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| 151 | 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 | 367 | |||||
| 152 | 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 | 365 | |||||
| 153 | 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 | 362 | |||||
| 154 | 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 | 362 | |||||
| 155 | The authors reconstruct the concepts of university by John Stewart Mill and William Whewell. They argue that modernization of Russian society requires a deep reconsideration of the idea of university education, especially, in terms of the humanities. The analysis of the discussion between Mill and Whewell could contribute to the understanding of the spirit of Victorian England as well as of some significant controversies between liberals and conservators in their debate on the social purpose of the university. The authors claim that this debate is still relevant for the current Russian reform of higher education. In the first part of the paper the authors discuss anthropological assumptions that gave rise to Whewell’s and Mill’s differences in viewing the human nature as well as in the meaning of history. While following empiricism, Mill accepted the idea of tabula rasa. Hence, he argued that the university should firstly give space for self-realization of individuality. At the same time, Whewell considered the human nature as an inalienable part of cultural tradition. In accordance with this, the university should primarily provide connection of the times and integrity of intellectual tradition. The authors discuss the ideological attribution of Whewell’s ideas, namely, his so-called “traditionalism”. They argue that Whewell should not be considered as an old-fashioned hunker, since he claimed that tradition was to be saved as long as it generated some new fruitful ideas. The authors pay special attention to Whewell’s philosophy of history. He considered rises and falls of civilizations as a cyclic process, which was congruent to the periods of dominance of mathematics and philosophy in culture. Whewell argued that the decline of Greek culture was predetermined, when simple geometrical conceptions of the school of Plato were debased and weighed down by a cumbrous apparatus of crystalline spheres. The authors claim that this visual image comes from the basic presumption of Whewell’s philosophy of science: the development of scientific knowledge should be considered as an advancement in a clear and definite understanding of object. Hence, clearness and visual simplicity of model representations are the most reliable proof of knowledge enhancement. The authors analyze the historical context of the Whewell-Mill debate. They put Whewell’s ideas into the context of his reformist activity in Cambridge University. They argue that Whewell tried to adapt W. Humboldt’s model of the university to the context of Victorian England. In the final part of the paper, the authors discuss how Whewell’s ideas could be used for the modernization of philosophy education in Russia. They propose that the integration of the STS (science & technology studies) into the university programs in philosophy could make philosophical knowledge more relevant and attractive for scientists. This turn to the more “practical” (in Whewell’s sense) way of teaching philosophy could be used for the justification of the heuristic potential of philosophical knowledge in science as well. The authors conclude that nowadays this mode of self-representation of philosophy is the most relevant one. Keywords: Whewell, Mill, philosophy of science, reform, liberals, conservators, university, education, philosophy, Victorian Age, STS, social context of knowledge | 362 | |||||
| 156 | 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 | 358 | |||||
| 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 | 357 | |||||
| 158 | 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 | 355 | |||||
| 159 | 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 | 353 | |||||
| 160 | 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. | 352 | |||||
| 161 | 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 | 352 | |||||
| 162 | 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 | 351 | |||||
| 163 | 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 | 346 | |||||
| 164 | In the article on the example of the photographic project presented the concept of personal visual defence. In modern war of images is important a rationalization. In the situation of uncontrollable and addictive stream of images, the solution is not in increduility to the images and iconoclasm, but, as shown by the individual searching of the artist and his unique way of seeing, in recoding popular and often shocking images and concepts. Only image, reduced to functions, whether political or economic, is militant, but by itself, it is material for our imaginary. The entity of iconoclasm is not in the struggle against image, aspiring to the Ideal, but in the struggle for human, for his presence, immanent to the image, for his protective and life-giving support of the Ideal. Keywords: the war of images, photos, media war, visual ecology, visual security | 343 | |||||
| 165 | 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 | 343 | |||||
| 166 | 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 | 341 | |||||
| 167 | 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 | 341 | |||||
| 168 | 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 | 340 | |||||
