Audiovisual Culture Research Articles

A semiotic analysis of representations of maids in Greek movies of the 1950s and 60s

A variety of semiotic codes, for example, proxemics, kinesics, dress code, verbal code, usually construct specific representations in audiovisual culture. This paper explores the semiotic systems in synergy which seem to lead to consolidation of the social representations of maids in pop culture texts, such as Greek movies in the 1950s and 60s (the old Greek cinema era). The research questions explore the social representations which have been constructed and the ways in which the verbal and non-verbal signs of the maids can lead to the consolidation of their social image or even to a myth construction based on specific ideological perspectives. So, how do maids act in Greek movies in the 1950s and 60s? What does their performance signify? A semiotic analysis will examine all these questions through semiotic codes in those multimodal texts (Greek movies), selected from the field of the historically Greek pop culture texts. These verbal and non-ver-bal codes work coherently to translate the depiction of Greek society and culture and to convey connotative meanings.

The Un/Bearable Lightness of (Slow) Watching: Audiovisual Boredom as Stimulation

The twenty-first century has seen the biggest breakthrough as regards the production and distribution of audiovisual culture. Slow cinema and serials—in particular those coming to us via streaming platforms as full seasons to binge-watch—are a special case of such a breakthrough for they offer us a new dynamics of experiencing culture; dynamics that relies on a meticulous orchestration of boredom to stimulate our creative participation in culture. This article will demonstrate, on the basis of selected Mubi, HBO, and Netflix productions, how the clever playing out of (serial) boredom can affect viewers’ mental, emotional, and even physical capacity and how important it is for a more effective perception of the twenty-first-century—digital—reality to be able to actively manage our “boredom-activated” culture compass.

Image of Sakura in the visual culture of Japan: origins and transformations

The Sakura blossom is one of the most constant and recognizable visual symbols of Japanese culture. Its presence in various phenomena of artistic activity over the centuries forms a significant plot-topical complex. Therefore, the study of the origins, content transformations, reasons and means of broadcasting the image of Sakura will allow us to develop a panoramic vision of Japanese culture.
 The purpose of the article is to highlight the main stages of the evolution of the Sakura cult and its interpretation in various visual practices.
 In the research we used the methods of comparative, stylistic, semantic and content analysis. The source basis consists of pictorial and graphic works, samples of applied and audiovisual arts, materials of visual practices and field researches conducted by the author in 2005–2013 in Kanto and Kansai regions.
 The results. The article examines the origins and peculiarities of the formation of a plot-topical complex associated with the flowering of Sakura blossoms in Japanese culture, identifies the main stages of the evolution of the image of Sakura blossoms from seasonal to national and propaganda symbol. Special attention is paid to the interpretation of the image of Sakura in Shinto and Buddhism, the development of the o-hanami tradition as a religious and social-communicative practice. On the basis of the analysis of works of painting, engraving (ukiyo-e, shin-hanga), works of audiovisual culture, the leading motifs that reflect the semantic diversity of the image of Sakura and its meaningful transformations are highlighted. The role of the poetic tradition in the development of plots related to Sakura, the presence of references to classical poems in the structure of the works are emphasized. A group of the most widespread images-identifiers of flowering is defined: places (Yoshino, Arashiyama, Gotenyama), seasons (spring), poems, persons (beauty, samurai, kamikaze), historical figures (Ono-no Komachi, Hideyoshi), temples (Yasukuni).

ИТОГИ НАУЧНОГО СЕМИНАРА «ТЕОРИИ И ПРАКТИКИ ПРИКЛАДНЫХ КУЛЬТУРНЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ» 26 ОКТЯБРЯ 2022 ГОДА (МУЗЕЙНЫЙ ЦЕНТР «ПЛОЩАДЬ МИРА», КРАСНОЯРСК)

This text presents a summary of the work of the educational, scientific and methodological seminar "Theories and Practices of Applied Cultural Research" (October 26, 2022, Krasnoyarsk, Museum Center "Ploschad Mira"). The seminar was devoted to the presentation of topical art studies in accordance with memorable dates for the world of culture and art: 1) Compositional formulas in works of visual and audiovisual art; 2) Creation of archives as an actual form of audiovisual culture research; 3) Actual studies of cinematography: 65 years since the release of the film "The Cranes Are Flying" by M. Kalatozov, 85 years since the birth of Soviet screenwriter Gennady Shpalikov, 75 years since the birth of writer Stephen King; 4) History of publishing: 160 years since the birth of the Russian publisher Petr Petrovich Soykin.

