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| 151 | The article discusses several epistemological problems of media theory: clarification of meaning and use of the “cult” concept as applied to audiovisual media objects; analytical tools and determinants of television series’ success; and, finally, the ontology of a television series as an object of spectator (consumer) and professional (research) perception. Based on the example of one of the most successful television series of the 21st century, Game of Thrones, the principles of the television series’ arrangement, its relations with its literary prototype, the role of script and structural features are considered. Particular attention is paid to the differences between the audiovisual and literary works, as well as policies of television channels as the most important determinants of television series production. On the basis of the history of HBO and the television adaptation of Game of Thrones, the logic of the evolution of the television series, its capabilities and limitations associated with both economic and internal reasons related to the very form of the television series’ existence are revealed. In the first part of the article, the concept of “cult” is considered using ideas of Umberto Eco and Philippe Le Guern. The elements of the social construction of “cult” are shown, and the need for some inner causes belonging to the object itself, not only to the practices of its use, is claimed. In the second part, the story of HBO is briefly observed for revealing the causes and meaning of its turn to TV serial production. In the third part, Game of Thrones is examined in the context of correlations between the book and the film, the book and the script, the film and critics, the film and viewers, and, most of all, the reality of the film and the reality of viewers. It is shown that, unlike the standard analytical optics used for working with television content, the key factor for the success of Game of Thrones and, at the same time, the failure of its final season is the “World of GoT”: a system of perceptual objects and events accessible to the audience that produce a subjectively significant psycho-emotional response. The existence of the “World of GoT” is provided mainly by the perceptual fabric of audiovisual forms and is relatively independent from the narrative structures, which makes Game of Thrones a cult television series despite the rejection of the final season from critics and fans. Keywords: Game of Thrones, TV series, film theory, media studies, epistemology of media | 612 | |||||
| 152 | The phenomenon of social practices and paternity comprehended in the context of a change of philosophical paradigms are considered. The “traditional” and “absence” fatherhood is examined by the author as a consequence of the binary conceptualization of gender in the classical philosophical discourse. An interpretation of the Universe throughout opposition to each other of the different aspects of reality (spiritual / physical, sensible / sensory, transcendent / immanent, etc.) is closely related with the existence in the cultural space of an ideal of estranged, rational father-man focused on out of family self-realization. Modern transformation of the father image, the appearance of “entrained” paternity trend are considered as a specific cultural implication of overcoming dualistic principle in modern philosophical ontology and anthropology. Display of photographs named “Fatherhood as a measure of a man” is conceptualized in the article as visual proof of overcoming the classic style in philosophy. Keywords: duality, binarity, masculinity, “absent father”, “traditional father”, “involved father”, “father’s revolution” | 611 | |||||
| 153 | In this paper the example of the two brightest artists of Soviet Culture by Mikhail Bulgakov and Andrei Tarkovsky’s analysis of the historical parallels between the strategies of survival in post-revolutionary intellectuals of 1920s–1930s and in the so-called period of thaw 1960s. In the years become popular innovation, the diversity of genres and techniques, personality. However, the official ideology of rigidly delineated boundaries of the “originality”, building a hierarchical vertical Party – Spectator – Author. It is shown that common to both periods was a sense of the dynamics of life, optimism, innovation, talent and amazing confidence in their creative powers. Cultural needs at different times and different places of the problem to the artists, but the relationship with the ideological “zone” are being built all the same laws of hierarchy and censored. It is emphasized that it becomes common place and getting into the lists of the most unreliable of independent, original, refusing to coincide with the mainstream. In this sense, “The Passion of Andrew” to a certain extent repeats the fate of Bulgakov’s plays. With respect to the two artists worked two opposite forces. On the one hand, the query time, pushed them to the surface, was in need of their creative talent and courage. On the other hand, this prevented the passion to notice that the life of Soviet people and all the built-in ideological dogma, going beyond that is dangerous. Revealed that the dominant strategy in a changing ideological situation in relation to the striking individuality, creative initiative, innovation, was the official silence and quiet the ban. Both biographies are manifested in full measure. As a conclusion they say that to Tarkovsky and Bulgakov now apply these definitions, as a legend, a model of responsibility and fidelity to the vocation. Keywords: Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrey Tarkovsky, cinema of 1960, Soviet culture, official ideology, revolution of 1917, censorship | 611 | |||||
| 154 | The paper deals with the deficit of constructive understanding of the phenomenon of “Motherland” in the context of nation building, of resource mobilization of the society. The author tries to methodologically prove the research of “Motherland” phenomenon. The author compares the current situation with the period of the Soviet nation creation of the mid 30s of the last century. Themes is also explored on the example of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and of the Crimea-Russia reunion. The possible charges and different solution scenarios are shown. Keywords: Motherland, Russia, nation, construct, empire, Olympics, Crimea. | 608 | |||||
| 155 | Cultural / culturologic studies (referred in the text as “culturology”) that being developed in Poland and Eastern Europe since 1970s, has the ambition of showing the phenomena or processes hidden behind a directly visible reality – tying them to the symbolic and axiological spheres. However, nowadays increasingly often the discourse based on values, norms, rules and meanings is enriched with issues related to ownership structures, social distinctions and relations of power. The author of the article tries to show this dialectic of various ontological orders on the example of urban studies. In functioning of city infrastructure, the basic role undoubtedly is played by “utilitarian values”. But while looking at the city as a work (something that remains in constant creation), artistic, aesthetic and ethical values seem to be the most important. The first two types (which include, inter alia, modernity, originality, beauty, order, context, chaos, ugliness, devastation), are present both in the process of shaping the urban space itself and in the formation of the styles of life occurring in it – including both everyday practices and bottom-up, spontaneous creative acts. Some of values are individual (happiness, freedom, religiousness anonymity, responsibility, care for the public good), and some are collective (community, equality, democracy, security, multiculturalism, local identity, living standards, nature, ecology). The diverse character of the social fabric of a city means clashing together various interest groups organized not only around the pursuit of power and profit but also convictions, ideologies, beliefs, and tastes. How proves Fereński, urban areas should, therefore, be seen/read as spaces of axiological disputes, strongly related to politics and economic determinants. Keywords: culturology, culture, visual culture, urban space, city, style of life, values, axiology, economy, politics | 607 | |||||
