Symbolic Image Research Articles

Lexical Units of the "Plants" Microsystem in Folklore Texts from Western Polissia

In linguistics, lexical semantics is one of the fundamental fields of study. The article highlights the issue of folkloristics in the context of lexical semantics, which is always relevant for studies. Studying the language of folklore is essential for understanding the traditional culture of the people and preserving the values of the nation embedded in rites, beliefs, and mythological images.
 Linguistic studies of the motivational productivity of lexical groups or semantic fields are closely related to texts (folklore, folk poetry, spell texts). Lexical units of “plants” microsystem in folklore texts from western Polissia are of great linguistic importance in this context.
 The internal form of many plants' names can be traced quite clearly, as we can see when elucidating the motivation of such phytonomens as maivka, molodylnyk, nekhvoroshch, vinychchia, serporiznyk, durmanyk, zaiacha kapusta (rabbit cabbage). Unfortunately, we cannot always establish the motivation for a particular name of a plant, some of them are influenced by folk etymology, as in the case of aiir (derived from the Turkish name ağir).
 The study of motivational characteristics of botanical vocabulary is combined with the field of extra-linguistic semantics (mythological images, magical actions, ritual practices, symbolic images), which brings motivational models into the field of culture. Phytonyms often appear in folklore texts and manifest a special symbolic meaning in their structure, such as widow's grass, hare's ears, Tatar potion, sabers, and vydiuk.
 In many cases, the folk-creative basis of the motivation of plant names is found outside the folklore text, since we can only guess about the existence of such a text (for instance, the origin of the names of such plants as bozhe derevo (the God's tree), artemizida, etc.).
 Depending on the functional role, the same phytonym can have different meanings, e.g. krovavnyk is equally applicable to yarrow and St. John's wort. And medicinal marigolds, yellow pitcher plants, iron sedum, Asian honeysuckle, marsh marigolds, erect foxgloves, and celandine have the popular common name zhovtets (buttercup).
 The cultural, historical, and ethnographic features of the Ukrainians, their traditions, and worldview have a significant influence on the semantic features of lexical folklorisms.

Evolution of a revived doll image in Russian children’s literature of the second half of the twentieth century

The article notes that initially the image of the doll was associated not with the world of childhood, but with ancient beliefs in magical powers. Therefore, in folklore and mythological traditions, the image of the doll is closely associated with the cult of death. In modern literature, the actualization of this image is associated with the romantic tradition, with the idea of the living world. In literary works, especially those aimed at child readers, this image is reinterpreted. In different cultural and historical eras, the semantics of this image, as well as the approach to its interpretation, differ. In the 1920–30s, the dominant interpretation of the image of animated dolls was allegorical, reflecting the social problems of the time in a form accessible to children. In the second half of the twentieth century, the emphasis was placed on the psychology of the child reader; the image of a living doll acquires the features of a symbolic image and can act as a means of didactic influence. The situation of reviving a doll allows us to focus on the problems of the creator’s responsibility for his creation, of a person for his work, as well as for those who have been “tamed.” A number of examples prove that this image allows us to reveal not only the specifics of a child’s perception of the world, the nature of the interaction between a child and a doll, but also the relationship between the worldview of a child and an adult.

ARTISTIC TRINITY: LITERATURE – CINEMA – MUSIC (THE FILM “EARTH” BY O. DOVZHENKO)

