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| 151 | 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 | 692 | |||||
| 152 | The article compares two texts of a different nature, but with a single semantic kernel: the script for the film “Teorema” and its screen implementation. The research is built through the analysis of the relationship between all the characters in the film with the central character, since the author (P. P. Pasolini) gives him both a deep content and a multifaceted symbolism. On the way of comparing the word and the frame, the following conclusion is made: what is written in the text of the script carefully and verbosely is visualized on the screen by mean and minimal speaking means, and vice versa – what several words are said about, expands in the visual text of the film and turns into a perfect and the finished thought. In Pasolini’s style, the word continues the frame, while the frame is a silent word, which means the word embodied in eternity. Keywords: cinematography, semiotics of cinema, filmscript, Pasolini, initiation, mythological thinking, image of the desert, transformation, hierophanic representation | 690 | |||||
| 153 | In this article, I continue the study of sacred topics of Russian cities. Here I define the syntactic meaning of the architectural ensemble “cathedral – gate”. The article shows that the main semiotic function of the cathedral is the visual designation of the city sacred center, which expresses the idea of the beginning and center of the inhabited world. Being structured in a certain way in its internal volume, the cathedral also acts as the dominant architectural element that gives orderliness to the entire urban space. The dynamics of the cathedral interior, spread over the city as a whole, gives the urban topic the property of “transitivity”, movement, spatial unevenness. Such heterogeneity of the urban living environment is optically expressed as a hierarchical “condensation” of sacred space from the periphery to the center (concentricity). The direction of this increase in sacredness is set by two positional dominants – the main entrance to the city and the cathedral. In Kiev of Yaroslav the Wise, these positions are occupied by the Cathedral of St. Sophia and the Golden Gate. This urban planning “scheme”, which is reproduced in all Russian cities and monasteries, corresponds to the spatial structure of the Garden of Eden, the Israeli “marching camp”, historic Jerusalem and the Heavenly City. The Russian city, organized according to the described “type” (Aldo Rossi), is a multi-layered spatial icon, an architectural representation and a concrete embodiment of archetypal sacred space. Keywords: visual semiotics, Eastern Christianity, city, sacred architecture, visual organization of space, center, concentricity, cathedral, gate | 690 | |||||
| 154 | This article is devoted to a primary analysis of the material obtained as a result of the study of the cultural space in Western Siberia and Lower Silesia in 2017. The study was carried out within the framework of the international project “Visual organization of urban space: preservation, translation, historical and cultural perspective” (Tomsk, Wroclaw). The task of this project: search and description of visual invariants of various cultural areas (in particular, Russian and Polish cultures) in the context of defining the forms of construction cultural, national, civil, religious, professional and other identities through means of visual presentation and communication, along the lines of a multidisciplinary analysis of cross-cultural processes. The author confirms the thesis about the presence of Jerusalem allusions (metaphors, citations) in the space of modern urban texts, using the example of Tomsk and Wroclaw. The correlation of the allegorical and literal in the construction of architectural allusions in Western Siberia and Lower Silesia is shown. The difference between the spatial images of historic Jerusalem and the Heavenly City is considered. The role of the sacred city center in the organization of the city space has been revealed. The role of the monastery court as icons of Heavenly Jerusalem (the new Eden) is substantiated. The semantic and structural connection between the Calvary and the mysteries of the Passion of the Lord is described on the example of the monastery ensemble of the Baroque period. Keywords: city, urban space, sacred topic, Tomsk, Wroclaw, Jerusalem, architectural allusion, cloister, calvary, mystery of Passion | 685 | |||||
| 155 | Architectural and landscape environment (spatial text) is considered as an important component spaces of social life. We discuss the possibility to extend submission to the spatial text by including natural formations. It is shown that the architectural value of the text occur in the process of operating architectonic, domain-functional and socio-symbolic codes. These codes serve as means of existence of the variety of functions of architecture. An appeal to the primary and secondary codes of interested and prepared subject is a complex condition of perception, understanding and assigning values of the architectural environment. Keywords: architectural environment, architectural text, semantics of architecture, semantic universe, codes | 684 | |||||
| 156 | The author present the results of the research into the change of mediation in the contemporary educational communication. I observe how those changes lead towards the change of the traditional role and functions of a teacher and educational communication in an educational event in particular. The objective of the presented research is to detect the interdependence between semiosis of education and the type of mediation in an educational situation. The author presents are opportunities and risks of innovative educational technology. In its basis is the ideology of the educational experiment of American scientists Gregory Bateson and Sigmunt Bauman. The training session is organized as a visual event. The mediator in the educational conflict is a static image (photo). Everything that happens in the classroom is fixed on the voice recorder. The second stage of my research work became the analysis of educational situations transcripts. At that stage we draw upon the practices of discourse analysis focused upon the relations between the participants of communication demonstrated in discourses. I believe that the interest to such ‘local’ (occurring in a classroom) could cast a light upon the nature of such interaction but also reveal the micro-processes occurring in educational community and practices. Keywords: iconic turn, visual stimulus, educational technology, visual artifact, educational event, educational conflict, presupposition, communicative strategy, communicative transgression, educational experiment | 684 | |||||
| 157 | The article is devoted to problems of the interpretation of the Mughal allegorical portrait. The author discusses the complex process of transformation of verbal signs into visual signs on a material of the pictorial panegyric. The article addresses the issues connected with various aspects of the visualization of concepts and motifs common in the Mughal culture. It is also shown that the formation of the royal portrait was influenced by political and socio-cultural realities of the time. Their introduction into visual text contributed to the actualization and concretization of the literary mythologems that formed the basis of the Mughal ideological programme. Keywords: mughal miniature, allegorical portrait, visual panegyric, badshah Jahangir | 681 | |||||