| 156 | As shown by current research in the field of metaindividual psychology of art, emotional response to some action/event can have different forms of realization and manifest not only in the verbal form, pantomime or behavioral strategies, but also in visual art. The analysis given in the paper is an attempt to show the forms of manifestation of the Mughal dynastic pride on a specific empirical material and to explore meanings and value which could be assigned to the material objects of Timurid art and Mughal culture. The pictorial manifestation of dynastic pride of the Great Mughals was predominantly implemented in the field of visual propaganda (state regalia and miniature painting). Keywords: dynastic pride, heirloom, family tree, genealogical seal, dynastic portrait, Great Mughals, Timur, Timurids | 604 | |||||
| 157 | 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 | 604 | |||||
| 158 | The paper suggests some keys to understanding Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late notes on colors. The authors point here at the crucial difference between the internal and external relations. This distinction is comparatively common for the later Wittgenstein and appears one of the main contexts in Wittgenstein’s investigations of colors as research of kinds of logical differences. The authors also consider Wittgenstein’s scattered notes in accordance with the following main contexts: language games and their dependence on perception, the relationship between color concepts and empirical judgments about the color of everyday objects, identity, interdependence between colors as a kind of a logical system and everyday language games. The paper also focuses on various exceptions from our color system (from the cases of color blindness to the natural relativization of color logic within a variety of language games). Finally, the authors consider the problem of meaning in connection with the study of color concepts. Keywords: color, color concepts, identity, logic of colors, language games, internal and external relations | 604 | |||||
| 159 | The present paper deals with the relationship between the visual image and the poetic text in the emblematic message of the hagiographic art of baroque. Specifically two different traditions of the 17th–18th centuries, namely the Cretan and the Russian, were studied by the typical examples of the icon “Μέγας εἶ, Κύριε” (“Great Art Thou, O Lord”) by Ioannis Kornaros and the iconographic type of the “Living cross”. The comparative analyses of the function of the poetic text – the homonymous prayer of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem and the religious poem of Silvestre Medvedev – on these icons revealed that in spite of the obvious differences there are certain common features which correspond to the general trends of the changing role of the icons in the European spiritual and social context. Keywords: talking icons, emblem, Baroque, Cretan school, Ioannis Kornaros, Silvestre Medvedev, Living Cross, St. Sophronius of Jerusalem | 603 | |||||
| 160 | This article is devoted to a primary analysis of the material obtained as a result of the study of the cultural space in Western Siberia and Lower Silesia in 2017. The study was carried out within the framework of the international project “Visual organization of urban space: preservation, translation, historical and cultural perspective” (Tomsk, Wroclaw). The task of this project: search and description of visual invariants of various cultural areas (in particular, Russian and Polish cultures) in the context of defining the forms of construction cultural, national, civil, religious, professional and other identities through means of visual presentation and communication, along the lines of a multidisciplinary analysis of cross-cultural processes. The author confirms the thesis about the presence of Jerusalem allusions (metaphors, citations) in the space of modern urban texts, using the example of Tomsk and Wroclaw. The correlation of the allegorical and literal in the construction of architectural allusions in Western Siberia and Lower Silesia is shown. The difference between the spatial images of historic Jerusalem and the Heavenly City is considered. The role of the sacred city center in the organization of the city space has been revealed. The role of the monastery court as icons of Heavenly Jerusalem (the new Eden) is substantiated. The semantic and structural connection between the Calvary and the mysteries of the Passion of the Lord is described on the example of the monastery ensemble of the Baroque period. Keywords: city, urban space, sacred topic, Tomsk, Wroclaw, Jerusalem, architectural allusion, cloister, calvary, mystery of Passion | 603 | |||||
| 161 | The article describes the situation of changing perceptions of the human habitat by the example of city images and city plans. It is shown that the image of an ideal utopia city is inferior to the image of the city as a way of life and habitat. As a result, there is a transition from attempts to accurately image and seize the city and space in maps and schemes that metrically preserve the image object on a scale, to describing the city and space in the idea of the cartoid. The cardoid here is understood as a sign-symbolic image of the mode of action when a person masters space. The author shows that the cartoid as an idea and method naturally arose in the situation of the need to describe a person’s navigation, if necessary, to routing them their progress and mastering the space. The article gives examples of maps and cartoids of specific cities and territories. Keywords: city, city image, city anthropology, city space, map, cartoid, navigation, region | 599 | |||||
| 162 | The space of social existence is considered as a “social reality, projected on its territory”. The spatial dimension of relations between society and government is understood as the phenomenon of the existence of special power spaces – contamination of architecture, landscape and regulating power relations. It shows the existence of predictors of the architecture and layout of these spaces of power, the semantics of which is a continuous differentiated, transformed and receives new historical, cultural, regional and individual psychological coloring. Keywords: architectural environment, space of power, predictors, semantics | 592 | |||||
| 163 | In article author investigates street art in some of Siberia cities as a ethically motivated visual integrations into common space. From historical point of view the author presents beginning of this phenomena in world specially in Russia. Signatures, graffiti, street art are seen as a manifestation of values parted in three categories: individual, involved, patterns recognized global. Street art in Siberia cities want to change social, political and what most important aksio-semiotic shape of city space. Article is way to propose research about Street Art and paintings on the walls as a visual texts on example of Siberian cities. How this visual phenomena’s exist in the city space in the East part of Russia. How do they relate to the city space? Do they reproduce the urban space? Do they visually build an image of urban space or create the illusion of a uniqueness of place? Where are they created and for what reasons? Street art can be individual experience, involved activity, political and social, global and local. Graffiti can be seen as a memorials or form to communicate function of place even hidden problems of society; as manifestation of values and form of interaction through symbols (the way they present themselves and possible interpretation); as the fight for values and beliefs (about the world) in Siberia urban space. For author cities like Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Novokuznetsk, Irkutsk, Gorno-Altaisk can be seen through street art as a desire of citizens for egalitarian changes: the accessibility of art, the aesthetization of buildings, political discourse, creating values / identities based on the place of residence. The key to their study is the way in which values are presented in them, the social and economic context of their occurrence, the political form of struggle by them, local activism and the construction / expression of a neighborhood identity. Street art is not only thinking about aesthetization of the Siberian cities space is also increasingly becoming an expression and a way to realize values or way to organize public space by common people. Keywords: axio-semiotic, street art, urban space, Siberia, culture | 592 | |||||
