Journal articles on the topic 'Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) – Psychological aspects'

Abstract: The study of the dream phenomenon in Georgian artistic discourse is important because dreaming represents typological universality, although with ethno-national specificity in its performance, enabling us to understand Georgian mentality peculiarity in relation with Western tradition and also because a dream semantics (in its broadest sense), as a cultural concept, encompasses typologically similar events (prophecies, visions, dreams, prognoses, etc.), the function of which in Georgian texts demands special study, as it represents a provoking element of narrative structure. The research goal is to \ under various perspectives: exploring the dream phenomenon through uniting psychological and literary aspects; typological dreams classification and its variations in the creation by Georgian realist and modernist writers. The research main line involves three types of scientific methodology: The sociological-psychological research method of dream phenomenon; feature-based analysis of dreams and structural-contextual analysis of dreams, which presents paradigmatic variants of diverse literary processes during the 19th and 20th centuries. The Georgian realism considered that dreams adhered to their basic principles.Vazha-Pshavela, in contrast, has a dreamlike vision that is not only related to sleep but it is one of the ways of accessing the irrational world through the dreamer’s mystical-allegorical perception and myths. Vazha-Pshavela's next generation of Georgian writers, who are fond of European culture began to master and develop the themes typical to modernism, and also to it’s theoretical principles. Keywords: Dreams; psychosemiotics; Georgian artistic discourse; Modernism

The results of the analysis of semantic groups of mythonyms of the poetic heritage of I. A. Bunin as means of explication of various historical-informational and cultural-symbolic worldview meanings are presented in the article. The relevance of the work is due to the interest of literary onomastics in identifying units of the onomastic code of artistic and aesthetic systems of various domestic and foreign writers. The novelty of the work is associated with the inclusion of lexical units with different ratios of the nominated image and denotation into the Bunin mythonymicon, with the synthesis of linguistic and literary-cultural approaches in characterizing each of the selected lexical units. The twelve described semantic groups of mythological names are organized in the form of a field with a core and peripheral parts. For each group, the features of contextual use are noted. The authors come to the conclusion that in the Bunin picture of the world, mythonyms of various semantics perform text-forming and meaning-forming functions. They not only represent archetypal images (Fire, Bottom, Feminine, Garden, etc.), axiological oppositions (light — darkness, good — evil, etc.), key ideas, themes and motives (the idea of being still, themes of love, death, motives of temptation, resurrection, dreams, etc.), historiosophical concepts (moral choice and fortitude), but also participate in the creation of an individual author’s myth.

In a noticeable artistic-based structure, stories in heavenly books assume fine narrative pieces. The literary construction and various devices employed in the narrative exhibit a fairly noticeable piece of art. In general, the heavenly books follow an allegoric art to emphasize ethical and typical behavioural ends. However, the intended message in the heavenly books have moulded this end in a fine artistic methods. To explore this scope, this paper examines the distinctive narrative form delineated generally in the heavenly books with particular focus on the Holy Quran. The researcher applies the aspects of narrative including form, technique on the text to identify the artistic creation on the basis of the narrative approaches. The chosen sura "Yusuf" is taken from the Holy Quran, which noticeably and artistically traces the development of its protagonist early from childhood up to maturity. It sheds the light on the ups and downs of the central character, in relation to the surrounding characters and circumstances; and their influences on the ultimate outcome. The narrative in Yusuf sura text interweaves various psychological, sociological, familial constrains which ultimately result into a fine literary portrayal. With a fine artistic touch, the narrator follows the allknowing mode whose narration includes the multitude aspects of the characters –the internal and external world. The text, further, gives a panoramic view of the entire world of the narrative which is arranged in an episodic plot with the employment of the cinematic technique of scene shifting. It is observed that the plot-organization, characters and struggle are dynamically presented away from the boredom of the historiography.