| 158 | The article analyses the plot of the story by Victor Astafiev “The Horse with the Pink Mane” in correlation with archetypic (biblical) motive of “temptation of wife”. The temptation motive is included, as a rule, into the subject structure designated in literary criticism as “a contract of a person with a devil”. The plot is formed by several motives. Based on work of Valeri Tyupa, we can distinguish the following: temptation and casting-off of a person from the world order; partnership with infernal helper-wrecker; remorse, the intercession of a sinner and, as consequence, their reunion with the world order. The plot of the story by Victor Astafiev, as a whole, follows this invariant scheme. When analyzing the story, a special attention is given to visualization techniques that make out the temptation motive at different levels of the poetics of the story. First, the spatial organization of the story is interpreted, in which the semantics of an ascension and descent / fall is developed, as well as harmonious coexistence with the world and the loss of “world order”, casting-off from a paradise house. Second, the techniques of the creation of characters’ images are investigated. It is noted, that, first of all, this is an autobiographical story about the childhood created on the basis of the poetics of psychologism. However, the writer uses “double coding”: the image of Sanka is one of a rural hooligan boy but simultaneously refers to the image of the serpent / “demon” (“blood-shot” eyes, a head with bumps, foul language, advances with the “evil spirit” and so forth). In the story by Victor Astafiev, as well as in the Bible story, there is the problem of a free will linked not to the tempter (he doesn’t have to make a choice) but to the tempted one (autobiographical hero Vitka). A symbolical allusion plan is extremely important for understanding of the author’s concept of the work: introducing a private, household history in a biblical context, the writer expresses confidence, that a fatal choice is made by each person, and a small temptation has essential consequences (loss of harmony with the world, despair, destruction of a soul). It is essential that the central character of the story though does not feel the correlation of his life with the biblical story (the author conveys this correlation), draws a conclusion about malignancy of his choice. In the context of the development of a temptation motive in the story, the images of wild strawberry and spice-cake in the form of a horse are interpreted. Fall and purifying remorse of the main character is shown by Victor Astafiev by the episodes of tasting of wild strawberry and “crying out” the strawberry tears accordingly. The image of spice-cake on the form of a horse is polysemantic. The ambivalent semantics of a horse is accented in it: on the one hand, a symbol of liberty, a victory of low passions over spirituality/moral principles, on the other hand, a horse is a solar symbol and the image of Saint George’s helper. The image of a horse serves in the story to the expression of the author’s thought that the same means can be used in harm and in the blessing. Sanka by manipulating Vitka’s desire to receive a spice-cake (associated by him with permissiveness, freedom), inclines him to a temptation, to a deceit; and grandmother Katerina Petrovna gives him a horse with the pink mane not only to punish him by shaming but also loving him. And this grandmother’s gift and forgiveness gives a moral lesson for Vitka and metaphorically marks the victory of “angels” over “demons” in the soul of the small hero of the story. Effective means for “fishing of people” is not an intimidation but forgiveness and love, not a whip but a spice-cake. Keywords: poetics of the visual, spatial poetics, Victor Astafiev, Siberian literature, the image of a child in literature, temptation motive | 681 | |||||
| 159 | The article analyzes individual semantic structures that have an external and internal nature and help in the process of creating an actor’s image. The author is interested in precisely the problem associated with determining the place of the actor’s personality in his screen character. We can formulate some aspects of the actor’s influence on the consciousness and lifestyle of the viewer and society on the example of documentary films about three famous actors. The specificity of the actor’s personality becomes an part integral of his screen hero. The analysis of the films reveals the opportunity to explain and prove that Cary Grant creates on the screen an image that he would like to be in reality, while Jean-Paul Belmondo projects his human credo onto his screen character, and Heath Ledger ceases to exist as a person in each role, dissolving into it. The semantic core of “alter ego” in the screen image is filled with meaning depending on the internal settings of each, that is, it is purely individual, it is inevitable in the profession of a movie actor. Keywords: the Hollywood star, inner and outer transformation, duality, the process of getting into the image, the screen image, the romantic hero type | 674 | |||||
| 160 | The present paper deals with the relationship between the visual image and the poetic text in the emblematic message of the hagiographic art of baroque. Specifically two different traditions of the 17th–18th centuries, namely the Cretan and the Russian, were studied by the typical examples of the icon “Μέγας εἶ, Κύριε” (“Great Art Thou, O Lord”) by Ioannis Kornaros and the iconographic type of the “Living cross”. The comparative analyses of the function of the poetic text – the homonymous prayer of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem and the religious poem of Silvestre Medvedev – on these icons revealed that in spite of the obvious differences there are certain common features which correspond to the general trends of the changing role of the icons in the European spiritual and social context. Keywords: talking icons, emblem, Baroque, Cretan school, Ioannis Kornaros, Silvestre Medvedev, Living Cross, St. Sophronius of Jerusalem | 672 | |||||
| 161 | 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 | 671 | |||||
| 162 | The phenomenon of social practices and paternity comprehended in the context of a change of philosophical paradigms are considered. The “traditional” and “absence” fatherhood is examined by the author as a consequence of the binary conceptualization of gender in the classical philosophical discourse. An interpretation of the Universe throughout opposition to each other of the different aspects of reality (spiritual / physical, sensible / sensory, transcendent / immanent, etc.) is closely related with the existence in the cultural space of an ideal of estranged, rational father-man focused on out of family self-realization. Modern transformation of the father image, the appearance of “entrained” paternity trend are considered as a specific cultural implication of overcoming dualistic principle in modern philosophical ontology and anthropology. Display of photographs named “Fatherhood as a measure of a man” is conceptualized in the article as visual proof of overcoming the classic style in philosophy. Keywords: duality, binarity, masculinity, “absent father”, “traditional father”, “involved father”, “father’s revolution” | 668 | |||||