| 164 | The semiotic analysis of local urban space on the example of the library “The Green Lamp” in Tomsk is made in this article. Motivation, goals, as well as the history of the visual construction process and transformation of a specific communicative locus on a big city scale are considered here. Such characteristics of the social space of the library-cafe, as dynamism, structural variability, creative style, orientation to personal comfort, cultural environment as a place for organizing events are shown in this article. This example allows to see how the personal initiative of the citizens can become the driving force of the real transformation of the urban space. This initiative gives life dynamics to the space of the city, forms comfort zones, constructs stylistically unique communicative loci in which a big city approaches the human format. Keywords: urban space, visual construction, microurbanism, communication, library-cafe, Tomsk | 586 | |||||
| 165 | The article is devoted to one of the key problems of urban anthropology and urbanism, related to the theme of human dimensionality of the city. The author analyzes the concept of “human dimensionality”, discusses the introduction of this concept into science by the methodologist and philosopher of science M. K. Petrov. On the example of the genesis of the ancient city, the article analyzes three classes of criteria for the city’s human dimensionality: the city from the point of view of the sacred beginning that generates the phenomenon of the city; the city in terms of social measure and the birth of the ancient polis as a meeting of citizens (citizenship and the voice of a citizen as a measure of the city); and the city from the point of view of the physical, bodily space of the settling of the city. The article describes the phenomenon of the genesis of the city in the categories of urban planning and its first experience – Hippodamus’ City. In connection with the physical criterion of dimensionality, examples and practices of urban space exploration are discussed using various measures and dimensions related to the human body, starting with the ancient polis and ending with the modern experience of reviving the idea of the physicality of the city and such a character of city life as a pedestrian. The article discusses such measures as body, palm, span, foot, stage, step. The problem of the connection between the idea of human dimensionality and the idea of the dimensionality of being (by the example of Heidegger’s analysis of the Protagoras thesis about man as the measure of all things) is discussed. In conclusion, the author discusses the problem of the loss of human dimensionality in modern megacities and attempts to revive the dimensionality of a person in the city through a pedestrian figure (research and practice in urban pedestrian anthropology). Keywords: measure, human dimensionality, city, city measure, urban anthropology, antique polis, Hippodamus’ City | 584 | |||||
| 166 | 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 | 584 | |||||
| 167 | This article presents the research of features of hierotopy in apocalypses of medieval Russia. The concept of hierotopy was proposed by Alexei Lidov in 2002. This term means both a process of creation of sacred spaces (understood as a special kind of creativity) and a field of research, devoted to this process and related phenomena. Hierotopy initially was designed to study complex phenomena of iconography, temple architecture and religion. In order to describe previously obscure features and phenomena such terms as ‘spatial icons’ and ‘image-paradigms’ were designed. The term ‘spatial icon’ is understood as a dynamic sacred space created through religious ceremony, when a breathing environment of conducted ritual (with all its elements, participants and surroundings) is seen as a one complex spatial image. The most prominent examples of spatial icons are the ritual with Hoedegetria of Constantinople and medieval Russian ritual of “Donkey walk”. Imageparadigm is an initial sacred space ordered by God himself which is later recreated in other sacred spaces. We can see this phenomenon in attempts to recreate the image of the Holy Land in other places (like in the New Jerusalem monastery in Russia) or in a vision of byzantine temples seen as images of Heavenly Jerusalem. Later, hierotopical studies turned to investigate literature. However these studies rarely covered basic hierotopical phenomena such as image-paradigms and spatial icons. This article explores the image-paradigm of Heavenly Temple and two types of spatial icons. Image-paradigm of Heavenly Temple can be found in the Apocalypse of Abraham, Slavonic book of Enoch and in the Ascension of Isaiah. This image was initially designed in the First book of Enoch in which it echoes the structure of the Jerusalem Temple and the wilderness tabernacle, but also demonstrates its own specific characteristics which then are recreated in the images of Heavenly Temple in the apocalypses mentioned above. Spatial icons of deesis (“Descent of the Virgin into Hell”, “The apocalypse of Paul”) and heavenly liturgy (“The Ascension of Isaiah”, “Slavonic book of Enoch”) are different in their relation to Heavenly Temple. Angelic liturgy is always located in Heavenly Temple and is a remarkable part of this image. Deesis on the other hand isn’t linked to any particular location. They are also different in their relation to narrative as a whole and have a different function in its development. The expansion of deesis is consistent and gradual, deterministic in a turning of its stages. Development of this type of spatial icon sets up a culmination for a storyline and drives the plot itself (the wicked punished in hell receive mercy as a consequence of deesis’ development). Angelic liturgy, on the contrary, moves along a storyline, its culmination is more of a marker of a storyline’s culmination than the means of achieving it. Keywords: hierotopy, spatial icon, image-paradigm, deesis, angelic liturgy, Heavenly Temple, medieval Russian apocalypses | 581 | |||||
| 168 | 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 | 575 | |||||
| 169 | The paper studies the phenomenon of a non-personal biography, a biography of a cultural object, based on the works of Peter Ackroyd, a modern British writer who became well-knows at the edge of 20–21 centuries with his biographical books about famous Britishers as well as meta-fictional historical novels. The work presents a vision of the biography of the city as a genre that provides for the author and the reader a way for personification of comprehension and experiencing of a national history and culture as an event of private life, thus transforming a historical fact into a piece of personal biography. Keywords: image of the city, British literature, city narrative, national identity, memory, postmodern literature, cultural code | 575 | |||||
| 170 | Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge where the most significant scientific breakthroughs take place in the 21st century. They are significant both for the development of convergent technologies and for the dissemination of interdisciplinary and integrative trends in research that connect areas previously thought of as completely incompatible, including natural sciences and the humanities. The author shows that in cognitive science, despite the highly theorized and narrowly special focus of many its areas of research, visual images are quite often and productively used. Some of them, such as a cognitive map, cognitive niche, cognitive landscape, cognitive field that echoes the concept of a dynamic field in Gestalt psychology, the wandering around the field of meanings, a search tree are discussed in the article. A special role is also played by mental imagery, which forms a basis for the work of productive imagination and creative thinking, studied in cognitive psychology. It is substantiated in the article that such visualization tools are essential not only as initial “scaffolding” for the development of theoretical concepts, but also for clarifying the nuances of the meaning of complex scientific constructions. In addition, in today’s cognitive science, the phenomenological approach and the so-called “first-person methodology” are gaining popularity, taking into account that the meaning of theoretical constructions begins to live and work, being unpacked in the lifeworld of each particular personality. Thus, the inseparability of figurative visual knowledge and abstract verbal knowledge gets additional justification through the understanding of the inseparability of the ordinary and scientific knowledge. Keywords: visual thinking, visual images, imagination, cognitive map, cognitive niche, cognitive landscape, meaning, phenomenal consciousness. | 569 | |||||