Communication in Audiovisual Culture as a Separate Sign System

The relevance of the topic is that the development of the type of communication – sign and signal system, including based on the sensory characteristics of man as a whole organism – is an issue, at first glance, quite simple and obvious. But with the development of science, the rapid movement of scientific and technological progress, the emergence of theater, television– it turns out that the issue, in fact, is not fully disclosed, because it has its roots much deeper than it seems at first glance. The aim of the article is the direct cause-and-effect relationships between sign systems and communication in audiovisual culture. Methods such as analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, abstraction, concretisation and structuring of the obtained data were used. The article identifies one of the approaches to understanding communication in audiovisual culture. The specific features of modern media space are studied, its key characteristics are described. The problematic approach to the interpretation of communication as a separate plane for human interaction is pointed out. The issue of semiotic analysis of media space at three levels is studied. It was found that semiotic analysis allows identifying in more detail the way of organising, structuring the story and how the content is transmitted through the general architecture of the text. The problems of behavioural analysis of the framing effect are identified. It is established that the paralinguistic system acquires special significance as a method of media coding. It is confirmed that each film is the embodiment of a universal form of history.

Editorial: Variability of Discourses of Modern Reality in the Linguistic Dimension

IntroductionIn the conditions of a new digital reality, the linguistic and literary world has become even richer of a great variety of discourses. The studies presented in this issue cover a wide scope of subjects, including research on the communicative and linguistic features of the political, public, philosophical, comic, marketing and advertising discourses; analysis of the significance of emotions in human communication; investigation of the role of relationships between sign systems and communication in audiovisual culture; research on the specific features and breadth of the mode of understanding certain cultural, folklore and historical phenomena at the intersection of various humanities and social sciences. The fact that the authors of the publications conducted their research at different levels of the national languages (phonological, phonetic, grammatical, morphological, stylistic and syntactic) also attracts attention to this issue.Thus, these studies demonstrate how changing the thinking of a modern person and as a consequence the entire system of communication and the variety of discourses in its meaningful depths. The authors of these scientific publications evidentially note the growth trend the of discourse-based approaches in the social sciences and humanities which have been gaining popularity throughout the last decades. These researches will be useful for everyone who is interested in the field of media, political science, psychology, linguistics, culture, philosophy and in general to those who, hoping for answers, constantly wander through the changing labyrinths of globalization processes.Guest Editorial BoardGuest Editors-in-ChiefMariia Kryvoshei, Scientific Alliance, UkraineMariia Kryvoshei is a Leading Researcher at the Scientific Alliance, Ukraine. Her research interests lie in semiotics, human perception of language, language competence. Her studies focus on language as a means of communication in different aspects of human life, with special attention being paid to public and philosophical discourses. She believes humans encode and decipher the world through language, and linguistic dimension is one way to perceive and understand reality.Liudmyla Mashtaler, MetaScience, UkraineShe studies the specifics of discourse in education and media, technical means to provide better communication. Her research covers specifics of language and literature studying, learner and teacher identities and their communication skills while touching upon aspects of cultural environment and language choice.MembersDamian Osatiuk, Kamianets-Podіlskyi National Ivan Ohiienko University, UkraineElisa Hercz, Stockholm University, SwedenJūratė Anamov, Mykolas Romeris University, LithuaniaKrzysztof Steve, University of Warsaw, PolandLuke Krause, Free University of Berlin, GermanyMegan Wilson, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, RomaniaNadiia Kolesnyk, Lviv Polytechnic National University, UkraineNoah Ikhsan, Ben-Gurion University & Achvah Academic College, IsraelRostyslav Orban, Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine

At the Crossroads of Gender, Power and Audiovisual Culture: Female Politicians and Businesswomen as Represented in Polish Cinema after 1989

Contemporary discourse on gender equality in the mass media focuses primarily on analysing news programmes, TV series and advertisements. However, films also constitute powerful cultural stimuli, capable of modifying the attitudes and behaviour of both audiences and the society as a whole. The strength and longevity of their impact lie in their deep roots in the culture in which they operate. For cinematic representations of women and men, this process implies the need to constantly refer to a certain stock of conventions, cultural stereotypes and ways of thinking about gender present in the mentality and social structures of a given community. The same applies to images of women in power in film, which on the one hand are determined by cultural patterns attributed to each gender, while on the other they themselves contribute to their perpetuation in the social consciousness, at the same time creating social images of relations between gender and power in political and economic life. The article discusses this phenomenon in relation to selected Polish films after 1989. The paper will analyse how the roles and behavioural patterns attributed to women were (re)defined in the (changing) public sphere and what the position of characters representing these characteristics was in the narrative of the films.