| 163 | Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge where the most significant scientific breakthroughs take place in the 21st century. They are significant both for the development of convergent technologies and for the dissemination of interdisciplinary and integrative trends in research that connect areas previously thought of as completely incompatible, including natural sciences and the humanities. The author shows that in cognitive science, despite the highly theorized and narrowly special focus of many its areas of research, visual images are quite often and productively used. Some of them, such as a cognitive map, cognitive niche, cognitive landscape, cognitive field that echoes the concept of a dynamic field in Gestalt psychology, the wandering around the field of meanings, a search tree are discussed in the article. A special role is also played by mental imagery, which forms a basis for the work of productive imagination and creative thinking, studied in cognitive psychology. It is substantiated in the article that such visualization tools are essential not only as initial “scaffolding” for the development of theoretical concepts, but also for clarifying the nuances of the meaning of complex scientific constructions. In addition, in today’s cognitive science, the phenomenological approach and the so-called “first-person methodology” are gaining popularity, taking into account that the meaning of theoretical constructions begins to live and work, being unpacked in the lifeworld of each particular personality. Thus, the inseparability of figurative visual knowledge and abstract verbal knowledge gets additional justification through the understanding of the inseparability of the ordinary and scientific knowledge. Keywords: visual thinking, visual images, imagination, cognitive map, cognitive niche, cognitive landscape, meaning, phenomenal consciousness. | 668 | |||||
| 164 | 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 | 665 | |||||
| 165 | The article describes the situation of changing perceptions of the human habitat by the example of city images and city plans. It is shown that the image of an ideal utopia city is inferior to the image of the city as a way of life and habitat. As a result, there is a transition from attempts to accurately image and seize the city and space in maps and schemes that metrically preserve the image object on a scale, to describing the city and space in the idea of the cartoid. The cardoid here is understood as a sign-symbolic image of the mode of action when a person masters space. The author shows that the cartoid as an idea and method naturally arose in the situation of the need to describe a person’s navigation, if necessary, to routing them their progress and mastering the space. The article gives examples of maps and cartoids of specific cities and territories. Keywords: city, city image, city anthropology, city space, map, cartoid, navigation, region | 661 | |||||
| 166 | 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 | 661 | |||||
| 167 | 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 | 660 | |||||
| 168 | 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 | 660 | |||||
| 169 | 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 | 659 | |||||
| 170 | Representation is the presentation of one thing in another and through another. The purpose of the article is to consider the applicability of the principle of representation to photographic experience, the article discusses the reasons why images appear in culture. Images are not just a cast or a duplicate of an object. It is not just reproducing the forms of the already visible world, but rather producing forms that are just becoming visible in the world. After a talented draftsman, as well as a photographer, the world grows in terms of the visible. The scope of a person's communicative competence includes the task of not only learning to speak. To get used to light is to learn to see and to learn to be visible, and to use light in this sense is just as important as to use the alphabet. The mirror in culture anticipated photography. The mirror helped make the image that others wanted to see real. In the experience of perception, various activities intersect: bodily, figurative, and symbolic. The symbols are what passes between the subject of communication, they define the horizontal vector of the connection of people. Images are not necessarily involved in exchange and tend to be integral and continuous, just like sacred objects. The visual turn is not that scientists have suddenly "discovered" images for themselves and for others, and are ready to "close" the language world. The turn is the refusal to recognize the "natural" dominance of symbols in the turnover of visual images. Human sensuality was not lucky in the modern era. A person of this era was primarily expected to be able to rationally represent reality for its interpretation. If any formations other than "intelligence" were found on the human side, they had to be reduced to "non-intelligence" with ritual regrets. Emotions, feelings, and affects were identified as natural, but not cultural, entity. The article presents arguments that refute the assumptions that photography is a representative system of a language type. It is shown that judgments about "reading photos" are only metaphors, which means that the function of photography in culture is not limited to the transmission of information. Being as a visual system, photography is primarily addressed to feelings and emotions. The article considers the arguments of proponents of non-representative theory which reject interpretative methodologies. In the non-representative approach, emotions are considered as thinking. Such thinking unfolds in the categories of body (gesture) and affect, this thinking is different from verbal thinking. Thought is placed in action, and action is placed in the world, the cognitive and affective in experience are not in conflict. Representative and non-representative theories come from different styles of thinking, and the choice of this style determines the boundary of the representation principle. Keywords: image, technogenic media, the perception of photographs, representation, non-representative approach, cognitive, affective | 658 | |||||
| 171 | The space of social existence is considered as a “social reality, projected on its territory”. The spatial dimension of relations between society and government is understood as the phenomenon of the existence of special power spaces – contamination of architecture, landscape and regulating power relations. It shows the existence of predictors of the architecture and layout of these spaces of power, the semantics of which is a continuous differentiated, transformed and receives new historical, cultural, regional and individual psychological coloring. Keywords: architectural environment, space of power, predictors, semantics | 654 | |||||
| 172 | The article reviews the development of prosthetic limbs (arms and legs), particularly, their visual transformation over the time. Traumas are imprinted on the spiritual and physical condition of a particular individual, people “with disabilities” can lose jobs or significantly reduce their productivity. The possibility of reparation by means of prosthetics definitely has a positive effect both for the individual and society as a whole. Prosthetics develops in parallel with the development of technology and allows people with “disabilities”/“additional requirements” to have a full life: cope with everyday life, work, sports, travel, have hobbies, participate in the Paralympics, etc. Bionics (or biomimetics) is an applied discipline, which studies the applications of principles of organization and functioning of living matter in the creation of technical systems and devices. Bionic prostheses (biological prostheses) are artificial analogues, which structurally and functionally imitate the operation of the lost organ. In the article, the author mainly focuses on prosthetic arms and legs. There is a number of challenges in creating artificial organs and limbs under the apparent progress in bionic prosthetics: the imperfection of the design, limitations in signal transmission, high price. General trends in prosthetics give scientists, technicians, physicians, anthropologists, philosophers and other researchers hope and reason to make both optimistic and negative predictions