| 171 | The article analyzes the musical and carnival space of Old Tiflis since late 19th up to early 20th century. Mainly visual and artistic texts of Armenian artists and writers – Vano Khojabekyan, Agasi Ayvazyan, Vagharshak Elibekyan served as an empirical material for this article. In the course of the reasoning, the following thesis is substantiated: Old Tiflis was a multicultural, musical and carnival city, in which a dance language was formed (Kintauri, Bagdaduri). Old Tiflis was a ‘hybrid’ space in which ritual (sacral) and profane dances (kintauri, baghdaduri, lezginka, etc.) could be seen simultaneously. The article briefly presents the basic approaches to the analysis of the Tiflis text: the Tiflis text of Armenian literature, the Tiflis text of Georgian literature, the Caucasian text of Russian literature. The author explains the connotative difference between the designation of the toponym Tbilisi versus Tiflis, which is key in the discourse “Tiflis text of Armenian literature”. Old Tiflis was a multinational city in which musical instruments of the West (piano, violin, mandolin) and the East (drum, zurna, duduk, kamancha, etc.) ‘met’ and ‘lived’ together. Social ‘top’, the elite was oriented towards Western music and invested in teaching their children to play the violin, piano, etc., while the social ‘bottom’ (kinto, carachocheli) turned to the Eastern, Caucasian instruments and melodies. At this very juncture the language of social ‘bottom’ dances (kintauri, baghdaduri) was formed. The article presents also the functions of the Eastern instruments and the scope of their use. Duduk and zurna were the most ‘omnivorous’, used during weddings, revels, christenings, commemorations, and in oriental baths during rest and parties. The main ‘heroes’ of Old Tiflis were mainly the representatives of the social ‘bottom – kinto and carachocheli. The article also describes the inner world of kinto, his lifestyle, the psychological state of his soul and appearance. The material of Vano Khodjabekyan’s graphic drawings (“Clown in Ortachali”, “Drunk Bear”, “Cout in Boat at Kura”), Vagharshak Elibekyan’s “Meeting with the writer Raffi”, “Zurnachi” and paintings introduces the language of clothing and the spirit of revels. The Old Tiflis dance language is so vital and lively that it was retransmitted in Soviet cinematography (G. Danelia “Don’t Cry”, “Mimino”) and at the present stage, is presented by different dance groups all over the world (for example, Ramishvili & Sukhishvili). In addition to the profane dances, the article also presents a ritual (sacral) dance, when the groom dances on the burial stone of his deceased father (Khojabekyan “The dance of the groom on the burial stone of the deceased father and circular dance with unmarried friends”) is an echo of the archaic, mythologized thinking. The ritual dance shines through Armenian, Georgian and Caucasian dances. Chronologically this dance was documented for the first time in letters of an Armenian scholar and cleric Grigor Magister (XI century), but the last manifestation of such ritual dance performed by Armenian groom is seen only in graphic drawings of Khojabekyan on Old Tiflis whereas in other Western and Eastern regions it wasn’t perceived. An empirical analysis of the primary texts showed that Old Tiflis being a carnival and musical space where different values, customs and traditions of various peoples were ‘cooked’, had its urban flavor, the language of dances, feasts, and revels. Old Tiflis of the late XIX and early XX century still remained at the junction of the national, mythical and European mixture. Old Tiflis was an interesting example of cultural ‘interspace’. Keywords: kinto, kintauri, baghdaduri, lezginka, sacral dance, ceremonial dance, dance of the groom on the burial stone, zurna, duduk, barrel organ (organ), reveling, visual semiotics, microhistory, urban anthropology, semiotics of the city | 568 | |||||
| 172 | It’s about blurring the boundaries of documentary and artistic photography. The difference of time, which we experience today, is that the documentation often serves as documentation of the same document, or otherwise, it works with the image of the document. The symptoms that we find in all spheres of science, politics, economics. In the Humanities the Sciences appear more related with the dimension of the images subjects: visual anthropology, visual sociology, visual ecology. Symptomatic in this context is the attempt of historians of philosophy to work with images of ancient philosophers, the interest in visualizing the categories of education, to everyday photos. Keywords: vernissage, visual anthropology, visual ecology, documentation, expression body, gesture, portrait | 564 | |||||
| 173 | 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 | 562 | |||||
| 174 | The “philosophical horizon” of modern European science was not formed exclusively by the efforts of the scientific community. The ground for the scientific revolution of the modern era was also prepared by the art of Alberti, Leonardo and other masters of the Renaissance. The Renaissance art theory and practice testify to the visual elaboration of the philosophical and conceptual guidelines which were later to become the basis of modern European science. This also includes such principles as geometrization of nature and science, overcoming of the Aristotelian and scholastic gap between physics and mathematics, between the natural and the artificial, between the superlunar and sublunar worlds. Renaissance artists fitted the celestial and the terrestrial into geometric shapes such as pyramids, triangles, etc. The theory and practice of Renaissance painting recognized geometry as a universal law valid both for the superlunar and sublunar worlds. The mathematical principles of nature were developed by Renaissance masters in the form of the theory of perspective and the theory of proportions. It should be noted that the Renaissance mathematical perspective did not derive from comprehending phenomena, but was brought into the real world as a compositional basis. This implies that Renaissance artists started from the a priori assumption of the mathematical order of nature and then tried to confirm this thesis at the visual level through representation of the corporeal world using the mathematical law of perspective and the theory of proportions. Renaissance artists realized that things made with men’s hands and those created by God are to the same extent subject to the same natural laws. The drawings of Leonardo can be interpreted as the visualization of engineering thinking which extends not only to mechanisms but also to natural objects and the human body structure. Leonardo’s anatomical studies can be regarded as engineering drawings which visually demonstrate the structure of the represented object. In this regard, the drawings of Leonardo foreshadowed the formulation of the mechanistic principle which turned to be one of the most important ones in modern European science, and which asserted the absence of a fundamental difference between the natural and the mechanical. The example of Renaissance painting demonstrates that fundamental philosophical conceptions as well as ideological shifts, transition to new fundamental ideas concerning space, time and the place of man in the universe, are simultaneously expressed in more than one way. In particular, they can be represented in visual images, in a sign-and-symbol form, in scientific conceptions, in philosophy, literature and art of a certain period. There are constant exchanges between different cultural practices as, for example, between philosophy, science and art: communication, exchange of information, translation from a sign and symbol language into a figurative one and vice versa, visualization of non-image information. Keywords: visual, modern European science, Renaissance painting, theory of perspective, theory of proportions | 562 | |||||
| 175 | The contemporary art world – namely, the current artistic and cultural situation, which emerged at the beginning of the Twentieth century – has led to a process of profound rethinking of the relationship between art and law. This relationship is inherent in the very concept of art and is as old as the history of the arts. In particular, the relationship between art and law, as it has structured itself from the beginning of the Twentieth century, has two vital functions – one of which is intrinsic to the concept of art, the other being extrinsic – the understanding of which is essential to investigate the contemporary art world. Keywords: Art, Ontology, Embodied Meanings, Normativity | 561 | |||||