Artificial Intelligence and the Preservation of Historic Documents

In recent decades, digitization has been presented as an important strategy both for the preservation of historic documents and for giving increased access for researchers to such materials. In the Norwegian context, this has not only implied the digitization of printed matter but also the digitization of audiovisual material like photography and analog tape recordings. From a technical perspective, there are of cause difficulties in digitizing such a variety of material when considering the diversity of media formats dating back to the nineteenth century. However, from the archival community criticism has been raised not only about the quality of the work but also the concerning the selection process, the organization of the material, and the collection of metadata. The National Library of Norway, especially, has attempted to avoid the problem of selection by attempting to digitize all of visual, sonic and audio-visual culture heritage. But this has created even greater challenges for the organization and registration of metadata. This is an issue that is apparent to the National Library, so it is looking into the possibility of using artificial intelligence – learning algorithms – to organize the material. The key issue is that the preservation of historic material is also dependent on the preservation of context and on metadata enabling us to interpret and understand the material at hand.

New feminist voices in Spanish audio-visual cultural production: Vis a vis (Locked Up) (Antena 3 and Globomedia, 2015–19) and La casa de papel (Money Heist) (Antena 3 and Netflix, 2017–21)

This article maps an emerging engagement with intersections amongst gender, voice/sound and feminism in the context of contemporary Spanish audio-visual cultural production. I locate the voice at the nexus of contemporary feminisms as these manifest through popular, public and theoretical means. Taking two recent internationally successful Spanish series (Vis a vis [Locked Up] and La casa de papel [Money Heist]) as examples, I contend that female voices and their treatment within contemporary Spanish audio-visual cultures constitute an important site within which female subjectivities emerge and are claimed. I analyse the importance of gender representations on- and off-screen in these works and attend to the use of music and voice-over in these shows as exemplifying the contradictory character of the voice within contemporary feminisms, both in and beyond Spain.

Audio-Visual Culture in Textbooks of German as a Foreign Language: A Crossroads Between Media Competence and Subject-Specific Objectives

"Audio-visual media have become an intrinsic part of the school curriculum in many countries as a means of complementing teaching and learning processes and ensuring modern and effective teaching in various fields of study, including foreign languages. This study will explore references to audio-visual culture in three internationally available textbook sets for pubescent learners of German as a foreign language: Deutsch.com, Direkt, and Ideen. Audio-vision is used here to refer to audio-visual cultural properties and includes the product and its production, reception, and position within the context of the media culture of the country of origin. Methodologically, the study uses content analysis to examine individual references to audio-vision according to a) the frequency of occurrence at individual levels of language competency, b) the implication of the examined references to audio-visual material with objectives specific to the acquisition of a foreign language (vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, speaking, intercultural education) and media literacy c) the attention paid to films, genres and other aspects of audio-vision, d) the connection between references to audio-vision and themes and topics discussed in a foreign language, e) the didactic function of the references, and f) their contribution to achieving media literacy goals (audio-visual/film literacy), providing a detailed description of the lessons in each of the studied textbook sets that make use of references to audio-visual material in their curricula. Keywords: audio-visual literacy, audio-vision, German language, textbooks, foreign language teaching "

The formation of audiovisual culture and its technological advances

The topic of our discussion today is the development of audiovisual culture and its technological advances in order to analyze audiovisual creativity, its specifics, types, genres, screen types, capabilities, mission, functions, Interaction with the public, scale of power, transformation. It is necessary to consider the genesis of audiovisual culture and the laws of its technological development.From our research we can conclude that the screen is the face of the universe, shaping its own culture, creating new ideas about life events, interpreting and correcting them according to place and time, as a kind of productive phenomenon. It is a kind of medium between reality and virtual reality, which can travel us from the real world to the virtual and at the same time, always control the pulse of current social processes. Human existence in the modern environment depends on the screen. A wide range of applications defined the vector of the formation of new social reality, the virtualization of social life and the creation of preconditions for human global issues.As for technology, there is no area of ​​individual and social life in which technology does not play a significant role: in the workplace, at home, in cultural life, in learning, in games and sports, in tourism, in healthcare, in scientific research, and so on. Man lives in a specially structured technical environment that creates a relatively independent "Third World" next to the interpersonal world and the natural environment. Audiovisual technology ultimately represents the development of human productive forces and is part of human cultural development.