| 169 | Education is permanent and not always purposeful process in which the brain changes physically. It is important which information people get and how they do it. At the same time, the interrelation of cognitive and corporeal impacts of information invokes a bioethical aspect of the problem. Bioethics as a form of modern culture emphasizes the right of an individual to be what one wants, and the duty of society is to provide an individual with this opportunity. Currently, bioethics protects the individuality of a person in the medicine field but not in fostering and education. The specific characteristics of modern times make it necessary to use bioethics in the field of pedagogy. Firstly, visual presentation of information largely replaced the verbal one. Secondly, life itself became a product of technology, so it turned into an artefact. Thirdly, the pace of innovation reveals how frail intellectual traditions are. Fourthly, the innovations of convergent and biomedical technologies create new risks. And, finally, existence in the environment of new risks requires a new degree of responsibility for choice made by an individual. In this case, an individual must make both bodily and mental choices on a constant basis. Bioethics is placed at the intersection of some trends: it protects individuality from the arbitrariness of biomedical operations, assesses new risks, retains the moral positions of philosophical traditions for determining the permissible limits of intervention of the artificial into the natural. Since education deals with different personalities, different situations, a high-quality usage of visual teaching aids requires relying on cultural traditions of perception and individual characteristics of the perceiver. Effectiveness cannot always be achieved using only one point of view. Therefore, it is possible and necessary to use different approaches and methods. This allows speaking about the need to combine different approaches and designate limits of their applicability, and the very combination of different approaches makes sense since each of them is focused on a single aspect. The understanding of the scope of these aspects is fundamental, which is clearly demonstrated by the research model of an information-synergetic approach chosen by the authors. The research position presented in this work opens up opportunities to categorize theories of visual information perception, which is undoubtedly relevant for a methodological regulation of their application in pedagogical bioethics. Keywords: pedagogical bioethics, bioethics, synergetic, perception of visual information, symbolism of bioethics, information-synergetic approach | 340 | |||||
| 170 | Avanesov S. S. EDITORIAL // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 3 (13). P. 7-9 . | 338 | |||||
| 171 | Continental philosophy was often being characterized (most significantly by Badiou) as having a particular relationship with language manifesting in an acute sense of and purposeful usage of style. Yet the matter of tone has rarely been addressed as something significant. One of the rare examples is Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy by Jacques Derrida. Having long dismissed with the separation of “rhetorical decorations” and “conceptual content” Derrida proposes a certain tone as a defining characteristic of philosophy, capable of saving it from a crisis or killing it altogether. Another we encounter in the works of Gilles Deleuze who characterises style and even a concept itself as a “hue” or “colour” of a text (in L’abécédaire) and in relation to the notion of Stimmung (in Logic of Sense) in opposition to the language’s function of designation. The same notion – Stimmung, meaning “attunement’ or “mood’, linked to Verstimmung - “delirium” or “mis-tuning” - appears in Of an Apocalyptic Tone. Is philosophy itself a particular kind of tone or hue of a text? The answers to these questions, as I suggest, differ depending on which of the two approaches - Derrida’s “harmonic” one or Deleuzian “colouristic” one - takes to philosophical conceptual creativity. By analysing and comparing these two approaches this paper suggests a particular relation between tone (both in the sense of sound and of colour) and concept. It also suggests that a certain integration of these two approaches can be achieved through analysis of time (as rhythm and detour), as presented in Quentin Meillassoux’ Subtraction and Contraction. Keywords: tone, colour, Derrida, Deleuze, Meillassoux, envelope, sound studies, spectralism | 334 | |||||
| 172 | 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 | 327 | |||||
| 173 | During the 20th century, the prose of F. M. Dostoevsky became more and more established as a “theatrical genre” on the Latvian stage. At the beginning of the century and during the years of the First Republic (1920–1940), Riga’s theatregoers were offered stage versions of almost all of Dostoevsky’s novels. This process was facilitated by the attentiveness of the Riga Russian Theater to the classical repertoire as a whole, as well as by the presence of a number of prominent Russian actors – Mikhail Chekhov, Gregory Khmara, Vasily Kachalov, etc – in Riga. At this time, the Riga theater of Russian drama made several productions based on original dramatizations of Riga directors Mikhail Muratov, Rudolf Ungern, Elena Roshina-Insarova. In the Soviet period, the search of theaters in Latvia focused on two polar tendencies – polyphonic or monologic Dostoevsky. The stage version of the novel “Crime