circumstances and contexts. The article discusses the various meanings of colour concepts and analyses the language games associated with the visual perception of colour in the variable parameters of the living space. The history (social, cultural, symbolic) of the green colour is multi-layered and contradictory in different periods. The author made an attempt to systematize the symbolism and designate “asymmetry” in the interpretation of the green colour, to draw a conclusion about the prerequisites and consequences of this phenomenon. In Europe, at different times, it could mean luxury, prosperity, or misfortune, deceit. The green colour meant not just different meanings, but opposites: youth, love, life, and decay, poison, illness. In modern times, the green colour has a strong connection with life and prosperity. A person quite often expresses their feelings through the use of colour in one way or another. The analysis of the perception and influence of different colours on human behaviour and emotions is of great importance in psychology and related disciplines. At the moment, the basic principles of the impact of colour in marketing, advertising, positioning and brand policy are quite well studied, formulated and used. Green, like other colours, has an important place in communication and the transfer of meanings at various levels of modern culture. At the moment, there are a large number of studies and various sources of information regarding the origin, classification, history and meaning of colour, which confirms the relevance and interest in the research topic. However, blind spots, ambiguity and inconsistency in some of the findings indicate good opportunities for further work.

Keywords: colour, green colour, colour symbolism, colour psychology, colour of pain

VISUALIZATION OF THE SPECIFICITY OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORLDVIEW: DETECTION OF SEMIOTIC OPTIMUM IN THE SELECTION OF ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL FOR AN OPEN LECTURE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 1 (39). P. 143-166

An explanation of two circumstances precedes the presentation of the main content of this article. The first relates to the fact that, with this article, the journal opens a new “Open Lecture” section. The second reveals both the meaning of the words in the section title and the primary purpose of the research, the first results of which are presented in this article. The phrase “open lecture” is the name of one of the procedures (established in the practice of domestic higher education), which is part of the preliminary selection of educators participating in the competition for a lecturer role. This procedure’s name defines the lecture as open to professional criticism: discussion of the content and its structure, the manner of communication between the lecturer and the audience and the likelihood of students achieving educational goals. The originality of the presented research lies in the fact that, firstly, all these components of the discussion are understood from the standpoint of semiotics, respectively, as semantic, syntactic and pragmatic translations. Secondly, these translations are understood as the interconnection of specific stages of the information process. It opens up the possibility of modelling the structure of the lecture content based on the characteristics of information (value, quantity, effectiveness). Thirdly, the stages of the information process are understood as mechanisms of self-organization, which makes it possible to interpret learning results from the standpoint of stimulating a transition (or lack thereof) of the students from simple reception to acceptance. Fourthly, the very formulation of the research problem is the problem of discovering the semiotic optimum in organizing the learning space. One can emphasize that, in this formulation, the problem within the pedagogical theory and practice framework is posed for the first time since the semiotic essence of education remains unnoticed in pedagogical science. The circumstance for implementing the semiotic optimum, assuming that this optimum is discovered, is the educator’s clear understanding of the student’s goals (spectrum and hierarchy of goals) in the classroom rather than the goals of the educator’s activity. Therefore, the subject of the study was chosen to be the first lecture on a subject that is extremely rarely taught at school in domestic education. Thereby, it is a lecture for which the audience may have minimal prejudice. More precisely, there can only be a premonition of the complexity of the subject, the isolation of its content from real life, which reduces the initial goals of students only to mastering ways to overcome this ‘disaster’ in their curriculum. It states the following need for the educator: (a) to have empathy; (b) maintain a balance between complexity of content and simplicity of explanation. Both necessities boil down to finding a measure, an optimal measure. The article justifies that illustrative material for a lecture should (1) serve not as proof but only as an explanation of the lecture statements. The choice of material should (2) be made from various visualizations that are events in intellectual history and also visually express the multi-layered context of known metaphors. In the case of our research, these are illustrations of works by artists from the Bruegel family; this intends (in addition to the mentioned) to demonstrate the metamorphoses of ideas within one philosophical school or tradition. Illustrations must (3) meet the requirement of end-to-end examples throughout the entire course of lectures. The material we have chosen illustrates the following. The contemplation of the world by a genius leads to the extraction of an essential detail unnoticed by others; expressing this detail in abstract form initiates a dialogue; expressing this detail in a relevant form creates grounds for interpretation among many people, which ultimately shapes the worldview of those people. The fact that there is a known case of erasing details from a painting and that the demonstrated artworks received different titles over time illustrates the change in topical emphases. The number of illustrations should (4) meet the condition: no more than one visual demonstration in a fifteen-minute lecture time interval. The article presents results obtained as of now only empirically. Experience shows that compliance with the above conditions ensures the stability of impressions among students and contributes to their understanding (and not just memorization) of the main messages of the lecture.