This article explores the intermedial and metapoetical semantics of the artistic image of a train. This image is part of the artistic semiotics and plays two interrelated roles: it marks the connection between the discourses of cinema and literature and signifies the act of artistic creation. Based on the Russian literature of the ХХ–ХХI century, this article reviews the origins and development of the arrival of a train as a cinematic metaphor, as well as the ways of depicting images in time and space (including the inner space). Before the age of cinema, the classic Russian literature introduced the railroad motif to make the discourse more dynamic and to highlight the key opposition between traditional lifestyle and technological progress, e.g. in works by F. Ostrovsky, A. Chekhov, etc. The literature of the XX century merged cinematic devices with literary motifs and introduced fragmentation, editing, changing angles, and other new ways of artistic perception, e.g. in A. Platonov’s oeuvre. Train imagery may attain mythological semantics when it manifests the themes of disaster, death, Apocalypse, and revolution, thus becoming a metapoetical symbol, e.g. in B. Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. In the contemporary Russian literature, train movement is associated with the life of human consciousness (V. Pelevin) or with text generation (S. Sokolov). In some cases, episodes of rail traffic interspersed with episodes of filming complicate the narrative and multiply transitions from external to internal focalization (E. Vodolazkin).

The paper is dedicated to studying the oneiric text of S. Krzhizhanovsky’s novel “Sideline.” The topicality of the research is due to modern literary criticism interest in examining various aspects of artistic hypnology of Russian writers, as well as studying the works of “returned” authors, including S. Krzhizhanovsky. The realization specifics of the structural model of the literary dream in question can be presented as the following scheme: unconscious falling asleep – dream-journey – awakening by falling down. Different variants of artistic implementation of the main metaphors connected with dreaming are analyzed: “dream-life” in the image of briefcase-cushion and the image of “million-brained” dream of equality and brotherhood; “dream-death” in the image of the leader of a dream world, with the prevalence of thanatological vocabulary in the description of the city of dreams. The ways of imitating the space of real dreaming in the oneiric text of the novel are studied: awakening by falling, sudden muteness of characters, sudden change of location, etc. Also, the specifics of using the plot device of an unannounced dream is considered contributing to the illusion of “reality” of everything that happens to the character in the city of dreams. An attempt is made to consider the oneirotop of the novel in terms of classification by genre and function, plot and composition, images and esthetics and characters, as well as artistic functions of dreams in the literature (plot function, psychological function, idea, and symbolic function). The oneiric text of Krzhizhanosky’s novel “Sideline” is viewed as an artistic realization of the author’s original idea of the subconscious, dreamy origin of a communist utopia.

The article aims at presenting the project Russian Orientalism (Science, Art, Collections), conducted by the team of researchers from the KunstkameraMuseum (St. Petersburg). We offer the reader an interpretation of orientalism, as having an inner unity of the way of perception and vision of the East, its co-creation, expressed in a wide variety of aspects: professional and scientific, artistic, everyday, etc. The resulting book shows that Russia's and “Orient” mutual history testifies to a continuous dialogue, through which we, realizing our dissimilarity, try to understand not only the Other, but also ourselves, through our reflection in it.

The paper deals with poetic translation analysis of the poem "At Night"of the Polish poet Bolesław Leśmian. The appearance of Bolesław Leśmian’s poetry in Ukrainian translation (the collections of selected works "Садбожий спалахненець" and "Ангели" translated by M. Kiianovska) has become an important event. The researcher focuses their attention on the contextual, poetic, poetical, artistic and stylistic peculiarities of the poem "At Night", in connection with the philosophic and literary views of the poet. The wide range of scientific works on Bolesław Leśmian’s poetry in Polish literary studies allows us to study different aspects of this poet’s poetics: symbolism, peculiarities of the artistic images creation, the appeal to folk sources, the language of his literary works, the image of God in his poetry, the role of rhythm, immediacy of worldview and creating the world anew in "song without words" etc. The poetics of the poem has been studied, its interpretation is based on the unity of compositional, semantic, figurative elements of the poem. The translation analysis, aimed at the study of structural and semantic features of the poem "At Night" in Ukrainian translation, is concentrated on the author’s peculiarities of creating images and their representation by M. Kiianovska in her translation of the poem. The author of the article focuses on the concept of the original and translation, the overall mood of the poem, its content, figurative system, structure, rhythmic organization, the rhyming system of the translation and the original. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the selection of lexical equivalents, the poetic syntax of the poem and other translation techniques on the way to better understanding of the text, the artistic images creation and grammatical and compositional integrity of the translation of the poem.