and Punishment” was carried out in 1978 by a playwright and director Mark Rozovsky, a poet Yury Ryashentsev and a composer Eduard Artemiev. The play “Ubivets” (“Murderer”) is a polycode text, a deconstruction of the polyphonic nature of Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”. According to the author’s genre definition at the time of writing, the play should be understood as a literary and musical performance (a musical). Applying the concept of M. M. Bakhtin for the composition of the play, Rozovsky deconstructs the novel into elements of the future polyphony. The word of Dostoevsky becomes two-voiced due to the combination of prose and poetry texts, to the linking of musical and literary languages, as well as through the synthesis of a high individual voice and the lower, penny dreadful, poly-voiced element of the crowd-choir. The visually stage text unfolds through the semantics of carnival, farce performance, town square performances, through the visualization of signs of culture of blessed fools and street aesthetics. Keywords: F. M. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Mark Rozovsky, dramatization, M. Chekhov’s Riga Russian Theatre, Latvian theatre tradition, visual semiotics, polycode text | 326 | |||||
| 174 | The article is devoted to the study of the visual semiotic aspects of city identity. The relevance of research on city identity is justified by its direct impact on migration patterns and migration behavior of citizens. The city identity contains a person’s stable image of himself as a resident of a certain city, fixes the citizen’s emotional and value attitudes to the history and culture of the city, to the city community, influences the individual’s self-esteem and his productive activities. The purpose of the article is to analyze the visual semiotic aspects of city identity. The article solves a number of research problems: first, the structure of city identity is theoretically described; secondly, the structural interconnection of city identity components is shown; thirdly, the visual semiotic aspects are highlighted in each component of city identity; fourthly, the influence of the affective and value-semantic component of city identity on the migration attitudes of the practical component is demonstrated. The structure of city identity consists of cognitive, affective, value-semantic and practical components. The cognitive component contains a complex of objective ideas about the city in which a person lives, about the factors affecting the conditions and quality of life in the city. The visualization of these representations is reflected in geographical maps, graphs, charts, tables. In the affective component of city identity, an emotional and sensual perception of the city by man takes place. The ability of a city to generate experiences depends on its history, culture, architecture. The ability of a person to experience the city is brought up. The visual semiotic aspect of the affective component is represented by the appearance of the city, it depends on the complexity of the architectural images, it is comprehended by a person while mastering the skills of visual communication. The positive and negative emotions affect the attitudes of the practical component of city identity. The value-semantic component of city identity serves as a form of harmonization of people’s ideas about the city, expressed in objectified forms of urban culture. The practical component of city identity directly influences the strategy of a citizen’s life choice. The specificity of the visual semiotic aspects of city identity is illustrated by examples from the classic works of domestic and foreign researchers of urban culture, as well as specific examples of the everyday urban life of Omsk over two decades of the 21st century. The article identifies the reasons for the formation of a negative city identity of Omsk residents. The results can be a direction for further research on positive and negative city identity. The practical significance of the study lies in the possibility of using by theorists and practitioners of urban development the ideas about the influence of city identity on the migration behavior of citizens. Keywords: city, city identity, structure of city identity, visual semiotic aspects of city identity | 326 | |||||
| 175 | 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 | 325 | |||||
| 176 | The paper is concerned with the esthetic arrangement of the new elements of Antiquity in structure of the national cultural consciousness that interprets the borrowed ancient text in a perspective of political changes. New antiquity forms were entered by Peter I into the field of Russian semiotics and founded beginning for new cultural ideas in historical formation of Russian esthetics. The Antiquity which is revealed in forms of the Byzantine model is a substratum of the Russian spiritual culture of which its linguistic parameters were set by formulas of works of East Fathers of church in national literature of Russian Middle Ages. Peter the Great’s era combines subject lines of two historically developed modes of ancient art in space of Russian esthetics: East (Greek) and Western (Latin). Article purpose is to analyze connecting of two antique paradigms in ontology of the Russian culture by means of esthetic categories: ‘beautiful’ / ‘ugly’. The research has been conducted on the example of the authentic texts of the beginning of the 18th century on the basis of philological and hermeneutical methods. Keywords: Russia, Peter the Great, text of ancient art, semiotics, antique mythology, interpretation, art form, semantic field, aesthetics | 324 | |||||