Keywords: Peter Bruegel the Elder, information processes, effectiveness, education subjects’s goals

Construction of the semiotic optimum in students’ notes (on the example of an open lecture on ethics in a philosophy course) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 2 (40). P. 120-144

The beginning and end of this article record two literary examples, the meanings of which are conceptually interpretated. The first example – the Unseen University – captures the problem of domestic education caused by ignoring the essence of education. According to the authors, the essence of education is that education systems (of any scale) are self-organizing systems; the mechanisms of their self-organization are information processes (they represent an invariant sequence of stages); each stage of the information process expresses the result of its “work” in a semiotic form. The invariant sequence of stages strictly distributes the characteristics of information by which it is possible to judge the achievement of a “semiotic optimum” (a concept proposed by the authors) in the structure of the educational process at a particular university. These characteristics lead not so much to some kind of pedagogical innovation but rather serve to define the application boundaries for many techniques – those application boundaries that often remain “unseen”. To a first approximation, these characteristics represent the dependences of education results on the interpretation of what the goals of education subjects’ actions express. Therefore, the condition for achieving the semiotic optimum is the effectiveness of managing the goals of the subjects of education. Secondly, the effectiveness condition is the concision of the method of goal achieving. However, in the reality of life, the concision of a method is never a straight line segment connecting the “start” and “finish” points. The characteristics of information are presented in graphical and analytical form, which is not the simplest but the most concise way. A similar method – laconic graphics of conceptual schemes – is chosen to construct a semiotic optimum in lecture notes. The pursuit of this optimum determines the way the lecture itself is prepared. The lecture preparation by an educator is subordinated to the construction of the optimal balance of goals stated in the work program of the discipline, in the curriculum of a particular program, and in the potential range of students’ life aspirations. From the standpoint of the authors’ concept “pedagogical bioethics”, this range of students’ life aspirations should be accepted by the educator in a modality similar to the doctor’s acceptance of the suffering of patients. For this reason, the content of a lecture is not a moralistic sermon but an explanation of the distribution of communicative formats and communicative roles within the scope of a specific idea of morality. The construction of a semiotic optimum in the circumstances of the Unseen University meets the potential of visual semiotics: finding unseen reasons for actual visibility. The second literary example in the article is Hogwarts School since its structure contains a magical instrument – the Sorting Hat – for determining those inclinations and life aspirations of students that students are yet to know how to recognize. The role of the Hat can be played by the optimal relationship between the actual goals of all subjects of education (students and their parents; teachers and developers of training programs; managers of the educational process and potential employers). Hogwarts ghosts serve as a marker of possible errors in recognizing individual goals. With sad irony, the ghosts express possible deviations within the scope of a specific idea of morality. The chosen topic of the lecture most fully corresponds to the research problem: elucidating the potential of the syntax of the goals of the main subjects of education for constructing an optimum in fixing the content of the lecture (translation in synchrony) and the content of the student’s individual work (translation in diachrony), in particular, fixed in students’ notes. It is such notes that can become a textbook created by students for themselves, that is, in awareness of the limits of personal autonomy.

Keywords: Unseen University, Hogwarts ghosts, characteristics of information, communicative formats, pedagogical bioethics

A thought experiment for constructing a semiotic optimum in the classroom (based on the ethics lesson in the philosophy course) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 3 (41). P. 37-57

The article begins with two literary examples from the works of one author. One example is a quote from Harper Lee's first published book. The content of the quote suggests a way to understand another person (“… climb inside of his skin and walk around in it”). The second example is the title of the author”s last book, Go Set a Watchman, which quotes a biblical exhortation. These examples are interpreted in the context of the lesson topic. The actions expressed by the words climb into, walk around, go, and set are emphasized. These emphases and interpretation illustrate the formulation of the research problem: identifying the conditions under which changing the classroom configuration is effective. The search for relevant ways to solve the problem is based on two circumstances. The first is the interpretation of each idea of morality as an impulse that organizes social structure, in particular, the structure of educational space. The paper focuses on such a semiotic result of ethics as the name “classroom” for one of the types of the room layout for holding parliamentary debates. The second is the concept of semiotic diagnostics (Irina Melik-Gaykazyan), which establishes correspondence between self-organization phases, information process stages and forms of the sign. A relevant methodological solution to the declared problem is a conceptual model of information generation that demonstrates the correspondence between the stages of transformation of two different spaces. In the phase space, scenarios of nonlinear dynamics of the system are competing. In another space, these same scenarios compete in the sizes and configuration of the distribution of their supporters (information carriers). Within the framework of a thought experiment, we present a “point” proposed to be interpreted as a locus of a potential “semiotic optimum”. At this point, there is an intersection of phase trajectories, while the intersecting trajectories refer to alternative scenarios. This optimum point creates an illusion of coincidence of positions; however, it is precisely overcoming this illusion that creates the basis for understanding and mastering different positions. We conclude that the first condition (1), under which a change in the configuration in a classroom is effective, is the need to discuss questions leading to alternative but equally correct given answers. Such a necessity arises during discussions on moral issues and when students master the essence of ethical dilemmas. The model demonstrates its sensitivity to a change in positions (a transition from one distribution to another), which reveals the second condition (2): the necessity of training for proactive socialization. The same sensitivity reveals analogies between the change in the configuration in a classroom and the syntax of ethical positions, between the organizational context and discursive strategies in discussions. The validity of this analogy is confirmed when comparing the author results and the results obtained in research fields of “language and learning”, “language and education”. We find that the problem we have set and the solutions we have proposed are pertinent for fulfilling another condition (3): the necessity of gaining experience in recognizing the ethical differences between educational strategies and acquiring professional skills within them. Configuration examples are provided as an illustration. We conclude that the use of the information generation model serves as a basis for thought experiments when designing lessons which educational goals include compliance with the conditions (1–3). The proposed model enables its role of a constructor for “reproducing” – in real classroom time – of intellectual history fragments in which a change of paradigms took place and specific teachings were created as a continuation of those paradigms; as well as enables also a retrospective tracing of shifts in the meanings of morality ideas on stable and unstable trajectories of social history.

Keywords: conceptual model of information generation, semiotic diagnostics, proactive socialization, learning space configuration, educational strategies