The purpose of the article is to reveal the ideological, thematic, descriptive, intonation-rhythmic consonance of the musical accompaniment of the band “DakhaBrakha” with the film and film story by O. Dovzhenko. The article highlights the role of musical accompaniment in the restored 2012 version of the film “Earth” by the famous Ukrainian director of the twentieth century O. Dovzhenko. This is the first study in which, through the comprehension of the trinity of the samples of music, cinema, and literature, new meanings are revealed in musical compositions and the film, the relevance of the raised existential problems is expressed, the ethnic basis of the concept of characters and the works of art chosen for the analysis as a whole are indicated. The corpus of methods was applied in the research: the cultural-historical method contributed to the understanding of the place, role, and meaning of film, music, and literary texts in contemporary artistic realities; the intermedial approach helped in identifying and characterizing the common, different and peculiar in the pictorial, mood, ideological and thematic, content filling of scenes, micro-episodes, symbolic images and details in samples belonging to various types of arts; the hermeneutic method is applied to reveal and interpret the traditional and innovative in stylistic specificity of the ethno-chaos performance of the “DakhaBrakha” band. Based on the cultural and historical method, the hermeneutic method, and the intermedial approach in the research it was emphasized that the instruments (accordion, drum, cello, ratchet, etc.) involved by the DakhaBrakha musical group, their tonality, rhythm, as well as the Ukrainian folklore samples involved in the content plan contributed to the effective depiction of various states of the main and secondary characters (joy, grief, concentration, sadness, thoughtfulness, etc.), the moods of the peasants, interpersonal relationships, emphasizing the character traits of Ukrainian heroes, hereditary farmers, their natural desire to work on the land and thus self-actualize. The article remarked on the role of pauses in the reflection of emotionally capacious, conceptually important film episodes, micro-episodes, and scenes, enhanced by demonstrative cinematic techniques. The trinity of music, cinematic material, and literary work in the construction of characters and perfect plot layout is emphasized. The musical design of the film “Earth” by O. Dovzhenko, carried out by the ethnic-chaos DakhaBrakha group, accentuates the national selfhood of the Ukrainian character, even though the film tells about collectivization, the purposeful policy of the then Soviet government (the 30s of the twentieth century) to destroy the private property of Ukrainians, to negate the feeling of the owner composed over the centuries. Skillfully combined traditional and innovative stylistic specificity of performing skills of the ethnic-chaos group “DakhaBrakha” contribute to the identification of subtexts, codes for the interpretation of the content of works, actual existential problems, and national originality of the characters. The order, tempo of the musical performance as well as the visual content, that was thought out by the authors of the film, form the musical leading motif of the movie and deepen the understanding of the subtext, symbolic accents of the literary work, emphasize the features of the artistic presentation of the land problem with the help of expressive images of sunflowers, gardens, steppes, fields, oxen, etc. There are a music tempo-rhythmic and tonal-emotional support of frames in the film, that as well performs a peculiar function of sound illustration in the corresponding episodes of the literary text, thus giving the images of main characters and minor characters dynamics and expression. The musical drama of the film “Earth”, audio visualization of the main and secondary characters, repetition, the collision of frames with different plans, landscapes, and the specifics of their location in the frames emphasize the problematic of the literary work, contribute to the multifaceted images of heroes in the literary work and in the film, enhance the understanding of the conflicts (intra-frame, interpersonal, worldview, etc.), testify to the ideological-thematic, compositional, pictorial, emotional-semantic unity of musical, cinematographic and literary texts.

Visualization of the Book: Graphic Metaphors in Art Decoration of Ukrainian Church Editions of the Baroque Epoque

The article considers the role of metaphor in the art decoration of 17th–18th centuries Ukrainian editions of church books. It claims that the book art of this period is marked by generous use of symbolic and allegoric visual images which play metaphorical role in general structure of the book. Structural-semiotical exploration of title pages, frontispieces, and illustration cycles in more than one hundred reeditions of Ukrainian church books of 17th–18th centuries enabled us to single out the main types of structure forming visual metaphors. All metaphorical visual images, used in decoration of the church books, transfer the meaning of the book through picturing its author, addressee, or the central theological concept. The image of the author in the tradition of the Ukrainian church book art decoration is inserted in the composition of the title page and frontispiece. It visually presents the church book as a creation of a saint person, inspired by God. The addressee is expressed both by the emblem of a patron, who supported book printing, and by an icon of a divine person to whom the prayer content of the book is addressed. The emblem of a patron is positioned on the title page and/or backside of the title page. It visually generalizes the image of the church book edition, printed due to support of notable person. The icons of a prayer addressee on the backside of the title page, on the frontispieces, or on in-text miniatures, reflect the conceptual idea of a church book as a tool for praying. The main idea of a church book is commonly expressed by symbolic and allegoric compositions. Such compositions, positioned on the title pages and frontispieces, summarize the content of the book by the most unexpected visual images. All the complexity of meanings expressed by images of author, addressee, and theological content, demonstrate the baroque means, which Ukrainian church book editors applied to visualize the church book essence.