The article is devoted to the research of the context of the author’s view in the architectonics of antiwar novels of the mentioned authors. The signs of a real military type, which appeared in the time on the pages of the humanities in the aspect of rationalism and individualism, are found out. The essence of the “lost generation” is characterised in philosophical, historical and aesthetic aspects. It is proved that the artistic system of anti-war novels is characterized by the dominant way of introducing the author’s view of the story. Aspects such as the author’s attitude to war disasters, the epic tone of the story, the aesthetic concept of the artist, his sociological, historical and psychological views are analysed. The objective-historical point of view, according to which narration extended the boundaries of space, created the background of time, overcame the static of the narrative, deepened the principle of mimesis, is investigated. The peculiarities of the authors’ artistic systems and some of their creative principles, the subjective interpretation of the feelings of the characters have been found out. The skill of each artist in reproducing the inner world of the characters under the influence of the bloody events of the war is outlined. The key words of novels, which serve as generalized forms of imaginative consciousness, as well as their influences on the artistic and psychological nature of the works, are characterised. The functioning of the author’s language of anti-war novels and the peculiarity of oral and written and professional language are traced. The stable correlation of the analysed novels with the most actual problems of the socio-psychological atmosphere of a specific historical era is studied. The originality of the writers’ literary world is revealed, the originality of their thinking is emphasized and the dominant typological similarities and differences are characterised. In studying the structure of the analysed novels, the peculiarity of the conciseness of the collective portraits, in which all the emotional and psychological capacity of each component is reproduced, is traced. It is emphasised that the context of the author’s view also manifests itself through various extravagant elements (authorial indentations, descriptions of exteriors, titles, epigraphs, etc.), which along with the story aspect of the novels give them artistic completeness and integrity. In addition, the specifics of the author’s language of anti-war novels are studied.

The purpose of the article is to identify the features of speech characteristics in the context of the disclosure of the plot-content aspect of the performance of postmodern aesthetics. Methodology. A typological and systematic method is used to study the creative mechanisms of the actor's creation of the speech characteristic of the image in the context of the peculiarities of the aesthetics of postmodernism; cognitive method, thanks to which theoretical positions in the field of language psychology and speech therapy are extrapolated to the field of theatrical art; method oftheoretical generalization, etc. Scientific novelty. The influence of postmodernist theater tendencies on the process of the actor's voice work on the creation of the image – the development and implementation of speech features of the character; the peculiarities of the process of decoding the sign system of a modern production on the basis of the interpretation of the speech characteristic of the images created by the actors are analyzed. Conclusions. The verbal characteristic of the image contributes to the actor's representation of certain internal characteristics of the character, his emotional state, deep reaction to events and/or actions of other characters, changes in lifestyle and worldview, etc., and in the context of postmodern aesthetics, when stage texts double coding" – a complex phenomenon of postmodernism, artistic and aesthetic means of which in theatrical art is a synthesis of different languages and codes of literature and philosophy in a holistic hypertext of performance, contribute to the understanding and comprehension of semantic aspects of theatrical production. The actor's use of elements of speech characteristic contributes to the expansion of his professional speech competence, the diversity of speech sound of the stage word. The components of speech characteristics can act as expressive means that reveal important aspects of the character; the necessary form of revealing the internal content of the stage image; an important element of the psychophysical structure of the role; an artistic technique that enhances the expressive possibilities of the stage word, and, accordingly, helps to form verbal symbolic means of expressing the artistic meanings of the performance. In our opinion, for the organic process of forming the stage image in general and the speech characteristics of the character in particular, the actor must not only expand his attention, observation, and ability to understand and comprehend the psychological and social causes of human behavior, but also deepen knowledge of psycholinguistics and speech therapy. Because only the organic combination of these factors contributes to the design of optimal stage speech, which corresponds to the concept of each specific performance.

The article reveals the psychological aspects of the perception of music and interaction with it when using music computer technologies, which are a software and hardware complex (musical computer, keyboard synthesizer, DJ console, smartphone with sound programs, etc.) in conjunction with the methodology of its application in creativity and in music training. Revealing the contradictions that are typical for the educational field “Art: Music”, the authors propose and use in their research an interdisciplinary approach (psychology, neurophysiology, pedagogy, computer science and Information & Communication Technology) in a holistic consideration of the phenomenon of music in connection with the phenomenon and processes of its perception, creation, and translation. The main problem is identified as the need to identify and take into account the psychophysiological factors that affect a person when interacting with music. The goal is to study the effect of convergence of the music computer technologies, manifested through the phenomenon of polymodality of perception of an artistic image is solved through the analysis of existing interpretations of polymodality, related connotations and classifications of synesthesia, using examples of technological and cultural manifestations of the polymodal nature of perception (syncretism of arts, associativity as a method of interpretation of an artistic image). Discussed insights on the future prospects of the study of polymodality of perception and representation of the artistic image of a musical work as one of the key features actualized in music computer technologies the effect of convergence and to explore the effect of virtualization, the use of potential of these technologies and multimodal nature of human perception for the holistic understanding of works of art.