associated with the introduction and development of technology, computers, robotics, and prosthetics. This entails issues not only in technology, but also in philosophy and ethics. Do technological effects on humans (NBICS technologies, creation of laboratory creatures, hybrids, chimeras, cyborgs and the extension of the modifications of human nature) have a therapeutic nature, or do they aim at improving humans in the eugenic trans-humanist sense? We observe how today’s reality and visions of the future are formed by semiotic means. Visual symbolism is a dominant tool in these processes. We can conclude that this domination leads to new ways of adaptation: adaptation to the preservation of one’s own identity with the aggression of the visual environment. Thus, there are new people with a different personality that need new forms of protection. The author refers to bioethics as an interdisciplinary system, which is designed to protect and respect life, personality and autonomy. It is important to treat patient’s autonomy with respect as the basic rule and principle of bioethics. In defining this principle, it is necessary to consider that respect for autonomy is in many ways attention to individuality. People can determine their identity and destiny due to scientific discoveries. The assumptions and conclusions are made concerning the increased value of the visual component of modern bionic prostheses. In the past, prostheses were designed mainly to hide, to disguise, to compensate for the lost functions, but now they also become an important part of visual expression, attraction of attention, even epatage. Keywords: bionics, bioethics, bionic prosthesis | 654 | |||||
| 173 | 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 | 652 | |||||
| 174 | The “philosophical horizon” of modern European science was not formed exclusively by the efforts of the scientific community. The ground for the scientific revolution of the modern era was also prepared by the art of Alberti, Leonardo and other masters of the Renaissance. The Renaissance art theory and practice testify to the visual elaboration of the philosophical and conceptual guidelines which were later to become the basis of modern European science. This also includes such principles as geometrization of nature and science, overcoming of the Aristotelian and scholastic gap between physics and mathematics, between the natural and the artificial, between the superlunar and sublunar worlds. Renaissance artists fitted the celestial and the terrestrial into geometric shapes such as pyramids, triangles, etc. The theory and practice of Renaissance painting recognized geometry as a universal law valid both for the superlunar and sublunar worlds. The mathematical principles of nature were developed by Renaissance masters in the form of the theory of perspective and the theory of proportions. It should be noted that the Renaissance mathematical perspective did not derive from comprehending phenomena, but was brought into the real world as a compositional basis. This implies that Renaissance artists started from the a priori assumption of the mathematical order of nature and then tried to confirm this thesis at the visual level through representation of the corporeal world using the mathematical law of perspective and the theory of proportions. Renaissance artists realized that things made with men’s hands and those created by God are to the same extent subject to the same natural laws. The drawings of Leonardo can be interpreted as the visualization of engineering thinking which extends not only to mechanisms but also to natural objects and the human body structure. Leonardo’s anatomical studies can be regarded as engineering drawings which visually demonstrate the structure of the represented object. In this regard, the drawings of Leonardo foreshadowed the formulation of the mechanistic principle which turned to be one of the most important ones in modern European science, and which asserted the absence of a fundamental difference between the natural and the mechanical. The example of Renaissance painting demonstrates that fundamental philosophical conceptions as well as ideological shifts, transition to new fundamental ideas concerning space, time and the place of man in the universe, are simultaneously expressed in more than one way. In particular, they can be represented in visual images, in a sign-and-symbol form, in scientific conceptions, in philosophy, literature and art of a certain period. There are constant exchanges between different cultural practices as, for example, between philosophy, science and art: communication, exchange of information, translation from a sign and symbol language into a figurative one and vice versa, visualization of non-image information. Keywords: visual, modern European science, Renaissance painting, theory of perspective, theory of proportions | 650 | |||||
| 175 | People are compelled to change their approach to education because of the current trends: the uncertainty in the world of the future occupations, the idea of education throughout life, education for the purpose of personal growth. These trends allow one to navigate in a rapidly changing world and to easily learn a new specialization; they force a person to receive a more “extensive” education, on the one hand, and a more “compact” education, on the other. In any case, in a short period of time, a person needs to learn a large amount of information, to acquire new skills. It is necessary to use time effectively. Therefore, it becomes very important to increase the effectiveness of education, the methods of transmission and perception of information that must be learned. All this together makes it appropriate to use educational technologies related to personality development and students’ active inclusion in the educational process. The complex of these factors requires the creation of study kits that would competently organize visual education on the basis of neuroscience research. Semiotic diagnostics of these kits shows how to correctly combine and use them without harm to the individual, taking into account the physiological, cultural characteristics, and personal needs. For effective training, it is necessary to take into account the individual characteristics of the brain, the individual needs of a person, especially the transmission and perception of information. The purposeful organization of the educational process is the embodiment of knowledge about how the brain learns: writing lecture notes by hand, the need for periodic repetition of information. Modern man’s overload with information makes them return to reading paper books, writing lecture notes on paper, using markers and studying in a library for successful effective learning. Visual information is remembered better. Much of the information in the learning process is represented visually, at least in the form of lecture notes. Thus, it is relevant to determine the optimal ratio in the use of types of visual educational aids and study kits. Keywords: semiotics diagnostics, neuroscience, neuropedagogy, synergetics, perception of visual information, education | 650 | |||||
| 176 | 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 | 645 | |||||
| 177 | 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 | 642 | |||||