| 176 | This article discusses some aspects of constructing the cinema novel in Polish cinematography at the period of its formation, that is the late 1950s and the early 1960s. The main task is to show the specificity of cinema novel from the different points of view, as from the author and from the character, taking into account the fact that the form of cinema novel has been transforming, modifying its internal principles. The author detects the specificity of the character’s image, that exists as an independent unit, however, is reflected in the other characters. It is proved that this way to showing film material is necessary for reveal diversity and ambiguity of seemingly the same situations and phenomena. Keywords: new film reality, cinematography of life, prevailing theme, semantic nuance | 558 | |||||
| 177 | 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 | 558 | |||||
| 178 | People are compelled to change their approach to education because of the current trends: the uncertainty in the world of the future occupations, the idea of education throughout life, education for the purpose of personal growth. These trends allow one to navigate in a rapidly changing world and to easily learn a new specialization; they force a person to receive a more “extensive” education, on the one hand, and a more “compact” education, on the other. In any case, in a short period of time, a person needs to learn a large amount of information, to acquire new skills. It is necessary to use time effectively. Therefore, it becomes very important to increase the effectiveness of education, the methods of transmission and perception of information that must be learned. All this together makes it appropriate to use educational technologies related to personality development and students’ active inclusion in the educational process. The complex of these factors requires the creation of study kits that would competently organize visual education on the basis of neuroscience research. Semiotic diagnostics of these kits shows how to correctly combine and use them without harm to the individual, taking into account the physiological, cultural characteristics, and personal needs. For effective training, it is necessary to take into account the individual characteristics of the brain, the individual needs of a person, especially the transmission and perception of information. The purposeful organization of the educational process is the embodiment of knowledge about how the brain learns: writing lecture notes by hand, the need for periodic repetition of information. Modern man’s overload with information makes them return to reading paper books, writing lecture notes on paper, using markers and studying in a library for successful effective learning. Visual information is remembered better. Much of the information in the learning process is represented visually, at least in the form of lecture notes. Thus, it is relevant to determine the optimal ratio in the use of types of visual educational aids and study kits. Keywords: semiotics diagnostics, neuroscience, neuropedagogy, synergetics, perception of visual information, education | 557 | |||||
| 179 | The principles of visualization of the Armenian epos in urban space are analyzed in the present article by example of Armenian sculptor Artashes Hovsepyan. Thesis of this article is: Armenian epos in the Soviet and post-Soviet period in the collective consciousness is active, and its visualization and presentation in the ‘high’ art is an occasion for reflection and activation of Armenian epos reception in the Armenian socio-cultural world. The main methodological premise of understanding of the material become semiotic ideas of Charles Sanders Pierce and discourse analysis. The analysis of empirical data has shown that the bas-reliefs by Artashes Hovsepyan, dedicated to the Armenian epos, can be seen not only in the public, social and cultural space of the city, but also in the museum (metro station ‘David of Sasun’, Brandy Factory, Cafesjian Art Center), i.e. in the open space for local residents and tourists. Comparative-typological analysis of the primary text (epos) and visualization (bas-relief, cartoon, graphics) show that every form of art ‘speaks’ with his language. The multiplication of epic text is ‘an extension’ of perception Armenian epos in the Armenian society, which in turn helps to keep the epic text in the light field of the recipient consciousness. Factual material ‘high’ art has shown that it was taken only from the second (Mher the Elder), the third (David of Sasun) and fourth (Mher Junior) epic branches. But, of course, the third branch has been and remains the most favorite branch with David of Sasun as the most beloved hero of the collective memory. Keywords: epic visualization, urban space, public space, collective memory, Soviet and post-Soviet era, epos, the Armenian epos, postfolklor, semiotic translation, interpretation of the epos, Artashes Hovsepyan, bas-relief | 556 | |||||
| 180 | In seventeenth and eighteenth centuries monastic complexes had reliable fortifications, which were developed according to the newest requisites of the times. Most of the monasteries lost their ecclesiastical, religional, scientifical, cultural, and artistic roles during the twentieth century; this became the reason of their decline and gradual decay. Today, many monasteries gradually restore their original roles of spiritual havens. However, the fortifications which are essential parts of their architectural image are not protected and are in decay. In this article we present monasteries of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which were founded both inside city walls and included in the city fortification systems, and outside cities and constructed on highlands or lowlands. As a result of the analysis it was possible do discern that the monasteries located on plains or lowlands had regular fortifications, while the ones on highlands had irregular fortifications. In some monastic complexes due to development of architectural and engineering thought, and also due to political and administrative factors, developed fortification systems arose. Keywords: fortified monasteries, regular and irregular fortifications, monastic orders, developed fortifications | 555 | |||||
| 181 | The article reveals the principal stylistic and semantic features of screen adaptation of Russian classics by the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. The emphasis is on the transfer of texts Leskov and Dostoevsky on screen. Andrzej Wajda analyzes the nature of female and male love, as well as the aspect of obsession with the idea. Using the devices of Kabuki theater in adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel ‘Idiot’, Andrzej Wajda expands the semantic field of death’s and love’s aesthetics. The specificity of the Slavic soul is attained through the combination of different cultural stratums. Keywords: screen adaptation, Andrzej Wajda, Kabuki theater, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Russian classical literature, Slavic soul, obsession with the idea, destructive power of love | 555 | |||||