Semantics and functions of the symbol in the prose of realism and modernism

The article attempts to combine the structural and comparative historical methods of symbol research. This is its scientific novelty, since modern symbolology is dominated by studies of a structural and semiotic nature and there is a clear lack of works that address the issue of the symbol's dependence on specific cultural and historical epochs. The author clarifies the concepts of the denoting and denoted symbol in the context of the ideas of linguistic conceptology and narratology, and also explores the problem of the conditionality of the meaning of the symbol and the means of its embodiment in the text by the artistic method and the type of narrative corresponding to it. The article proves that in realist prose the symbolic image is multifunctional. Firstly, it appears as an element of a landscape or interior description. Secondly, it performs a conceptual function, correlating its deep meaning with the main idea of the work. Thirdly, it plays a role in the development of the plot, in particular, it anticipates a significant and often unexpected turn within it. Fourthly, if it functions in the character's speech, it becomes one of the means of characterization, since the ability to perceive, comprehend and experience the symbolic meaning of an image is always evidence of the beginning of the character's spiritual insight. As for the symbolist, in particular ornamental, prose with its characteristic weakening of the plot, the symbol here has a completely different meaning. Firstly, it performs the function of a leitmotif - a figurative characteristic of the character, which is constantly repeated, because it expresses their essence. At the formal level, the function of symbols-leitmotifs is to organize the coherence and integrity of a literary text, which in realistic prose is ensured by the cause-and-effect relationships between the events that organize the plot. The author emphasises that these differences are due to the peculiarities of the worldview on which the respective artistic methods are based.

Features of Visual Identification of Modern Ukrainian Theatres by Means of Graphic Design

The purpose of the article is to reveal the features of visual identification of Ukrainian theatres by means of graphic design. Research methodology. The method of typology and techniques of figurative and stylistic analysis are applied, as well as the method of semiotic and visual-cultural analysis of brand symbols of Ukrainian theatres. A combination of the descriptive method and techniques of formal analysis are used to identify the means of artistic expressiveness used by the designer. The method of semantic and structural-semantic analysis help to clarify the cultural meanings of images created for the representation of Ukrainian theatre. The graphic-analytical method is used to visualise research results. Scientific novelty. Peculiarities of visual identification of modern Ukrainian theatres by means of graphic design were studied. The main attributes of visual identification of Ukrainian theatres – emblems and logos – were considered, their comparative analysis was carried out. The concepts of "emblem" and "logo" in the context of graphic design have been clarified; based on the structural and semiotic analysis of emblems of Ukrainian theatres, the spectrum of their visual images was characterised. Conclusions. The visual identification of modern Ukrainian theatres is a system of symbolic and graphic images, the logic of which is built to distinguish theatres by their purpose according to their types (musical, music-dramatic, dramatic, puppet, and others), as well as to differentiate each specific theatre within the defined typology. The emblem as a symbolic image of a certain idea encoded in a graphic form is the main visual image of the theatre, endowed with symbolic meaning, which conveys the main values of this cultural institution with the help of the graphic elements depicted on it. It is used for visual identification of the theatre in real and virtual space. The study of the emblems of modern Ukrainian theatres has revealed the following. Characteristic elements for the symbolism of Ukrainian theatres expressed in the emblems are elements of architectural origin (theatre buildings), graphic images of famous Ukrainian representatives of theatre, literature and art (Lesia Ukrainka, I. Franko, T. Shevchenko, M. Vodianyi, M. Sadovskyi, and others) and Harlequin masks as a symbol of the acting profession. Socio-historical and cultural factors are fundamental elements of concept formation. Emblems symbolically reflect theatrical, primarily acting activity. The conceptual solution of the corporate style also reflects the idea of the existence of the theatre and the values it offers in the space of modern culture: humanity, heredity, traditionality, and interculturality. Decoding symbolic images requires a high level of education and intelligence. Brand symbols can be built on a nuanced solution, in which all style elements enhance the effect of simplicity, complexity or an intermediate option. Keywords: graphic design, Ukrainian theatres, visual identification, emblem, logo.