Review: Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization, by Rosalind Galt

Review: <i>Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization</i>, by Rosalind Galt

Special issue introduction: utilitarian filmmaking in Australia 1945–80

ABSTRACT While Australian cinema is generally defined by the feature filmmaking tradition, at least since the 1970s, ‘utilitarian filmmaking' represents a significant but barely visible portion of screen culture in Australia, a portion that has had an emphatic but unexamined influence on the media industries, education systems, industrial relations, research culture and national culture. Recent scholarly work undertaken internationally has shown how this vital strand of cultural and industrial history has often been overlooked; worse, it has often been expunged from cultural memory, either by critical neglect or through the destruction of archives previously deemed worthless by businesses and collecting-agencies. Given the insights and impacts of the latest studies of utilitarian filmmaking in the US and Europe, it is no exaggeration to propose that local, Australian holdings in the genre will come to be understood as a hitherto overlooked skein of ‘DNA’ in our national media systems. To study this heritage is to deepen our understanding of general/global and local/national characteristics of audiovisual culture and aesthetics as they operate in Australia, as well as to contribute in a major way to the burgeoning scholarship in international media archive research.This Introduction will focus on the manner in which ‘utilitarian cinema’ operates in relation to conceptions of Australian national cinema as well as to how this term can also contribute to formulations of transnational cinema. It will introduce the findings of this Australian Research Council funded research project being conducted by Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd, Stella Barber, Mick Broderick, Ross Gibson, John Hughes, Grace Russell and Deane Williams as well as introducing the case studies that were undertaken.

O popular brasileiro na cultura audiovisual cinematográfica

Abstract This paper’s object consists of the problematizations regarding the popular which are internal to the expressive formats (in this case, the feature film) specific to the audiovisual culture in Brazil. The goals of correlating the Brazilian popular with audiovisual culture result from these two crossed intuitions: a) we understand that the popular, when defined as an object, participates in the constitution of epistemological and artistic fields in the country, mediating them to some extent; b) the popular also becomes subsidies to the designations of the socio-technical audiovisual system in the country. From the cinematographic authorial tradition that emerged between the 1950s and 1960s, we understand that the examination of the historical-empirical resumptions of the problematization regarding the popular, in the interrelationships of the audiovisual system with the other systems that make up the cultural sphere in Brazil, offers an opportunity to reflect on how this system is inserted in the modes of perception and cognition in the arrangement of the modern societal complex, when it offers an alternative of meaning attributions based on its optical, graphic and oral code.

La représentation des cuisiniers de collectivité

Résumé : Ce texte s’intéresse à la représentation médiatique d’un groupe professionnel relativement discret, celui des cuisiniers de collectivité. Dans une première partie, nous montrons comment la culture populaire contemporaine a progressivement établi la distinction fondamentale entre la figure du grand chef cuisinier dans la restauration commerciale et celle du « cuistot » de cantine. La médiocrité du second fait ainsi pendant à l’excellence du premier, vigoureusement mise en spectacle par les productions audiovisuelles contemporaines et notamment celles de la télé-réalité. Dans la deuxième partie, l’article aborde la communication endogène dans la cuisine de collectivité. Il s’agit alors de montrer la différence entre, d’un côté, la communication des grands groupes de restauration collective qui pratiquent à grande échelle ce que l’on peut être tenté de qualifier de green washing, et d’un autre côté, l’investissement de l’espace public par des cuisiniers de collectivité, notamment via la communication en ligne et les réseaux sociaux.

The Nordic noir brand

Editing the volume Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation with Linda Badley and Jaakko Seppälä made evident historical changes in the role of adaptation in Nordic audio-visual culture. An earlier generation of auteurs such as Aki Kaurismäki used adaptation to align themselves with aesthetic and philosophical bodies of texts, what we might call ‘networks of similarity’, following Luis M. García Mainar. In the rise of Nordic noir since the millennium, Nordic cinema and television’s networks of similarity change. The auteurs used adaptation to establish modernist originality of vision. In the current moment, this quality has diminished, and adaptation increasingly figures in broader, more densely cross-referential networks of similarity, of which Nordic noir is arguably an instantiation. These are defined by aesthetic and sociopolitical associations, more so than originality. These associations figure in practitioners’ and textual consumers’ use of response to and replication of the noir texts and their networks in a variety of media. This activity can be understood as a type of branding that aligns with attempts at national and regional branding.

Interaction of sound and image in modern audiovisual culture

The article analyzes the possible types of combination of sound track components with the visual track, namely diegetic and non-diegetic sound, actual, commentative sound, etc., reveals the main positions and opinions of foreign and Ukrainian authors studying the problem, types of sound in screen projects, and their significance and features in the context of audiovisual culture are indicated. Examples of creative application of audio track in modern Ukrainian and foreign audiovisual culture are considered. The following methods were used during the study: analysis was used for consideration of the components of the sound track and certain types of interaction of sound and image, comparative method was used to study different concepts of scientists to more fully present the issue, systematic approach was used to study a set of types of the combination of sound and image in audiovisual projects. The scientific novelty of the article is to highlight the current state of theoretical approaches to the interaction of sound and image in audiovisual culture. The results of the study are of practical importance to scholars studying film, audiovisual culture, as well as to sound engineers and other creative professionals working on screen projects, in order to be able to master possible techniques to combine sound with the visual component of the project.