| 177 | 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 | 313 | |||||
| 178 | 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 | 312 | |||||
| 179 | L’objectivation du corps, nécessaire pour en parler, permet de grandes avancées dans le domaine de la technique, mais peut aussi devenir source de dérives déshumanisantes. Nous aborderons deux notions paradoxales et complémentaires, le corps comme objet de recherche voire de marchandise, mais aussi le même corps subjectif et parlant à soi et aux autres. Le langage de l’homme est principalement corporel. Notre chair « pense », notre corps parle. Toutes les manifestations de la vie, que ce soit la douleur, la peur, l’horreur, ou la joie, l’amour, le bonheur-peuvent être considérées comme la conscience montre par le corps. L’objectivation du corps de l’homme est une condition de son observation. Toutefois cela doit rester un moyen et non pas devenir une fin. Keywords: la Philosophie du corps, l’éthique, la Psychologie, la technologie biomédicale, la chair de pensée, l’objectif du corps | 311 | |||||
| 180 | The author argues that in order to fruitfully explore the city within the cultural-studies framework one must first accurately define the city as an object of knowledge, which only highlights the problematic nature of the boundaries of the city. The article foregrounds the key role of the cultural heteronomy of the city, which overrides its civilisational heteronomy. Culture, which the Polish culture scholar Stanisław Pietraszko understands as a way of being in accordance with values, is the determining factor in the identity of the city and is manifest in the openness and fluidity of its limits. Central thematic concern lies in literary “prostheses” of cities, which are needed in places inhabited by migrants, the colonized, “the subjects homesick” for “their” cities. Fiction and poetry bear a crucial ontological and axiological city-making responsibility, as demonstrated in the author’s previous studies on Quixotic La Mancha and re-confirmed in this paper on the example of the Latin American Amereida, a group of architects, poets and artists. The author examines their 1965 journey from Chile, called Travesía (The Crossing), whose aim was “poetic dwelling” in America. During the journey, they performed poetic acts referred to as phalènes, whose idea grew out from an earlier trip to Paris and urban poetic practices in Santiago de Chile. As the pampa and Patagonia became a symbol of absolute modernity, the realisation is prompted that the modernity of the city-text can be “re-written” onto a non-urbanised space. The article ends with a glimpse of the utopian Open City (Ciudad Abierta), which the Amereida founded on the Pacific coastal dunes in 1970 in order to live there, work and teach students of the Faculty of Architecture of the Catholic University of Valparaíso. The pursuits undertaken in the city show that what is poetic is “open,” long-lasting and communal. Keywords: Amereida, the Open City (Ciudad Abierta), travesía, city, city limits / boundaries, modernity, culture, values, South America | 310 | |||||
| 181 | Count Aleksey Sergeyevich Uvarov (Mar. 12, 1825, St. Petersburg – Jan. 10, 1885, Moscow) – Russian archaeologist, honorary member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, founder and leader of the Moscow Archaeological Society (1864) and the Historical Museum in Moscow (1883); the founder of the Archaeological Congresses in Russia. He conducted archaeological excavations in the south of Russia, in Suzdal and in the Taurida Governorate. Count Uvarov is the author of books “Studies of Antiquities of Southern Russia and of the Black Sea coast” (1848), “The Merya people and their way of life by results of the burial mounds excavations” (1851), “Archeology of Russia. The Stone Age” (1881). He published his articles in the journal “Antiquities” of the Moscow Archaeological Society (since 1865), as well as in the “Archaeological Herald”. He is the founder of the Uvarov Prizes of the Academy of Sciences (1857), named after his father. A. S. Uvarov’s “Collection of Small Works” was published in 1910 to the 25th anniversary of the death of the Count by his widow Praskovia Sergeevna Uvarova (1840–1924). Countess Uvarova is a well-known Russian archeologist and historian; from 1885 to 1917 she headed the Moscow Archaeological Society, having replaced her husband on this position. Two texts from the above-mentioned “Collection” are presented below: 1) a small note about the mosaic “Virgin Oranta” from the basilica of Urs in Ravenna as a prototype of a similar image of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev; 2) a brief remark about the symbolic meaning of the iconographic plot “Savior the Blessed Silence”. The texts are published in the original spelling. | 307 | |||||