The Gothic temple, its heritage and the architectural presence of the altar in the second half of the 20th century

The article defines the role played by the architecture of a Gothic temple in the aspect of the synthesis of the cultural and liturgical image when it concerns the form of the cathedral’s facade, its floor plan culminated with the eastern choir and metaphysics where the light processed by stained glass in contact with the frame (stone skeleton) structure brings a symbiotic, symbolic image. The above-mentioned synthesis was interpreted specifically after the Council of Trent (1545-1563) by the demolition of the rood screens closing the Gothic choir in front of the nave of the lay faithful. The liturgical renewal with a visually open choir introduced the main altar at its culmination, obligatorily connected to the tabernacle, and additionally elevated by a retable. The article describes the interior of the Gothic choir after the Council of Trent, liturgically up to date with the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Then, it describes the renewed image of the Gothic choir after another, modern, liturgical renewal. By specifying a new presence of the altar and tabernacle after the Second Vatican Council in the church (currently defined as the domus ecclesiae), the article elucidates the validity of the architecture of the Gothic interior when it exists in accordance with the post-conciliar regulations and serves the purpose of building the community of faith.

“I collect the rosary from words...”: Poetic features of Razil Valeev’s verses

The article describes the life and creative path of Razil Valeev, analyzes his poetic works and determines the poet’s place in Tatar poetry of the second half of the 20th–early 21st centuries. Although the writer worked fruitfully in all three forms of verbal art, it was in the poetic field that he became famous as a talented poet. This article proves that many poet’s works have become “programmatic” for Tatar poetry and identifies the main trends in his literary career. The central motifs and innovations, introduced by R. Valeev into the concept of the lyrical hero and the verse poetics, are presented in the context of the literary process of the second half of the 20th–early 21st centuries. As a result of our analysis, we trace a revival of rebellious traditions in R. Valeev’s works; against this background, we reveal the concept of his lyrical hero, as well as his system of motifs. The poet revived avant-garde traditions in the spirit of Taktash, successfully used Aesopian language through symbolic images and referred to the folk style in spiritual lyrical poetry.

THE MYTHOLOGICAL SPACE OF GOOD AND EVIL IN “THE YELLOW PRINCE” BY VASYL BARKA

To analyze the representation of the Holodomor in Vasyl Barka’s novel “The Yellow Prince”, it is beneficial to draw upon the concepts of artistic universes and mythological studies. In particular, Franz Boas’s notion of mythological universes as source material for the creation of new universes can provide valuable insights. Based on this concept, the apocalyptic motifs of the novel “The Yellow Prince” might be considered a unique author’s attempt to interpret the traumatic experience of the Holodomor. In this case, the biblical eschatology serves as the key to understanding the entire scale of the tragedy and the essence of the crime against the Ukrainian people.
 After analyzing the structure of the novel, drawing parallels with biblical motifs and codes, and noting the most prominent biblical allusions, it becomes evident that the writer constructs his own apocalyptic model of the world, which shows no specific Comings of the Antichrist and Christ as they both are presented collectively. The writer’s dichotomy between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’ contrasts the harmonious, traditional Ukrainian village with the godless Bolshevik regime. The first mode, embodied by the Katrannyk family, functions around the church as a sacred center and a treasury of Christian values. Therefore the process of collectivization and the destruction of the temple disrupts its organic existence, leading to death. Those who strive to preserve their right for the sacred must be prepared to fight, even at the cost of their lives.
 Both the church Chalice-Grail and the martyred peasants represent the collective Christ. The source of evil, in its turn, lies within the hierarchical system of the Bolshevik forces of evil. This system ranges from the symbolic image of the Yellow Prince as a collective Antichrist to radical evil embodied by demonized and dehumanized representatives of the Soviet government and banal evil manifesting itself in unconscious peasants who, due to a lack of understanding, also become accomplices in the crimes. Thus, the evil appears in the novel as a series of negative and demonic images embodied in characters, symbols, and details existing at various hierarchical levels. All these elements serve as a comprehensive representation of the profane.