| 182 | Visual semiotics studies a variety of fields of human culture and human behavior. In particular, various forms of social self-identification and presentation of a visual nature are directly related to the field of its study. We propose to expand this list to include forms of social clan self-presentation, which is quite obvious, but also the visual component of the intellectual practice. In our case – the ancient. The modern metaphor of the polis as a “city of speeches” is quite applicable to the ancient world. But we must add to it the equally important metaphor of the “city of viewing”. The visual curiosity of the ancient Greek was no less than the auditory curiosity. And philosophers responded to this need. The creators of the most radical visual version of philosophical behavior in ancient Greece were cynics. It was strange not only from the point of view of food austerity and eccentric manners (attributed to the Pythagoreans). It contradicted other visual examples of ancient intellectuals. The provocative behavior of cynics can be called “visual rhetoric”. In contrast to the rhetoric of Aristotle, which was aimed at preserving public order and decency, without which a policy is impossible as “communication for the sake of maximum good”, the cynics rejected public decency. They did it in a clearly visible way. Their rhetoric was illustrative. As one of her tools, they used their own body, which became a vivid expression of freedom and independence from public control. The description of cynical visual arguments allows them to be classified into the following topics. 1. Overcoming myself: Victory over myself means deliverance from the power of a social type with which a person identifies himself. In order to cope with the mandatory power of symbolic communications, it is necessary to train in oneself the “power of Socrates”: the ability to pay no attention to anything other than virtue. The cynic asceticism was intended to prevent the transformation of the satisfaction of needs into a subject of passionate lust. This was expressed in their economical minimization and in a clear demonstration of how to get rid of lust. Visual clarity freed from the fear of obsceneness. 2. Argumentation: Cynics use elements of everyday food culture as cheese, beans, and fish as illustrative tools for refuting. They actively exploit the metaphorical connotations of these objects in ancient folklore and literature. 3. Counter-Movement: Cynics visually demonstrate that they are “swimming against the stream”. They are convinced that this is the only correct way of behavior. 4. Search for a person: The famous anecdote about «the Lamp of Diogenes » testifies to the famous Heraclites’ «argument from a dream». 5. Attitude towards death: The attitude of Diogenes to his own death shows that in this case “visual decorum” must be rejected too. A dead body is more worthy of a “barbarous” (most likely Zoroastrian) burial, but not a Hellenic one. Cynics’ visual arguments were related to Antisthenes’s teaching of the correct name, which should have a one-to-one correspondence with the subject. The paradoxical behavior of the cynics was aimed at changing the focus of our view on the real. It can be said that cynic behavior is part of their “name correction” strategy. Keywords: Visual anthropology and semiotics, cynicism, Antisthenes, Diogenes the Cynic, chreia | 554 | |||||
| 183 | 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 | 553 | |||||
| 184 | 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 | 550 | |||||
| 185 | The paper deals with Arkhangelsk town-planning features in the historical and cultural perspective from the end of the 16th to the beginning of the 21st century. The Pomorian city is represented as the condensed essence of a holistic ideological and semantic program which peculiar to the Russian medieval city. Arkhangelsk is developing in the tideway of the general Russian architectural tradition and of its creative interpretation of various styles techniques and motifs: from baroque to modern. The primary focus is on the eclecticism and art nouveau periods. In the eclecticism era the Novgorod, Moscow, Yaroslavl and especially northern folk architecture traditions became a significant basis for them. At the beginning of the 20th century the eclecticism yielded precedence to the Arkhangelsk art nouveau, manifested here in the pre-revolutionary period. It was focused mainly on a strictly rationalistic and functional direction. The trading houses, built according to designs of S. A. Pets with their distinctive architecture and the Belyaevsky’s wooden house with the filled with decor street façade, that combines carved paneling and open log became exceptions. The techniques of Russian wooden architecture with the forms of the art nouveau and the traditional Scandinavian architecture surprisingly combined here. All presented art styles that followed the tastes of the time remained deeply national. At the beginning of the 20th century, interest in innovative phenomena of Western European art coexisted with a deep interest in the artistic culture of the Russian people, its traditions. “In Russia, a fertile passion for its past woke up” (I. Evdokimov). In the 20th – 21st centuries, these traditions are being interrupted, which will lead to the disappearance of the historical city face. Keywords: Russia, Pomorye, Arkhangelsk, ‘grad’-city, monastery, traders’ market, architecture, art styles | 549 | |||||
| 186 | 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 | 547 | |||||
| 187 | David Lynch’s “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Drive”, the classic products of postmodern culture, carry multiple interpretations and senses within their plots. Unlike other works, these two films exploit absurd, one of the most prominent instruments of modernity, adjusting it to current realities by disguising it as complex but logical narrative. On the one hand, researchers of absurd note its current decline due to abolition of binary oppositions, which has made the concept of common sense and, thus, possibility of opposing anything to it, ungrounded. On the other – while analyzing the works of modernist writers in his “Logic of sense”, Deleuze comes to the conclusion that absurd in this sense plays a rather different role than in so-called philosophy of absurd: if for Camus absurd is attributed to lack of sense, for an absurdist like Lewis Carroll it, on the contrary, signifies surplus of multiple senses. Thus, the abovementioned films represent a bundle of multiple readings, often conflicting, but never falling apart into incoherent stories. The concept of Umberto Eco’s “opera aperta” acquires different geometry here – multiple senses do not lie parallel to each other, from depthless to deeper readings, but constantly intersect, deflect and change directions. Lynch intentionally puts contradictions into each interpretation to let the viewer to assemble multiple senses as a puzzle over and over, configuring unique interpretations each time. The plot structure is conceived in such a way that each of the interpretations would be insufficient and tangled with others. Keywords: film, David Lynch, sense, absurd, logic, film semiotics | 546 | |||||
| 188 | The report discusses methodological tools for overcoming the extremes of the positivist and hermeneutic strategies for studying the city. Attention is drawn to individual differences between cities and urban life phenomena. The possibilities and subject areas of typology, phenomenology, topology as conceptual approaches to studying the individuality of cities are analyzed. The author introduces the concepts of studying the individuality of cities: topoi of the urban environment, everyday practices of citizens, the habitus of the city. It is shown that in the topological perspective the city looks like a “puzzle” of vital worlds, as a composition of qualitatively defined places – topoi. The concept of everyday practices of citizens is considered as a connecting link, a medium between the structure of the city and the meanings of its inhabitants. The methodological idea of the city habitus is to bring together different aspects of city life into a single model, showing their interdependence: gestalts, narratives, production and consumption practices, economic trends, cultural schematizations. The report substantiates the value of the concept ‘city habitus’, explores the observed circumstances of the city habitus existence and the conditions for its formation. Keywords: image of city, topos of city life, everyday practices, types of cities, city habitus | 543 | |||||