| 182 | Existing methods of representing the integrity and quality of urban spaces in visual perception are faced with the limitations of their use. The theories of visual perception physiology and theories of compositional structures and their harmonic relationships face a many additional conditions that level down their meaning in practice. We declare an alternative approach to analyzing the urban environment and explaining the principles of its visual perception based on the interdisciplinary theory of patterns. The essence of this approach tells the urban environment is historically formed on the basis of spatial formation models, archetypal models, and spatial prototypes. We call these templates as patterns. The concept of a pattern, which is widely used in various fields of science and practice, is adapted and updated within to urban planning in relation. We argue the principle of mosaicity of city area and folding the urban environment by “imprints” of spatial prototypes called urban units. The context of the notion “pattern” is considered: its etymology, history and essence of the pattern phenomenon in the interdisciplinary angle. Types of urban patterns and their basic properties are listed. The of the patternity space levels on which to fix and explain the influence of spatial prototypes are established. The principle mechanism of formation and patterns replication on the city area into the elementary spatial units is revealed on the example of a socialistic city, microdistrict and central blocks of the city. The differences in the mapping principles at different levels for this types of spaces are shown. We note the main problems of research in visual perception of the urban environment on the basis of the theory of patterns. The article uses the methods of theoretical definition of concept based on an interdisciplinary analogy. The study will provide use of the patterns theory to identify and diagnose a “genetic code” of city for its further translation or transformation. Keywords: pattern, urban morphology, integrity, mosaic, visual perception, city archetype | 307 | |||||
| 183 | 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 | 304 | |||||
| 184 | 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 | 304 | |||||
| 185 | The formation of cognitive maps of geographical space is a crucial condition for an agent’s cognitive activity, determining his possible orientation as the highest psychical function. The initial way of understanding oneself in the surrounding world for humans was to correlate oneself with one’s natural dimensionality and to form an anthropomorphic system of measures and coordinates. This article considers processes of transforming natural geography into a culture-determined one, resulting in the formation of world maps based not on the objective vision of geospace but on mythological, religious, pragmatic, and ethnocentric factors. The influence of human’s technological extensions on transformation of his natural spatial ideas into cognitive schemata and on change in his spatial “worldview” is analyzed by the example of accessibility/inaccessibility of geographical objects. The paper posits that the possibility to interpret geographical knowledge and skills as symbolic and culture-determined options of the orientation ability are fixed not to natural, but technological mode of travel. Furthermore, the paper describes a special hybrid construct of orientation/locomotion that arises in the conditions of technological progress and sets a new topology of man’s cultural body, a technologically transformed topology of the surrounding world. Additionally, it is stated that any technical development does not abolish human dimensionality but only modifies it, expanding natural human abilities and identity. Keywords: cognitive activity, identity, cognitive map, geography, geospace, technologies, anthropomorphic dimensionality, spatial orientation, transport, embodiment | 303 | |||||
| 186 | 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 | 303 | |||||
| 187 | 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 | 302 | |||||
| 188 | 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 | 300 | |||||
| 189 | One of the essential features of education is emphasized in the article: a person’s adaptation to the symbolism of social reality. The modern transformation of social reality is accompanied by educational experiments made by leading universities. The combination of social and educational transformations, which is expressed in two experiments, is subjected to semiotic diagnostics. The substantiation of semiotic diagnostics is based on the interpretation of information characteristics as criteria for the self-organization of complex open systems. This substantiation is obtained within the framework of natural philosophy and is overcome based on bioethics, namely, on the interpretation of bioethics as discursive symbolism, in which the approach of interpretation of invariant rules from the perspective of variable and situational personal preferences has been tested. The procedures for semiotic diagnostics include: (1) elucidation of all “symptoms”, that is, the set of signs that are present in the analyzed effect; (2) elucidation of “syndromes”, that is, operators selected to implement the goals of the participants of the analyzed effect; (3) clarification of the goals that form the analyzed effect; (4) juxtaposition of the “anamneses” of the analyzed effects to clarify the precedents (if any) of the studied situation. Procedures show: (1) the semantics of the effect, (2) the syntax of the effect, (3) the pragmatics of the effect, and (4) the “diagnosis” itself. The limits for applying the developed procedures are determined. The requirement to formalize the manifestation of the effect in a four-dimensional space is assigned to the applicability limits. Models of bioethics and paradigms of education exist in such a space. The innovations presented by the Minerva Schools and the project (referred to as Janus in the article) of Stanford University are subjected to semiotic diagnostics. These projects represent an education-travel, exclusive in speed, which connects cultural landscapes with different “climatic” modes of cognitive management. Its purpose is to gain wisdom (rather than knowledge), expressed in acquiring a combination of experience in independent generation of knowledge and experience in the implementation of this knowledge in different socio-cultural contexts. The diagnosis is given in the title of the article. Keywords: semiotic diagnostics, procedures of semiotic diagnostics, information characteristics, efficiency, self-organization phases, positions of bioethics, visualization technologies in education | 299 | |||||