NeuSyRE: Neuro-symbolic visual understanding and reasoning framework based on scene graph enrichment

Exploring the potential of neuro-symbolic hybrid approaches offers promising avenues for seamless high-level understanding and reasoning about visual scenes. Scene Graph Generation (SGG) is a symbolic image representation approach based on deep neural networks (DNN) that involves predicting objects, their attributes, and pairwise visual relationships in images to create scene graphs, which are utilized in downstream visual reasoning. The crowdsourced training datasets used in SGG are highly imbalanced, which results in biased SGG results. The vast number of possible triplets makes it challenging to collect sufficient training samples for every visual concept or relationship. To address these challenges, we propose augmenting the typical data-driven SGG approach with common sense knowledge to enhance the expressiveness and autonomy of visual understanding and reasoning. We present a loosely-coupled neuro-symbolic visual understanding and reasoning framework that employs a DNN-based pipeline for object detection and multi-modal pairwise relationship prediction for scene graph generation and leverages common sense knowledge in heterogenous knowledge graphs to enrich scene graphs for improved downstream reasoning. A comprehensive evaluation is performed on multiple standard datasets, including Visual Genome and Microsoft COCO, in which the proposed approach outperformed the state-of-the-art SGG methods in terms of relationship recall scores, i.e. Recall@K and mean Recall@K, as well as the state-of-the-art scene graph-based image captioning methods in terms of SPICE and CIDEr scores with comparable BLEU, ROGUE and METEOR scores. As a result of enrichment, the qualitative results showed improved expressiveness of scene graphs, resulting in more intuitive and meaningful caption generation using scene graphs. Our results validate the effectiveness of enriching scene graphs with common sense knowledge using heterogeneous knowledge graphs. This work provides a baseline for future research in knowledge-enhanced visual understanding and reasoning. The source code is available at https://github.com/jaleedkhan/neusire.

ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОГО ИЗОБРАЖЕНИЯ БУДДЫ В ИСКУССТВЕ ДРЕВНЕЙ ИНДИИ

The article considers the stages of origin and development of Buddha’s artistic image in the art of ancient India: from the early symbolic images that denoted the presence of Buddha to the colorful frescoes and sculptures of the Ajanta cave complex. The issue of originality of the Indian art is actualized in contrast to the version of borrowing the ideas of the European art and architec-ture formulated at the beginning of the last century. The proposition of the au-thenticity uniqueness of the ancient art of India is made.

Study Of The Aesthetic Form Of Wood Craft Furniture Design By Barata Sena

This study focuses on five woodcraft furniture designs by Barata Sena that have been exhibited, namely the Groovy Grey Dining Table, Selendang Console Table, Coffee Table Soft Miami Blue, Wall Panel, and Cabinet Bontos Effect with 4 Drawer. The analysis of the aesthetic form of these five woodcraft furniture designs by Barata Sena is conducted using an interpretative analysis method with an approach to furniture aesthetics. The interpretation analysis is intended to examine Barata Sena's woodcraft furniture designs. Aesthetics in a furniture design can be observed through its composition of principles. Aesthetic form, emotionally, aims to present symbolic images for enthusiasts or users. The forms of the five Barata Sena furniture designs as a whole tend to be in the realm of Geometric Abstraction. These Barata Sena furniture designs not only have geometric basic shapes but are also configured with organic forms. The crafting techniques and finishing applied by Barata Sena tend to be innovative, which is the result of a fairly extensive exploration in order to achieve textures, colors, and constructions with appealing freshness.

''Visible is a symbol'': Nature as an animated creature pictured by Russian and German romantics

The topicality of the research refers to the problem of national identity, national code, embodied among other spheres of spiritual life and in literature. Romantics' worldview was composed on the foundation of folklore, myth and literary tradition. The system of symbolic motifs of 'infancy' and 'pre-earth life', affinity of souls, joining in death and others became significant elements of the works in the Romanticism period. The study object is the collection of writings connected to natural-philosophic ideas of Nature as a living creature. The subject-matter of the research is national identity of Romanticism, manifested in the peculiarities of Nature perception. In the process of analysis, a comprehensive literary approach was used, combining historical-literary, historical-genetic, comparative-typological methods, which made it possible to establish the specifics of the embodiment of ideas about Nature by writers of Russia and Germany of the Romantic era. Presenting the natural-philosophic system of life conception, the writers relied on F. Schelling's philosophy. It is demonstrated that Russian romantics associate the origin of ideal female images with Heaven (angel-woman) and German romanticists – with the Earth (flower woman). Angel woman and flower woman help the characters to understand the essence of the existence. Natural symbols used in the works (sky, earth, flower atc.) and other symbolic images (melody, kiss, icon etc.) convey the specific mystic world understanding of the authors. Novelty of the research lies in the analysis of dominant images, that makes it possible to determine 'the independence of the face' of romantics in Russia and Germany, basing on the idea of a man dependent on Nature that existed in the developed national tradition. This approach makes it possible to specify the understanding of the particular characteristics of archetypic female images presented in ethnic-cultural sphere.