The article focuses on various aspects and peculiarities of Ukrainian literary emigration – from the need to surround other people’s space with the whole complex of psychological, socio-cultural, creative problems – to the re-accentu- ation of the notions of motherland / stranger, center / periphery, etc. In this context, various individual views on the notion of a homeland as a territory and a homeland as a spiritual, metaphysical substance are considered. It is noted that under the conditions of a closed system of totalitarianism, this was perhaps the only opportunity to perceive the intellectual, philosophical, artistic-style impulses of the world not only through the mediation of Russian and Polish translation, but also directly within other cultures. Writers outside Ukraine produced other models of world perception – hence the explanation of a broad map of scattering of Ukrainian emigrants. The emigre writers integrated into a strange world, the world of the Other is not as Alien, where, accordingly, there is a dominant, “central” or dominant culture and culture marginal, peripheral, brought from other ethnic territories and communities. On the one hand, they got the freedom of creativity, and on the other hand, they were limited by harsh conditions of survival (most of them had to work for a long time on different jobs). Open to change, they were guided by the guideline to maintain a certain balance between their / stranger to balance the images of their homeland / stranger. The received “gift of freedom” tried to convey creativity, “liberating” itself from traditional aesthetics, instead seeking the new, “unburied aesthetics”. Different models of “absent presence” of diasporic writers in mainland Ukrainian literature (B. Boychuk, B. Rubchak, I. Koshelevets, Emma Andievskaya, Vera Vovk, Anna-Galya Gorbach, Martha and Ostap Tarnavsky, etc.) are analyzed in the article. Some of them tried to legalize their presence in the Ukrainian socio-cultural space still far from gaining independence from Ukraine; others have proven active in the Ukrainian cultural environment since the 1990’s. The author stresses the need to study the holistic image of Ukrainian literature, including the study of mentality, psychological peculiarities of emigration writers.

Receptive stylistics is the latest trend in the stylistics of text. It studies the mechanisms of text perception, in view of the account time, socio-cultural and individual psychological factors of perception. This integrative model of textology combines the ideas of hermeneutics, phenomenology, receptive aesthetics and poetics, traditional poetics, linguоsynergetics etc. Maximum openness to the researching of the intellectual and communicative nature of the text is reflected in the terminology of receptive stylistics. One of the theoretical platforms of receptive stylistics is receptive aesthetics (aesthetics of the reception). Terminology of this scientific branch was actively accepted and integrated into the special language of the new stylistic direction. First of all, we are talking about key concepts such as aesthetic experience and horizon [expectations] of the author / reader, horizons of perception / understanding. empty spaces / semantic gaps in the structure of the text, identification of the reader with the text, specification of the text, actual dimension of the text, etc. Today, the Ukrainian receptive theory is structured by the concept of actualization of the text, the horizon of the text, the constitution of the text, the communicative certainty / uncertainty of the text. Emphasizing theoretical and methodological cores of contemporary Ukrainian receptive theory, it is necessary to focus on the national historical and cultural context of its constructing. Especially important from this point of view is the treatise by Ivan Franko From the Secrets of Poetic Art. Most of the theses of this work present a progressive vision of the deep psychological mechanisms of reading the artistic text in the measure of active perception, as lingual and aesthetic communication, dialogue between the author and the reader through the text. Also, the concurrence of Ivan Franko’s views with fundamental receptive principles of studying artistic text constitutes the scientific concepts of aesthetics, inductive aesthetics, perception, reception, suggestion, resonance, sensory vibration, etc. Consequently, the concept of reading and interpreting works of verbal art, formed in the treatise From the Secrets of Poetic Creativity, implicitly contains the basic principles of receptive aesthetics and poetics. Cardinally new philosophy of reconnaissance of the nature of artistic text, psycholinguistic mechanisms of influence on the reader, regularities of reception and interpretation at the end of the 20th century presented linguistic synergetic. Actual, and in some aspects methodological for receptive theory has become the following concepts of linguistic synergetic: nonlinearity of development, stability / instability of development, openness of the system, rhizomes, energy of the text, energy resonance, author’s energy, reader energy, etc. In contemporary receptive stylistic studies they do not stagnate, but are in a state of active deepening, refinement. For example, the concept energy of the text is coordinated with such established, well-known categories of stylistics as linguistic and literary tradition, lingual and cultural memory, reception and interpretation. Process of terminological borrowing and assimilation of units of other disciplines contributes to the development of an integrative terminological paradigm optimally adapted to the needs of the reciprocal description of the nature of artistic text.