| 178 | The article examines the historical trends in icons display throughout the entire period of its existence as a museum object. Museum display of icons which started about a century and a half ago has always reflected relations between museum, society and power as well as changes in understanding of the phenomenon of a museum item as such. Throughout all this time, the status of an icon in a museum space, its interpretation and various ways of display have always been under discussion. The uniqueness of an icon lies in the fact that it gives a vivid opportunity to trace the transformation of meaning of an object when it becomes a museum item, i.e. is transferred from one context to another. The present museum analysis declares that museum is not a neutral storage space for monuments or information. It actively shapes the frames of perception, endows the exhibits with meaning and even grants them the status of the norm and obviousness, actively forming cultural identity. When an object is removed from its initial environment and included in a museum exhibition as a museum item it loses its original meaning, thus acquiring a new, different interpretation. The display policies and museum design have always been the tools with which a museum developed new meanings. As for icons, the opportunity to trace the change of their meaning depending on the ways of display is of interest. For example, how an icon is removed from the sacral context and acquires its secular meaning, how the sacral context is recreated within the secular space of a museum exhibition. Several periods can be distinguished in the history of museum existence of icons. In the 19th-century display the icon detached itself from its sacral space and was regarded as an object for collecting or academic research, thus confirming the value of rational perception. In the early 20th century, museums made first attempts to return to icons their sacral context, but not the ceremonial one, but the philosophic and esthetic. In the 1930s, the exhibitions maximally levelled both the connection of an icon with its native sacral context and its interpretation as a philosophic and esthetic phenomenon. It turned into a historical document, an illustration for educational stories or ideological thesis. By the end of the 20th century, Old Russian Painting items were perceived as masterpieces of art affording an opportunity of aesthetic enjoyment. The current approach synthesizes all previously used ways of display. Nevertheless, placement of icons into their sacral contexts recreated by means of various exhibition methods has become common practice. Thus, all the above mentioned ways of display of icons at different stages of their museum existence show, nevertheless, certain recurrence. Under their impact, an icon is perceived either as a sacral or a profane object. Explanations underlying the exhibition methods of sacralization/desacralization of icons were certainly absolutely different, though they don’t hamper the ability to see typological similarities between common strategies. For all that, only the values forming predominant visual strategies of particular time can influence display practices. Keywords: museum design, boundary, icon, context, display policies, sacral, secular. | 642 | |||||
| 179 | 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 | 641 | |||||
| 180 | 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 | 632 | |||||
| 181 | 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 | 631 | |||||
| 182 | The modern era can rightly be called the era of criticism. All that can be done can be done better; therefore, almost any achievement or decision, primarily of politicians and entrepreneurs (but not least of all of scientists, designers, architects, writers and even people of art), is accompanied by protest or criticized. Achievements or decisions either affect personal rights, or threaten the environment, or damage cultural, gender, national or religious identities. At the same time, protest should be presented in a bright visual form. Any protest slogan should receive an additional symbolic refinement or extension. Symbols can be understandable or require few thinking efforts; and both these conditions should not harm the overall transparency of the protest function. These symbols of protest oppose metaphorically encoded video sequences to the complex party programs. The decoding of protest symbols is not difficult (“anything goes”) and provides a general understanding and unity of the protesters (or its illusion that, in general, does not change things). The symbolic visualization of the unifying values of protest (e.g., of the collective rejection of suffering or of the rights loss) and its decoding compensate the lack of a generalized symbolic means of communication, which is a guaranteed means of achieving communicative success. Such a symbolic visualization would ensure that any participant of protest communication has their contact request accepted, that is, addressed to other participants. Such communicatively generalizing symbols or media (power, truth, money, faith) belong to classical macro-systems (the ones of politics, science, economy, religion), which allows these systems to solve the main communicative problem, to provide collective actions, and to coordinate common interests and decisions. But protest communication, on the contrary, is dispersed into several heterogeneous key topics. The debate on these topics integrates communities and institutionalizes these communications into such social movements as feminism, environmentalism, anti-globalism, etc. However, unlike the clear communicative symbols of the political and economic systems, the absence of such a generalizing symbol in protest communication is not a competitive advantage. In the article, the authors consider the communicative and symbolic resources of protest communication that have been developed during the Internet network epoch as a functional compensation for its thematic fragmentation in the absence of a single unifying symbol. Keywords: visualization of protest communication, system-communicative approach, activism, social networks | 630 | |||||
| 183 | The author starts from the premise that the second volume of Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres contains the conception of what could be called cartographic dispositif and tries to reconstruct separate provisions of this conception and relate them with some ideas made by contemporary specialized studies on the history of cartography. One of the main points, which Sloterdijk shares with these studies on maps and cartography, is that maps are too complex to be simple expression of spatial facts. Inscribing arguments about cartography in context of own theory of terrestrial globalization, Sloterdijk shows that cartographers were among its main actors and maps and globes of Earth were among its basic representational mechanisms and practical tools. The article provides description of what exactly was said by Sloterdijk about cartography and cartographic representations, extremely powerful tools of visualization and epistemic accumulation, but at the same time of political and economical control and of re-ordering of space. The main conclusion of the article is that Sloterdijk’s conception of cartography is in a unique position to support the sense of dizzying and intriguing complexity of cartographic representation and its historical types and forms (their very diversity is good enough reason for dizziness). This sense stands against deceptive obviousness (“we all know what a map is”), generated by equally deceptive “democratization of maps”, their pervasive presence and everyday uses. And if, as Matthey Edney says, “a map is representation of space complexity”, the very map is complex, being a strange hybrid of intelligible and empirical, theoretical and obvious, imaginary and real, what is seen and what is read, scientifical and political, actual and virtual, representation and performativе. But maybe this principal complexity of cartographic representation makes it a worthwhile object of research and fascination. Keywords: globe, map, cartography, cartographic dispositif, visualization, Sloterdijk | 628 | |||||