Memory for symbolic images: Findings from sports team logos.

Memory for symbolic images: Findings from sports team logos.

VISUAL INTEGRATION OF SCULPTURE IN FORMING THE IMAGE OF THE CITY

This work examines the issue of the phenomenon of modern sculpture and its influence on the formation of urban space. It has been established that Ukrainian sculpture is a young art that has undergone changes of generations and aesthetic views. Modern sculpture, creating new and modifying existing cultural and symbolic images of settlements, plays an extremely important role in creating the effect of authenticity of urban space, strengthens its cultural, artistic and historical meaning, is a kind of effective means of actualizing cultural memory. It is renewed not only according to the laws of the internal logic of classical fine art, but also inspired by external tectonic factors. 
 The image of the city creates, first of all, spiritual and scientific life, forming its cultural, artistic and intellectual states, a certain level of quality of the social dimension - aspirations and needs of residents, culture and art, consciousness and language. 
 It is small urban sculpture designed to create or emphasize the uniqueness and originality of each specific place, designed to awaken imagination and emotions. After all, it is precisely through it that the connection between architecture and fine art is possible, which aestheticizes the environment and life of a person, appealing to his feelings and thinking at the same time, brings variety and harmony, which are so necessary for a person. 
 As you know, a small plastic form attracts a person with its proportionality: it makes you want to approach it, touch it, take a picture. It is an integral and sometimes decisive part of the communication between the city and the person. It is the sculptures that make the city understandable, pleasant and accessible to people. A small urban sculpture can transform an ordinary space or strengthen existing advantages and place accents in a saturated historical center.

Life and death of Knyaz Mykhailo of Chernihiv in ancient ukrainian literature

The article examines ancient Ukrainian literary works about the life and tragic death in the Horde of Prince (Kniaz) Mykhailo of Chernihiv. The article aims to trace the process of literary transformation of the ancient story and to introduce this material into the circle of research in Ukrainian medieval studies. The content of the story reflects events from the life of Mykhailo of Chernihiv, focusing on his journey with boyar Fedir to the Horde in 1245 to obtain permission from Batu Khan to own lands in Rus. There, they refused to bow to the khan according to Mongolian custom, and were killed for it. Ancient authors saw this as a Christian feat, and Mykhailo was proclaimed a saint. This is how he appears in the «life» created by Dmytro Tuptalo. This life (early 18th century) does not fit into the Byzantine hagiographic canon because it does not tell the whole life of Mykhailo, but focuses only on his stay in the Horde, where tragic events occur that are intended to move the reader and evoke sympathy for the martyr, a faithful Christian. In addition, the hagiography was written in the Baroque period, so it is characterized by pomp and circumlocution, emblematic and symbolic images, rhetorical figures, authorial reflections, and quotations from other texts, which ultimately play a role in reinforcing the highly moral image of Mykhailo. The prince is portrayed differently in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle: it does not emphasize Mykhailo’s feat, but praises Danylo Halytskyi, who obtained permission from the khan by obeying non-Christian customs. The deaths of Mykhailo of Chernihiv and his boyar Fedir in the Horde are striking, and historical events fade into the background, becoming the background for the depiction of strong personalities. It cannot be said that Mykhailo of Chernihiv is a strong personality. Rather, he is a victim of the circumstances. He was credited with heroism, and Danylo Halytskyi with diplomatic wisdom. This is despite the fact that the Mongol-Tatar invasion pushed back the development of the ancient Ukrainian lands for several centuries, bringing decline and languishing on the edge of Europe that survived that horror.