The article is devoted to a specific socio-cultural phenomenon, called by the author “Napoleonic” Petersburg, and its reflection in Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment (1866). In the late 1830s — 1860s the Napoleonic myth manifested itself in several aspects of the cultural life of the capital of the Russian Empire: the names of public institutions, restaurant menus, apartment decorations, museum rarities, monuments, street shows, theatrical productions, literary works, psychological imitation of Napoleon, etc. The article presents an attempt to reconstruct how the “Napoleonic” Petersburg was formed and looked like during the time when Fyodor Dostoevsky, who dedicated several works to the life of people in Petersburg, fascinated by Napoleon (“Mr. Prokharchin,” White Nights, Notes from the Underground, etc.), lived and worked in it, before the creation of Crime and Punishment. The author’s research focuses on the novel Crime and Punishment and Rodion Raskolnikov, trying to become a new Napoleon and talking about the transformation of St. Petersburg and the greatness of historical figures as “living monuments” on which there is “not a body, but bronze.” It is shown how the realities of St. Petersburg (the Egyptian Bridge, the Alexander Column, the Kazan Cathedral, etc.) relate to the Napoleonic myth and are indirectly reflected in the text of Dostoevsky’s novel.

This article analyzes Edgar A. Poe’s short stories “The Black Cat”, “Hop-Frog”, “Four Beasts in One — The Homo-Cameleopard”, “Morning on the Wissahiccon”. The aim of the study is to determine their animalistic codes — artistic images and motifs related to the life of animals, human-animal relations, “animal” symbolism, etc. Having applied historical-literary, psychoanalytical, and comparative methods of research, these short stories are identified as variants of the author’s modeling of an animalistic text. The subject of the study is the specifics of Edgar A. Po’s interpretation of images and motifs that are directly or indirectly related to artistic animalistic. The novelty of the research is determined by the following tasks, solved for the first time in its course: considering the correlation of animalistic codes with the ideological pathos of short stories; allocating the characteristic features of the author’s models of artistic animalistic and the arsenal of their poetics; provides a comparison of the psychoanalytical and metaphorical versions of Edgar A. Po’s interpretation of animalistic codes in the context of his idiostyle. As a result of the study, it was found that the writer’s usage of the animal theme, in the broadest sense, is the result of his view on relevant natural and philosophical ideas, which resonate in his prose with the manifestation of various animalistic codes. Two types of novels of the author’s animalistic text were distinguished. The first one, psychoanalytical, provides a realistic and concrete image of an animal perceived through the prism of the narrator’s consciousness and the tradition of his mystical interpretation, turning into an image-symbol as a result (“The Black Cat”, “Morning on the Wissahiccon”). The parable-like text of the second one, philosophical-metaphorical, despite the absence of an animal image emphasizes the problem of a “human beast” (“Hop-Frog”, “Four Beasts in One — The Homo-Cameleopard”). Symbolization of animalistic codes is common for both types. The article generalizes the important role of animalistic codes in the modeling of a psychological portrait of a contemporary man by Edgar A. Po and in the genre creation of diffuse varieties of a psychological-analytic novel.