| 189 | The article concerns bottom-up creative acts oriented toward the transformation of urban space. Objects that are the result of these activities represent something that can be called alternative urban aesthetics. Basing on the results of research conducted in Siberian Tomsk, as well as photographic material collected as part of research projects such as “Invisible City”, the author tries to prove that the described phenomena in the urban iconosphere have a global character. The “invisible” activities of the city’s inhabitants are spontaneous forms of creative activity. These are traces of being and inhabitation left by the very people who create urban space. The residents who are the active actors, not only modifying but also creating the surrounding space. Importantly, these practices have material implications, thus affecting the appearance, organization and dominant aesthetics of cities. The “invisibles” are often assigned to the spheres of kitsch and bad taste because they quite strongly break the established and valid canons. However, paradoxically, alternative aesthetics have their own internal canon, too. As its basic principles, we can identify re / upcycling, independent construction of objects, avoiding abstractness, and referring to animal and plant shapes not necessarily known from the surroundings, as well as an unusual community of forms that cannot be denied in its global character. From 2015 the author has participated in a research project called “Visual organizations of urban space: behaviors, interpretations, historical and cultural perspectives. Comparative analysis of the iconosphere and its relations to the ways of life of Russian Tomsk and Polish Wroclaw inhabitants”. Tomsk turned out to be extremely abundant in “invisibility”. In almost every courtyard, whether adjacent to modernist blocks of the Soviet period (the so-called big slab, that is large panel system-building), or to unique, wooden single- and multi-family houses, the author has found examples of spontaneous creative activity by residents. Tomsk’s residents transform unnecessary objects or materials into installations whose primary function is to “tame” and “embellish” the nearest – often dehumanized – space, as well as work to solve everyday problems and shortages. Bricoleur-like minds and hands are then transforming rubbish and fragmented objects into emancipating entities. Invisible objects introduce familiarity and mark the presence of the creators / residents who, by adopting an active attitude, thus decide about the image of those city fragments. These creative acts “give” their power back to them and the objects produced in this way are characterized by a very special position in the entire universe of objects. Keywords: urban aesthetics, city, globality, self-agency, “invisible” city, representative, neglected, urban space, urban studies | 542 | |||||
| 190 | In this article, I continue the study of sacred topics of Russian cities. Here I consider the issue of the functions of the church over gate in the structure of the city as a sacred text. I argue that the architectural composition “city gate + temple” originated in Old Russia and does not have Byzantine historical prototypes. The construction of the Golden Gate in Kiev was part of a unified program for creating urban sacred space (hierotopy). The explanation of this program in accordance with the ‘idea transfer’ model removes the question of the Byzantine prototype of the Kiev Golden Gate. The semantics of the Russian overgate church has a multilayered character. First, such a temple expresses the idea of supreme patronage, or divine protection. Secondly, the overgate church demonstrates the idea of the triumph of Christianity over paganism, of order over chaos. Thirdly, the overgate church is an optical means for expressing the conformity of a city (or monastery) with historical Jerusalem or Constantinople. Fourthly, the gate with the temple (especially with the temple dedicated to the Virgin Mary) is a visual presentation of the dogma that God became man, that is, about the entry of God into the empirical world. Finally, fifthly, the sacred gates with the temple on them function as a structural analogue of the gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Accordingly, that city (or monastery) into which these gates lead is perceived as the “spatial icon” of the Heavenly City, which will descend from above at the end of times. The overgate church has a special meaning due to its numerous semantic links with the Most Holy Theotokos, as well as due to its syntactic relations with the main city cathedral. Such semantic connections are established, among other things, on the basis of the Christian reception of certain “urban” texts of the Old Testament. The overgate church is a necessary spatial and visual element of the sacral symbolism of the Eastern Christian cities. Keywords: visual semiotics, Eastern Christianity, city, sacred architecture, cultural and semiotic transfer, visual organization of space, city gate, overgate church | 541 | |||||
| 191 | The modern era can rightly be called the era of criticism. All that can be done can be done better; therefore, almost any achievement or decision, primarily of politicians and entrepreneurs (but not least of all of scientists, designers, architects, writers and even people of art), is accompanied by protest or criticized. Achievements or decisions either affect personal rights, or threaten the environment, or damage cultural, gender, national or religious identities. At the same time, protest should be presented in a bright visual form. Any protest slogan should receive an additional symbolic refinement or extension. Symbols can be understandable or require few thinking efforts; and both these conditions should not harm the overall transparency of the protest function. These symbols of protest oppose metaphorically encoded video sequences to the complex party programs. The decoding of protest symbols is not difficult (“anything goes”) and provides a general understanding and unity of the protesters (or its illusion that, in general, does not change things). The symbolic visualization of the unifying values of protest (e.g., of the collective rejection of suffering or of the rights loss) and its decoding compensate the lack of a generalized symbolic means of communication, which is a guaranteed means of achieving communicative success. Such a symbolic visualization would ensure that any participant of protest communication has their contact request accepted, that is, addressed to other participants. Such communicatively generalizing symbols or media (power, truth, money, faith) belong to classical macro-systems (the ones of politics, science, economy, religion), which allows these systems to solve the main communicative problem, to provide collective actions, and to coordinate common interests and decisions. But protest communication, on the contrary, is dispersed into several heterogeneous key topics. The debate on these topics integrates communities and institutionalizes these communications into such social movements as feminism, environmentalism, anti-globalism, etc. However, unlike the clear communicative symbols of the political and economic systems, the absence of such a generalizing symbol in protest communication is not a competitive advantage. In the article, the authors consider the communicative and symbolic resources of protest communication that have been developed during the Internet network epoch as a functional compensation for its thematic fragmentation in the absence of a single unifying symbol. Keywords: visualization of protest communication, system-communicative approach, activism, social networks | 541 | |||||
| 192 | The phenomenon of architectural and landscape spaces of power, showing the specificity of the relations between society and power, is considered. Asym metry of influence and other characteristic of power are clearly expressed in the organization of these spaces. Reproducible for thousands of years they are content due to the technology of power. Among the invariant features of the spaces of power: the symmetry of the architectural and compositional solutions (the presence of severe axis), the dominance of the ‘classical’ forms, the ensemble construction, the availability of space for demonstrations and so forth. The existence of specially organized territorial and spatial structures reveals the content, non-obvious connections and dynamics of mutual relations between society and government. Spaces of power are the object of reflection as an “image of power”, acquire a symbolic expression (verbal or visual), bearing a semantic load. The article uses the diachronic method of correlation of architectural methods of expression of power with the characteristic moments of the state of society. Identified sustainable and re-usable architectural decisions, traced the patterns of their development. It is established that the processes of formation and development of spaces of power are characterized by stages of both complexity and simplification of the environment. The nature and forms of their manifestation in the interiors and exteriors of modern objects of power of democratic communities are analyzed. Bringing the russian spaces of power in compliance with the requirements of the time is evaluated as a socially significant problem. Keywords: city, social spaces, relations of society and power | 538 | |||||