Multidimensional piano in George Crumb’s chamber music (on the example of “Makrokosmos I”)

Statement of the problem. The article considers the issues of transformation of the sound image of the piano, which is extremely relevant for the last generations of pianists-performers, which in the modern era acquires new features or develops certain qualities of its own. On the example of the American composer George Crumb’s famous meta-cycle “Makrokosmos” for solo “amplified” piano, we can clearly observe an ability of the solo instrument to creation of a virtual symbolic ensemble, the participants of which very diversity new and traditional piano timbres become. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. Despite the attention of musicologists to the figure of G. Crumb, his chamber music as a leading genre of creativity, in particular the image of the piano as the most used instrument by the composer, in all its diversity and novelty, is not analyzed in detail. The ensemble qualities of the piano in its expanded composer’s vision, as well as the principles of pianistic performance of modern music on the new “a-classical” instrument with its enriched sonorous and spatial possibilities, remain overlooked. The purpose of this article is to use the example of the first volume of G. Crumb’s meta-cycle “Makrokosmos” to reveal in the multidimensionality of the “roles” of the solo piano a new quality of “symbolic ensemble” in the context of genre typologies of music of the XX–XXI centuries, in particular based on the idea of Professor I. Polska regarding solo performance as micro-ensemble forms. A comprehensive approach to the disclosure of the stated topic is applied, combining source studies, comparative, comparative-analytical, cultural and philological research methods. Research results and conclusion. Using the example of the analysis of “Makrokosmos I” it is demonstrated that G. Crumb is far from unification in his interpretation of the piano. His “expanded piano” emphatically appeals to timbre and figurative polyphony, i.e. a multidimensional ensemble, the participants of which, in addition to the pianist himself who involves different “territories” of the piano in the musical performance (beside a keyboard, also the open strings, pedals, and corpus), are his voice, variously organized verbal replicas and whistling. Thus, in the collection of symbolic images that appear in various combinations and sequences in the 12 pieces of “Makrokosmos I”, we count up to a dozen symbolic roles-characters that build a fantastic picture where temporal and spatial dimensions intersect and interact. The rendition of such music, in addition to the performer’s mastering of its purely “technical” novelty, requires the transformation not only of the pianist’s consciousness and skills, but also of established theoretical views in the paradigm of modern genre typologies.

Cosmologic Representations on the Late Antique Mosaics from Bulgaria

The article traces the cosmologic structure and its separate components, reflected on the Late Antique mosaic pavements from the ancient provinces of present-day Bulgaria. Distinguished are three basic historical periods of development. The observations reveal that these lands were receiving ready cosmogonic structure’s schemes after the act of cosmogony from the big artistic centers of Italy, Greece, Asia Minor and North Africa. For several reasons, the cosmologic structure and the components of the Late Antique mosaic pavements from Bulgaria are not full, but limited and adapted, with many missing figural representations in the mosaic pavements and the tomb wall paintings, differently to the Western and the Eastern Mediterranean. This is considered a kind of proto-iconoclasm, due to the influence of heresies and the concrete historical, religious and artistic development. The joyful picture of the Christian Universe changes and disintegrates after the Justinianic period, and the previous Order and Harmony, including the place of each sphere and cosmologic element, is already not fixed, but in free mixture with other figural and symbolic images. The old cosmologic picture comes to its logical end and is replaced by a new one after the beginning of 7th century.

Do consumers care about human brands?: A case study of using Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) to map two athletes’ engagements in social and political advocacy

ABSTRACT Research Question We aimed to explore consumers’ perceptions of two athletes and athletes’ engagements in social and political advocacy. Research Methods We conducted 24 individual in-depth, unstructured interviews and applied Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) to reflect deeper feelings and thoughts of consumers and construct a perceptual map. Results and Findings Findings show how the actions of athletes contribute to the building and leveraging of their own brands – symbolic images and key associations of Michael Bennett and Jason Pierre-Paul. Findings reveal that lifestyle, relationship effort, and role model make a difference in creating unique brands. New categories emerged from the analysis of athlete advocacy: views toward advocacy, sport as platforms for advocacy, and ambassadors. Implications We offer unique methodological contributions to scholarship and distinctive associations of selected athletes and provide implications for both professionals and academics in sport.

Symbolic Images Representing Cultural and Ethnic Identity of the Kazakhs in Kazakhstan Cinema

Symbolic Images Representing Cultural and Ethnic Identity of the Kazakhs in Kazakhstan Cinema