| 184 | The academic discipline “Methodological bases of visual anthropology” is taught in the Philosophy faculty of the Tomsk State University for master’s degree students in the direction of “sociology” from 2012. Master students acquire the skill of system theoretical explication of anthropological meanings contained in the photographic image, as part of the study of this discipline. They demonstrate their competence in this area in the respective thematic essays devoted to the conceptual interpretation of photo selected by them. Here are some work of master student in sociology, devoted to the analysis of the photographic image from the perspective of visual anthropology. Keywords: photography, visual anthropology, analysis of images | 627 | |||||
| 185 | 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 | 624 | |||||
| 186 | 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 | 624 | |||||
| 187 | The report discusses methodological tools for overcoming the extremes of the positivist and hermeneutic strategies for studying the city. Attention is drawn to individual differences between cities and urban life phenomena. The possibilities and subject areas of typology, phenomenology, topology as conceptual approaches to studying the individuality of cities are analyzed. The author introduces the concepts of studying the individuality of cities: topoi of the urban environment, everyday practices of citizens, the habitus of the city. It is shown that in the topological perspective the city looks like a “puzzle” of vital worlds, as a composition of qualitatively defined places – topoi. The concept of everyday practices of citizens is considered as a connecting link, a medium between the structure of the city and the meanings of its inhabitants. The methodological idea of the city habitus is to bring together different aspects of city life into a single model, showing their interdependence: gestalts, narratives, production and consumption practices, economic trends, cultural schematizations. The report substantiates the value of the concept ‘city habitus’, explores the observed circumstances of the city habitus existence and the conditions for its formation. Keywords: image of city, topos of city life, everyday practices, types of cities, city habitus | 624 | |||||
| 188 | It’s about blurring the boundaries of documentary and artistic photography. The difference of time, which we experience today, is that the documentation often serves as documentation of the same document, or otherwise, it works with the image of the document. The symptoms that we find in all spheres of science, politics, economics. In the Humanities the Sciences appear more related with the dimension of the images subjects: visual anthropology, visual sociology, visual ecology. Symptomatic in this context is the attempt of historians of philosophy to work with images of ancient philosophers, the interest in visualizing the categories of education, to everyday photos. Keywords: vernissage, visual anthropology, visual ecology, documentation, expression body, gesture, portrait | 622 | |||||
| 189 | The article reveals the principal stylistic and semantic features of screen adaptation of Russian classics by the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. The emphasis is on the transfer of texts Leskov and Dostoevsky on screen. Andrzej Wajda analyzes the nature of female and male love, as well as the aspect of obsession with the idea. Using the devices of Kabuki theater in adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel ‘Idiot’, Andrzej Wajda expands the semantic field of death’s and love’s aesthetics. The specificity of the Slavic soul is attained through the combination of different cultural stratums. Keywords: screen adaptation, Andrzej Wajda, Kabuki theater, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Russian classical literature, Slavic soul, obsession with the idea, destructive power of love | 621 | |||||
| 190 | The article is devoted to the great film director Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990), his Habitus (sociocultural behavior), and unique personality. Special attention is paid to the semiosis of privacy and of social space. Parajanov’s photographs, as well as textual and visual artifacts (collages, movies, letters, and scripts) are comprised the main empirical material for the present paper. The methodological basis for the description was theory of Pierre Bourdieu and semiotic metalanguage. In the course of describing the Habitus of S. Parajanov, the author presents him as a representative of cultural border, a hybrid human, since Parajanov was a carrier of different cultures (Armenian, Georgian, Russian, and Ukrainian). A special place in the article is given to the interior of his Tbilisi apartment, the “real” component, as well as to the syntagmatic series of cultural artifacts. Special attention is also paid to the semiotic space of the toilet, its ironic, humorous and political context. The visual material provided an opportunity to analyze the structure of the Italian courtyard in Tbilisi, as well as the performances, the photo session of the great director in his own social space. S. Parajanov turned his vivid space into a holiday, aestheticized food, invented performances for guests. An important point for describing Parajanov’s Habitus was also prisoner “atavism”, a subculture of the Soviet camp, as well as a description of its hierarchical status in the zone. The reasons of the “aggression” of the Soviet establishment against. S. Parajanov are outlined and described as being connected with his playful-political performance (greetings of the demonstrators through L. Brezhnev’s eye) and a speech in front of cultural figures which “prepared” the ground for the fabricated criminal case, culminating in an eventual five-year term in a strict regime colony. An analysis of the empirical material showed that the great director worked not only while making masterpiece films, but also in the utilitarian space. His Tbilisi apartment was not only a living space, but also a creative laboratory, a workshop, a wardrobe room, and finally, a theater. Parajanov’s habitus and biography are a brilliant example for describing the repressive Soviet power of not only the Stalinist, but also the Brezhnev era, which was intolerant in relation to creative individuals. The «volcanic» nature of S. Parajanov became a prerequisite for the destruction of genre and value traditions. His outrageous, humorous, ironic thinking created performances, breaking the boundaries of the real and virtual. It was in this context that his apartment turned into a theater, a museum and a studio. With his way of thinking he destroyed the generally accepted functions of the private space; the toilet was turned into a museum, a gallery for the presentation of his diplomas, a space of outrageous, ironic and humorous texts (some sort of a “luggage room”). Parajanov’s self-irony, irony, sarcasm, extraordinary outrageous thinking became prerequisites for playing with the Soviet “sacred” values, for creating an anti-text of his era, and it was also a generator of his unique cultural habitus, performances and poetics. Keywords: Sergei Parajanov, semiotics of behavior, semiotics of interior, private space, semiotics of toilets, hierarchy of thieves, microhistory, Old Tiflis | 619 | |||||