| 193 | In this article the author makes an attempt to trace the spiritual and creative components of Pasolini and Mandelstam worldview, explicate identical patterns in its construction. Careful attention to detail and things, including them in imaging system of verse, animation of the material world and sacrificial attitude toward death unites these two poets, despite the difference of time and language. Keywords: infantilism, the absurdity of existence, world of things, paradoxes of the mind, the search for meaning, intuitive insight, finding the highest point | 535 | |||||
| 194 | The article considers the drawing Pictish Warrior by John White, an English artist of the XVI century, representing a native of ancient Britain. The drawing reflected contemporary ideas on national self-identification, belonging to the supporters of two different views on the British past. Supporters of the first view based their opinion mainly on the medieval History of Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, in which such legendary leaders, as King Arthur and Brennius, were represented as the founders of empires and rivals of Ancient Rome. The second view on the British past was presented by historians of the so-called School of antiquaries who proceeded mainly from the analysis of historical antique texts and the remained ancient monuments. The analysis of the image created by John White shows that the drawing has been executed primarily under the influence of the School of antiquaries. However, White also paid attention to the views of the medieval version supporters, trying to glorify his image and establish close connection between it and the images of Ancient Rome. Keywords: Renaissance culture, John White, Geoffrey of Monmouth, William Camden, Roman Britain | 532 | |||||
| 195 | The paper is devoted to problems of correlation between the Mughal allegorical portrait and its original source – the Persian poetic eulogy. The strategy of translation from the verbal language to the language of painting suggested different variations: a close adherence to the text by which the onomastical and phraseological units of panegyrical topics were reproduced literally on the visual level, and also associative abstracting by which individual motives and devices were applied and visualized indirectly through the significant attributes, recognizable hints, and the like. This article is intended only to sketch the basic lines of interaction between different levels of reading of the Mughal visual panegyric and to show how the difficult task of visualization of literary conventions was solved on a practical level to glorify the king. Keywords: visual panegyric, verbal panegyric, mughal painting, allegorical portrait, literary conventions, badshah Jahangir | 532 | |||||
| 196 | Market square of a city or town is a spatial frame where the notion of lower middle class was formed and in which memorial events took place. Due to the tragic events of the 20th century – the First and Second World Wars, Holodomor (famine) and Holocaust, emigration and moving of peoples, destructions and distortions of town space – market squares have become a certain mythological construct. After the damages of the First World War the market squares were restored and were actively functioning. In the second half of the 20th century, most market squares were completely destroyed. Distortions of the market squares resulted in the disappearance of urban patriotism and deformation of town resident’s identity. Keywords: market squares, historical town, spatial symbol, architectural monument, town resident’s identity | 530 | |||||
| 197 | Collective monograph “MediaPhilosophy XII. Game or reality? Research experience in the study of computer games” is being reviewed. The book is an attempt to develop an independent philosophical discipline of game studies. Besides philosophical and methodological issues in such discipline authors explore juridical, ethical, social and existential aspects of the problem. Also, some more specific topics of special interest to computer games researchers are discussed. Keywords: mediaphilosophy, mediareality, computer games, technophobia, aggression | 530 | |||||
| 198 | The author starts from the premise that the second volume of Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres contains the conception of what could be called cartographic dispositif and tries to reconstruct separate provisions of this conception and relate them with some ideas made by contemporary specialized studies on the history of cartography. One of the main points, which Sloterdijk shares with these studies on maps and cartography, is that maps are too complex to be simple expression of spatial facts. Inscribing arguments about cartography in context of own theory of terrestrial globalization, Sloterdijk shows that cartographers were among its main actors and maps and globes of Earth were among its basic representational mechanisms and practical tools. The article provides description of what exactly was said by Sloterdijk about cartography and cartographic representations, extremely powerful tools of visualization and epistemic accumulation, but at the same time of political and economical control and of re-ordering of space. The main conclusion of the article is that Sloterdijk’s conception of cartography is in a unique position to support the sense of dizzying and intriguing complexity of cartographic representation and its historical types and forms (their very diversity is good enough reason for dizziness). This sense stands against deceptive obviousness (“we all know what a map is”), generated by equally deceptive “democratization of maps”, their pervasive presence and everyday uses. And if, as Matthey Edney says, “a map is representation of space complexity”, the very map is complex, being a strange hybrid of intelligible and empirical, theoretical and obvious, imaginary and real, what is seen and what is read, scientifical and political, actual and virtual, representation and performativе. But maybe this principal complexity of cartographic representation makes it a worthwhile object of research and fascination. Keywords: globe, map, cartography, cartographic dispositif, visualization, Sloterdijk | 528 | |||||
| 199 | The article is devoted to the study of the features of visual carriers of the city’s cultural memory, which are one of the types of symbolic intermediaries that connect citizens and urban environment. The relevance of the research of cultural memory of the city is confirmed by the increased scientific interest to the problems of commemoration and mechanisms of structuring social forms of memory, and to the determination of collective ideas about the city. The functioning of the of the city’s cultural memory is supported by memory carriers as units of storage of the city’s culture significant elements (symbols, images, myths, etc.), which symbolically mark the urban environment. The author focuses on the visual carrier of the city’s cultural memory, which role is to accumulate, reproduce and translate the cultural meanings of the city, forming a visual matrix of urban memory. The methodology of the study of the city’s cultural memory is not yet formed, but the author gives a number of techniques to identify significant cultural meanings as fragments of urban memory. In addition to the use of cognitive, semiotic and sociological categories in the study, a certain methodological potential refers to a communicative paradigm that focuses on the analysis of the processes of generating cultural meanings of the city and their representation in the space of the city. The specificity of the functioning of the city’s cultural memory is illustrated by the example of the author’s 2016–2018 study of visual meanings of Veliky Novgorod, which transfer the key layers of urban memory. The author suggests to consider four main groups of translators of visible information about the city’s past as visual carrier of city’s cultural memory. The author identifies and substantiates features of visual carriers of the city’s cultural memory. The obtained results can be a starting point for further studies of the city’s cultural memory. The applied significance of this research is part of the intellectual capital that can be used by urban elites of each particular city in solving the problems of the policy of the city’s cultural memory associated with the creation of collective ideas about the city, including the image of the city. Keywords: city, city’s cultural memory, commemoration, visual memory, cultural meanings | 527 | |||||
| 200 | Avanesov S. S. EDITORIAL // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 3 (13). P. 7-9 . | 526 | |||||