The article is devoted to the study of the general and different aspects of the presentation of Chinese culture discursive elements in the literature of the Russian diaspora in China. The perception of a large number of “Chinese elements” by the emigration literature determines not only the specificity of this layer of the literary creativity, but also the production of the whole series of traditions that are receptive by their nature. Tradition markers, various signs of the Chinese culture, as well as the problems of the traditional Chinese philosophy and a special process of plot making - these are the aspects that the literature of the Russian diaspora perceives creatively. Traditional Chinese symbols (lotus, fan, etc.) play a special role in the creation of special traditions of the Russian emigration literature, which convey inspiration and depth to the works, and to the literature of the Russian diaspora as a whole, that is an appeal to the world cultural values, that are all-embracing in nature. The purpose of the article is a multifaceted analysis of the discursive elements of Chinese culture in the literature of the Russian diaspora of China from the standpoint of the traditional foundations perception of the Chinese culture and the development of their own traditions within the literature of the Russian emigration, which makes it possible to reveal the artistic features of the works created by the Russian writers and poets outside the influence of the native culture. The relevance of the study is determined by the insufficient study of the role of the traditional Chinese culture in the formation of new imagery in the works of representatives of the Russian emigration literature in China. It is necessary to analyze the discursive elements of Chinese culture in the artistic world of the Russian emigration literature, using the capabilities of an interdisciplinary complex of research methods to identify the nationally-specific and individual-author’s perception of Chinese traditional culture and develop on this basis its own traditions of Russian emigre literature.

The article tries to implement the methods of the so-called «unnatural» narratology to analyse the texts of the collection of short stories «Absolute Emptiness» («Doskonała prόżnia»), which is a set of reviews on non-existent texts. In story-telling structures of this kind, an author usually forms and a reader usually cognitively processes: (a) new types of these structures (schemes), which are not generated in non-estranged texts; (b) new narrative strategies, in particular, the reference part of the textual story may contain actors impossible to be met in «usual» texts; (c) narrative approaches to the formation and evaluation of story-telling structures where there are objects, persons, etc. absent in the real life; (d) means of «restoring» the images of the non-existent authors in the «body» of other texts (in particular, paratexts similar to reviews). The article proves that literary narratives that reflect the non-existent texts demand additional cognitive efforts from an addressee to perceive the communicative senses generated in them. The most important source of such senses creation is a specific logic of the world perception and its reflection, which is non-characteristic to the «classical» speech genre of a review. In view of linguistic pragmatics, these texts actualize special points of view, empathy, and means of their focus. The author’s standpoint about the non-existent text and its reconstruction in paratexts form a shifted focus of empathy, and, what is more, generate non-usual communicative senses, the perception of which demands additional cognitive and psychological efforts from the addressee (a reader, a listener).

The article presents lexical-grammatical and associative-semantic methods of verbalization of basic value-axiological concepts - woman, man, mind, child. The mediacontent of the modern magazine “Zinka” is characterized as a container that covers universal information, including emotional, playful one. The importance of attention to anecdotes is noted as to everyday, literary stories, which reflect key concepts of human relationships, but are not used to create these concepts. The role of mini-texts of jokes as a means of psychological and social unloading, activation of a positive world-view of a person is noted. Anecdotes as oral narrative genres are reproduced in written and bring to the target audience in the artistic form certain value dominants, which contemporary Ukrainians should focus on, as well as gender aspects of linguo-cultural activity in the community, and in general, reflect informative-communication culture of community. All text material is analyzed with attention to the following linguistic means of comism creation: the contrast of direct and figurative meaning of the word and phraseological reversal, the contrast of high and low, literary and colloquial in stylistic semantics of words and phraseological reversals, pun, semantic alogisms of homonyms, synonyms and paronims. Particular attention is paid to the functions of precedent name in literary anecdotes. It is noted that in Ukrainian laughter culture the appellation to a precedent phenomenon is traditional, which serves as the undisputed authority, because for a long time a certain image of a leader has been formed in society, template ideas about it are finished, which gives the impression of the authenticity of the situation being played. It is shown that in such anecdotes and jokes the precedent name acquires interactive features, and the public image of the so-called media persona is updated every time, activating the linguocultural memory of the audience of listeners-readers.