| 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 | 295 | |||||
| 191 | 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 | 293 | |||||
| 192 | Predicates expressing visual properties, like ‘large’ and ‘larger’, constitute a special category of linguistic expressions. Whereas their meaning in most contexts seems to be uncontroversial, there are contexts where their meaning is hard to determine. Cross-world comparison is an instance. Its specific feature is that it compares an object taken in one possible world with an object taken in another one (distinct from the first one). In the paper, the problem of semantics of comparative visual predicates in the contexts of this type is examined. The problem can be illustrated using Russell’s famous example ‘I thought your yacht is larger than it is’. What makes this sentence problematic for semantic analysis is that an object as it was conceived by the speaker is being compared with that same object as it actually is. If we construe this sentence (as t suggest) as expressing a comparison of objects rather than their sizes, it is hard to see what the logical form of this sentence might be like. As a starting point, I take the uncontroversial claim that predicates like ‘large’ have a hidden argument, viz. a standard of being large for the contextually salient category of objects. I show that generalization of this point to comparative predicates like ‘larger’ enables us to solve the problem stated above. To this end, we have to distinguish a) between overt and hidden arguments of visual predicates, b) between an interpretation utilizing functions from objects to numbers, and an objectual interpretation, c) between immediate and mediated comparisons. I show that adopting the concept of comparative predicates having hidden arguments and the concept of cross-world visual comparisons as mediated by a hidden argument allows us to provide an intuitively correct objectual interpretation of cross-world visual comparisons. Keywords: semantics, interpretation, logical form, predicate, visual property, contextuality, comparison, possible world, visual experience | 282 | |||||
| 193 | 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 | 275 | |||||
| 194 | 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 | 274 | |||||
| 195 | The article analyzes the specific reasons for the occurrence of episodes demonstrating urban and rural landscapes of Lithuania and creating a distinctive atmosphere within the frame in Soviet children films. Since Vilnius baroque was influenced by Italian architecture, filmmaking in Lithuania created the illusion of Italy for Soviet cinema. Another reason lies in the ground of otherness of the culture, inside which an image of an enemy was easier to create. But along with this extreme point there is another opposite aspect in the context of Soviet children cinematograph – visual demonstration of the absolute identity of Lithuanian urban space to Russian, or, more precisely, Soviet one. The use of Lithuanian cities landscapes was mosaic by its nature. Different meaning, than the one they performed in reality, was attributed to certain places that the audience saw in frames. The urban space of Lithuania in children’s Soviet cinema is devoid of its true meaning. The article reveals those patterns by which filmmakers deliberately refuse to show historical and everyday objects of this Baltic republic in a recognizable way. Keywords: landscape contrast, Lithuania, urban environment, Soviet children’s cinema, visual code. | 269 | |||||
| 196 | The article addresses practices of visual subversion undertaken by an independent contemporary art center called The Substation in Singapore. The curator project, “Discipline the City” examines the question of social control written into space and material and technological circumstances in a contemporary, highly urbanized metropolis. Drawing on the accomplishments of contemporary visual studies and urban studies and incorporating “material turn” into their discourse, I examine the issue of control in a disciplining city, where the source of oppression is not institutionalized and objectified power, but the material and visual properties of an urbanized reality. The political ontology of a disciplining city encompasses both forms of oppression and subversion, built into the relationships between objects, artifacts, technologies, people and other organisms that unveil themselves in social practices. Keywords: urban studies, visual studies, material turn, subversion, political ontology, disciplinary city, disciplining city, urban praxis, The Substation, Singapore | 267 | |||||
| 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 | 263 | |||||