Идея русского символизма о синтезе культурных форм в контексте культуры постмодерна

The relevance of the topic is due to the attention to trends in the development of culture. The synthesis of cultural forms is one of the important factors in the dynamics of culture. The teaching of Russian symbolism about the synthesis of cultures was analyzed in the scientifi c literature of the entire twentieth century. The novelty of the research is to compare the idea of art synthesis in the early twentieth and twenty-fi rst centuries. Two aspects of the idea of synthesis are considered: 1) the relevance of the idea of art synthesis in the postmodern era; 2) music and the visual series as organizing centers of art synthesis in the era of information technology. The purpose of this article is to examine the teaching of Russian symbolism about the integration of various forms of art and the features of synthesis in the postmodern era. The idea of integrating cultural forms was one of the key elements in Russian symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century and was interpreted as a real prospect for the development of culture. In a broad sense, synthesis in symbolism meant the integrity of life, the integration of all spheres of human activity, the “organic connection” of cultures of the past and present. The synthesis can be realized on the basis of the art of symbolism, which can create a new culture. The synthesis of arts was understood as the beginning of the formation of a new culture. The core of the synthesis of arts, the symbolists saw music. Postmodern art is characterized by synthetism. Computer and information technologies create new forms of synthetic media art. The video series becomes the center of integration construction of postmodern audiovisual culture forms. The symbolist idea of the synthesis of arts as the beginning of cultural change in the postmodern era remains a utopian project. But the creation of new art forms in postmodern culture i s based on integration. New technologies are becoming a factor that determines the specifi cs of the synthesis of arts and infl uences the dynamics of culture. Both in Russian symbolism and in modern art, the goal of art synthesis is to present an integral image of the world, to form a system of worldview attitudes.

МЕДІАКУЛЬТУРА: СУТНІСНІ ОСОБЛИВОСТІ І ФУНКЦІЇ

The purpose of the article is to reveal the essential features and functions of media culture. The development of modern society is closely connected with information and communication technologies, therefore, it is relevant to determine the essential and special features of media culture. The research methodology is based on the application of the method of adaptiveactivity cultural studies in combination with an interdisciplinary approach, which allowed us to reveal the essence, functions and structure of media culture. The scientific novelty lies in the cultural studies research of the dialectic of interaction and mutual influence of media culture as a phenomenon of the information society and the processes of informatization at the beginning of the 21st century. Conclusions. The article has demonstrated that the core of the entire media culture is the screen and audiovisual culture, which often compete with each other. It has been noted that media culture as a sociocultural phenomenon can be interpreted in a broad (the social environment that actively communicates through the symbolic exchange) and a narrow (the mechanism of cultural activity that is relevant in every cognitive act) sense. The author of the article has outlined the functions of media culture: informative, communicative, normative, relaxation, creative, integration, mediatory. The relationship of media culture with culture in its traditional sense, as well as the connection and interdependence with other systems of reality, has been proved. The peculiarities of the functioning of media culture in the modern information space, its multifunctionality, impact on all spheres of life, in particular, the individual negative influences of the studied phenomenon and their causality have been indicated. The article has shown that the main mechanism of formation and reproduction of media culture is media education, which should contribute to the identification and realization of the creative potential of the individual, the development of an analytical attitude to the phenomena and facts of reality. The article deals with the formation of a “person of media culture”, the actualization of the anthropological concept of media culture, which will ensure the continuity of traditions of existence in culture at the individual level.

En torno al currículo de Cultura Audiovisual en el Bachillerato: una reflexión crítica

Las enseñanzas de cultura audiovisual, reguladas de acuerdo al Real Decreto 1105/2014, han estado sujetas desde su misma plasmación normativa a un intenso cuestionamiento en el ámbito docente. Pasado un tiempo prudencial desde su implantación, este artículo establece unas primeras revisiones críticas de los contenidos, criterios de evaluación y estándares de aprendizaje evaluables que presentan las dos asignaturas (Cultura Audiovisual I y Cultura Audiovisual II), con el objeto de efectuar una llamada a la reflexión colectiva sobre el devenir actual de estas enseñanzas y su innegable potencial futuro.