| 191 | The aim of the work is to characterize the image of the frog (pāa) in the oral folk art of the Khakas. Based on the goal, the following tasks were set: to analyze the folklore and ethnographic information and to identify the key constituent elements of this mythological being, to discover the semantic links of its image with natural objects and elements. The chronological framework of the work covers the end of the 19th – middle of the 20th centuries. The choice of such time limits is determined by the state of the source base for the research topic. The work is based on an integrated, system-historical approach to the study of the past. The research methodology is based on historical and ethnographic methods – a scientific description, a concrete historical, semantic and relic analysis. As a result of the analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1) the frog was given an important place in the culture of the Khakas. This reality was due both to the prevalence of this animal in the nature of Khakassia, and specifically because of its zoological specificity; 2) in the mythological perception, the specified amphibian was endowed with contradictory dual characteristics and caused mixed feelings in people, often negative ones. In the traditional consciousness of the people, the frog’s unpresentable appearance contained the repulsive intrinsic qualities of its character, which was reflected in folklore and verbal magic; 3) in the ideas of the people, the designated amphibian, as a creature that lives in two elements – water and land, was consistently associated with the Lower World. Moreover, its image is often introduced into mythological and fairy-tale schemes with the participation of other chthonic animals, for example, mice, snakes and lizards. In the Khakas oral folk art, the entire life support system of the demonic characters of the underworld, which included housekeeping and food, was directly connected with this amphibian; 4) animalistic images presented in folklore can be considered not only as purely symbolic, but also as totemic representations; 5) great importance was attached to the image of the frog in the shamanic practice. The animal in question had a direct relationship with both the spirit master of the water – sug eezi, and the lord of the underworld – Erlik Khan. The identified specificity of the frog contributed to its inclusion in the composition of key shaman helpers who mediated between the world of underground spirits and people: 6) among shamanists worship of amphibians reached such a high level that a cult of the patron of sheep appeared, whose external data included amphibian and reptile features. This character carried out protective, protective and healing functions in relation to not only domestic animals, but also to people. Keywords: mythical image, myth, folklore, Khakas, frog, rites, shamanism. | 619 | |||||
| 192 | The article is devoted to the study of the features of visual carriers of the city’s cultural memory, which are one of the types of symbolic intermediaries that connect citizens and urban environment. The relevance of the research of cultural memory of the city is confirmed by the increased scientific interest to the problems of commemoration and mechanisms of structuring social forms of memory, and to the determination of collective ideas about the city. The functioning of the of the city’s cultural memory is supported by memory carriers as units of storage of the city’s culture significant elements (symbols, images, myths, etc.), which symbolically mark the urban environment. The author focuses on the visual carrier of the city’s cultural memory, which role is to accumulate, reproduce and translate the cultural meanings of the city, forming a visual matrix of urban memory. The methodology of the study of the city’s cultural memory is not yet formed, but the author gives a number of techniques to identify significant cultural meanings as fragments of urban memory. In addition to the use of cognitive, semiotic and sociological categories in the study, a certain methodological potential refers to a communicative paradigm that focuses on the analysis of the processes of generating cultural meanings of the city and their representation in the space of the city. The specificity of the functioning of the city’s cultural memory is illustrated by the example of the author’s 2016–2018 study of visual meanings of Veliky Novgorod, which transfer the key layers of urban memory. The author suggests to consider four main groups of translators of visible information about the city’s past as visual carrier of city’s cultural memory. The author identifies and substantiates features of visual carriers of the city’s cultural memory. The obtained results can be a starting point for further studies of the city’s cultural memory. The applied significance of this research is part of the intellectual capital that can be used by urban elites of each particular city in solving the problems of the policy of the city’s cultural memory associated with the creation of collective ideas about the city, including the image of the city. Keywords: city, city’s cultural memory, commemoration, visual memory, cultural meanings | 617 | |||||
| 193 | 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 | 615 | |||||
| 194 | The contemporary art world – namely, the current artistic and cultural situation, which emerged at the beginning of the Twentieth century – has led to a process of profound rethinking of the relationship between art and law. This relationship is inherent in the very concept of art and is as old as the history of the arts. In particular, the relationship between art and law, as it has structured itself from the beginning of the Twentieth century, has two vital functions – one of which is intrinsic to the concept of art, the other being extrinsic – the understanding of which is essential to investigate the contemporary art world. Keywords: Art, Ontology, Embodied Meanings, Normativity | 610 | |||||
| 195 | 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 | 610 | |||||
| 196 | The article deals with a number of problems related to theoretical and applied aspects of the university role in various models: as a supporter in the economy of survival or as a driver of technological and socio-economic changes in the era of smart cities. The article goal is to prove the leading role of the university in both the educational and socio-economic areas of the city and region development. The academic relevance of the research is supported by the international economic processes Russia has become a member of, such as the movement of smart cities, the Trianon dialogue (Russia – France) at a high level. Using the Tomsk case, we demonstrated the achievements of universities in the socio-economic changes of the country. Based on historical examples, relevant studies of major urbanists and the author’s ten-year experience of comparative studies of cities, we show how the University can organize city and region social space. The fails associated with the reduction of meaning and uncritical handling of popular theories are analyzed. The article put forward an algorithm of the collaboration of city and university. We use methods of comparing city policies toward the university, historical reconstruction of successful cooperation projects between university and city, analysis, and participant observation during the decision-making process. Problematization of issue solving begins with an analysis of the reduction of theory meaning. This reduction often results in fashionable slogans and transformation programs, which leads to a distortion of these theories and international experience. Such popular theories today include ‘smart’ and ‘creative’ cities. We agree with K. Nawratek, the British urbanist, that such projects are doomed to failure without including the interests of the citizen and the community. The gap with meaning and technocratic abstractness are confirmed on the example of two relevant projects “Smart Grove” and “Living Laboratory” (Tomsk case). We reconstruct the figurative and semantic model of the university grove as the visual space of Siberia and the image of its civilized future. Using the example of the living laboratory of BMW and the Guggenheim Foundation, we reveal the interaction of the city authorities of New York and residents concerning improving the living climate and appearance of the metropolis. Raising the problem of living cities, we consistently consider the university role in the city. We support our position, referencing to an article, published by R. Florida (August 2019), dedicated to the rankings of 50 American cities, which is based on the percentage of university graduates. This confirms the role of the university in the modern knowledge economy, the potential for smart cities development or trivially – for improving the city and region economy. Referencing G. Ave’s publication, the Cleveland case and the projects of the Tomsk university campus, we concluded that to form a university city today means living a full social life. Keywords: university cities, visual environment, meaning, image, creativity, living labs, living city, Russia. | 606 | |||||