| 198 | The purpose of this work is 1) to analyse the features of the content and style of historiographical works of the English philosopher, scientist and theologian Isaac Newton, connected with the sacred symbolism; and 2) to find out the place and role of sacred symbols in the civilisation theory of the thinker. This study of Sir Isaac Newton’s understanding of Biblical symbolism is based on the analysis of his unpublished manuscripts from the Library of King’s College (Cambridge), Library of New College (Oxford), National Library of Israel (Jerusalem), Babson Library Collection in California. The principles and techniques of hermeneutic, historical philosophical, linguistic and structural analysis were used to achieve the task of the paper. As a result of our research, it is found out that in forming his civilisation theory Newton used a complex of prisca sapientia (ancient wisdom) ideas. According to Newton, physicochemical and cosmological ideas reflecting the unity and completeness of the material world and expressed in the notions of the Universe, Galaxy, Solar system, harmony of the aggregate states of matter and their mutual transformation, can serve as the basis of our understanding the ways of the ancient civilisation development. It is revealed that, according to Newton, when the ancient Greeks and later Romans learned the knowledge of prisca sapientia from the Ægyptians, they perceived and re-interpreted the Old Testament biblical visual symbols. Thus, the Prytanæum architectural, cosmological and cultural-sacred tradition arose, that was based on the architectural hieroglyphs of the structure of the Universe. In his historiographical manuscripts, Newton proves the advantage of the Jewish religious and cultural tradition and its chronological precedence over the antique and ancient Eastern ones. It is assumed that complex and obscure style as well as rather rough philological stylistics of the Newtonian historiographical works may be caused by the two reasons. First, Newton wrote his historiographical compositions in a private manner, preferring never to publish them, therefore the texts of these works represent merely drafts, sketches, rather than finished scientific papers. Second, Newton made an attempt (conscious or unconscious) to copy the inspired style of many ancient representatives of the prisca sapientia tradition, e. g., Old Testament prophets, Ægyptian priests, Chaldean oracles (sages), Persian Magi, and Indian Brahmans. Keywords: Newton, symbol, symbolism, sacral sign, Biblical symbolism, hermeneutics, semiotics, architectural symbol, architectural hieroglyph, Christian non-canonical sermon, literary sermon, Christian homiletics, religious scientific homiletics, historiography | 262 | |||||
| 199 | This work is dedicated to the history of Academy in Athens in early and late periods of its existence. I will first consider Academy in the time of Plato and then switch to the Athenian school of Neoplatonism (“the House of Proclus”) in the period of late antiquity. Using both archaeological and written evidences, fortunately sufficient in case of both of these institutions, I intend to draw a picture of their physical location and structure. Such an attitude towards the history, typical to the Annales School, will help us to place intellectual life of the ancients in proper everyday context. There is one more reason why I have chosen these objects. One can say that these two institutions represent two different approaches to the way of life and the methods of education. On the one hand, one can see here the evolution of educational system from free discourses to more familiar for our educational system formal instructions. On the other hand, Plato’s Academy reminds us of the contemporary tendency of organizing scientific life far from the densely populated cities in the form of university’s campuses, which, to some extent, constitutes a return to the classical paradigm. Keywords: topography of Athens, Plato’s Academy, Gymnasium, Square Peristyle, exedra, Athenian school of Neoplatonism, Proclus, Marin, university | 257 | |||||
| 200 | Text concerns on visual dimension of urban space. It’s based on analyses of historical and contemporary processes and phenomena shaping that space. The main topic is urban landscape of Tomsk (Russia). Nevertheless, the article contains a theoretical and methodological proposal that connects anthropological-semiotic approach with the idea of presenting various urban aesthetics of the city in context of relations between systems of values and political and economic disputes over the urban space. It’s reflection on patterns of behaviour, norms, beliefs, expectations and needs of citizens. For author, city is not only a physical place structured by material objects but also as a human communicative environment semiotically and axiologically marked space, which reflects the position of a human being as a cultural subject initiating the cultural activity. On example of wooden buildings, he shows relationship between the socio-cultural and architectural complexes. The author analysed architecture and architectural environment of the city as a text (semiotic construct), which manifests different types of lifestyle, aesthetic preferences, modernisation projects, ambitions of power, political strategies. He is particularly interested in the transformation of “reality” – the impact of urban texts on the perception of space and thinking about space (also in dimension of community and social differences). Keywords: city, urban space, architecture, culture, cultural heritage, activities of residents, semiotics of urban space, urban studies, urban research, Tomsk, Siberia | 256 | |||||