| 197 | 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. | 605 | |||||
| 198 | Great playwrights, whose names are associated with the “golden age” of the ancient Greek theater, often put on tragedies on the same subjects and even with the same names. Turning to the existing interpretations or creating new ones, they tried to teach a lesson to the city and instruct its audience-students on a certain interpretation of the current events. The polemic between the authors of the ancient Greek tragedies gave an additional flavor to the theatre agons, and the polemic between the modern researchers studying it has created a space for an interdisciplinary dialogue on the features of the ancient visual culture, amongst other things. In the article, a comparative analysis of three versions of the mythological plot about Orestes and Electra, presented in the tragedy by Aeschylus “The Libation Bearers” and the tragedies of the same name “Electra” by Euripides and Sophocles, is carried out. These ancient Greek playwrights represent a hierarchy of the significance of the main characters – the brother and the sister, who are carrying out a plan of vengeance for the death of their father Agamemnon, through the hierarchy of their virtues and life principles. The comparison of the three tragedies is carried out according to a scheme that allows you to see these hierarchies: 1) at the beginning of the tragedy, where the first meeting of Orestes and Electra, during which they begin to try to assert their right to instruct themselves and others, takes place; 2) at the moments when the heroes come into conflict in point of who has the right to instruct under the supervision of the gods as the supreme instructors, and in what subjects; 3) at the end of the tragedy, when the heroes see the results of their instructions. The city, in which the tragic action unfolds, is either narrowing down to the particular family, where everyone thinks of himself as a mentor to the others, or expanding to the intellectual and political community of citizens who can be instructed by the example of their rulers. Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles offer the reader / spectator different “formats” of visual instructions in which the divine will and human desires are combined. In addition to the ancient Greek literary tradition, the mythological subjects about Orestes and Electra were reflected in the material culture (ancient Greek vases, relief images and bronze artifacts), which is another level of visualization of the instructions, this visualization being primary to the theater in some cases, and secondary in others. The tradition of depicting the mythological scenes about Orestes and Electra on the artifacts had taken shape long before the theatrical productions of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, partly predetermining their “discourse of the word’ and “discourse of the image”, and being partly transformed under their influence. Keywords: anthropology of city, visual instructions, theatrical visualization, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Electra, discourses of word and image in the ancient Greek drama | 604 | |||||
| 199 | 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 | 603 | |||||
| 200 | Although there exists a considerable number of research works on the semiotic nature of education, they do not provide a comprehensive idea of the semiotic context of pedagogical education. The article considers the issues of hierarchization of sign systems and the part they play in pedagogical students’ development as professional teachers. To characterize the semiotic context of pedagogical education, the author of the article addresses A.B. Solomonik’s pyramid of sign systems. In connection with this classification, he distinguishes two goals of pedagogical education. The first one is connected with the use of sign systems for the determination and application of the content of a school subject pedagogical students learn in order to transfer it to schoolchildren. In this context, the relevance of semiotic research and its development has three aspects: semiotics of school subject content visualization; semiotics of educational process visualization based on the modern capabilities of technical educational aids, information and communication technologies; semiotics of pedagogical communication. The second goal is associated with the application of the semiotic pyramid for systematization and transmission of the general professional culture to student teachers. However, pedagogy as a science does not have formalized sign systems of the first and second orders of the considered classification. In this study, stereotypes (representations, images, forms of behavior) that determine the dynamics of the student teacher’s professional development act as units of sign systems. The development of pedagogical culture stereotypes in students determines their further professional and personal progress. The description of sign systems of four stages is given. (1) Natural sign systems. These are elementary ideas about relationships, characteristic of interaction between the student and the teacher, which reflect life experience obtained by the student prior to their professional education. (2) Image systems. These include stereotypes that characterize pedagogical university applicants’ ideas of the system of lessons and its attributes thus forming the image of the traditionally existing school. Stereotypes may have both positive and negative properties. (3) Language systems. These are verbal texts containing theoretical information about a specific field of professional culture which suggests its individual assimilation by each student (lecture material, traditional educational tasks, etc.). A semiotic teaching model emerges. The professor introduces educational paradigms (metastereotypes of pedagogical ideas and forms of behavior) to the student in theory through language systems. (4) Notation systems. These include written texts (documents) reflecting pedagogical systems and technologies, educational programs and standards. A certain role in the development of stereotypes in student teachers belongs to lists of competencies and labor functions set by educational and professional standards. The article considers student teachers’ personal and professional development approach to pedagogical education which implies a practice-oriented system of education through the continuous solution of profession-oriented educational tasks. In this sense, teachers’ training is to reflect professional activities in terms of the emergence of a synergistic effect. Keywords: levels of sign systems, pedagogical education, content of education, educational process, general professional culture, stereotype | 599 | |||||