А. Платонов - известный русский писатель XX века, родившийся в Воронеже и проживший достаточно сложную жизнь, что не могло не отразиться на произведениях, создаваемых им. Особое внимание среди всего литературного наследия, оставленного А. Платоновым и изучаемого в разных аспектах (сюда входит проза, драматургия, публицистика и т.д.), привлекает специфика введения автором ономастических единиц разных разрядов. Имя собственное - это та лексическая единица, с употреблением которой мы сталкиваемся ежедневно в процессе использования языка для номинации людей, животных, стран, рек, поселений и т.д. Присущее именам собственным разнообразие как функциональное, так и языковое, привело к возникновению ономастики - науки, которая занимается рассмотрением имен собственных, названий и т.п. Полагаем, что имя собственное - это особый художественный элемент, не существующий в тексте самостоятельно и всегда взаимосвязанный с другими элементами текста, поскольку это необходимо автору для создания художественного образа. Анализ взаимодействия всех этих систем позволяет точнее понять замысел автора и цель введения в текст той или иной ономастической единицы. Очевидно, что введение автором в произведение конкретных ономастических единиц всегда не случайно, подобный выбор всегда обусловлен ассоциациями автора, связанными с тем или иным именем. В данном исследовании предпринята попытка провести анализ существующих в современной науке работ по исследованию особенностей функционирования ономастических единиц в творчестве А. Платонова. Рассмотренные нами работы масштабны, но исследование ономастических единиц в произведениях А. Платонова не теряет своей актуальности в связи с тем, что системные труды в данной области отсутствуют. A. Platonov is a famous Russian writer of the 20 century who was born in Voronezh and had a long and complicated biography reflected in his works. Platonov’s literary heritage which includes prose, plays, features etc. is studied in various aspects but special attention must be paid to the specificity of the author’s usage of proper names from different groups. A proper name is a lexical unit which is regularly used in the process of language nomination of people, animals, countries, rivers, settlements etc. The variety of proper names, both functional and lingual, lead to the foundation of onomastics as a science to study such lexical units. We think that proper names are special artistic elements which do not exist in the text by themselves as they are always connected with other text elements being necessary for the image creation. The analysis of the interaction of all these systems leads to the better understanding of the author’s ideas and the purpose of usage of a certain onym which never happens by chance but is always based on the author’s associations with the name. In the present article we try to analyze a set of contemporary scientific works devoted to the functioning of onomastic units in A. Platonov’s prose. The analyzed works are quite serious but the research of onomastic units in A. Platonov’s creativity is still relevant because of the absence of systematic studies in this sphere.

Statement of the problem. The article is devoted to consideration of a problem of orphanhood in the modern Russian literature on the basis of L.E. Ulitskaya’s novels ‟Sincerely Yours, Shurik” and ‟The Big Green Tent”. The relevance of the study is determined by the increased interest to the work of the writer. The aim of the study is to reveal ethical and spiritual aspects of the problem of orphanhood in the literature of new sentimentalism through the prism of Ulitskaya’s works. An attempt is made to identify ways of realizing the image of an orphan, to denote a fair allocation of it in a special type of hero. Achieving the goal helps to identify intertextual connections and meanings that constitute the ideological and artistic basis of the works. The methodology of the study was comparative, structural-typological and hermeneutical approaches, as well as the method of literary analysis of the novels under study. Research results. The study of the central images in the selected novels allows the author of the article to reconstruct a certain philosophical picture of the world, which served as the basis for the creation of the type of an orphan hero. The article notes that the main character must face difficulties, the result of overcoming which will be either the achievement of psychological maturation of the orphan or the impossibility of his existence. In general, there is a profound connection between the theme of orphanhood in the works of L. Ulitskaya and large-scale social breakdowns at turn of 21st century.

Background. The article is a step towards a modern comprehension of the creative heritage by M. Karminskyi, whose work in the second half of the 20 century contributed to the development and international fame of Ukrainian music. Analysis of scientific publications (Heivandova, K., 1981; Ivanova, Yu., 2001; Kushchova, E., 2004 etc.), memoirs (Hanzburg, G., 2000) and a huge array of periodicals devoted to the composer allows us to single out the characteristic features of his creative personality, which determine the originality of his talent as a composer, explaining the constant demand for his music and its successful functioning in the pedagogical process, in particular, in children’s music schools. The purpose and objectives of this study – to consider the artistic and aesthetic orientation of the creative heritage by M. Karminskyi and identify its distinctive features, focusing on the genre and style aspect of his works for children and youth and their methodological significance in pedagogical practice. Research methods are based on general scientific principles of systematization and generalization. The most important role was played by the interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of the composer’s creative heritage from the standpoint not only of musicology, but also of history, culturology, and pedagogy. For reflecting the spiritual atmosphere, where the composer’s talent was formed, the historicalbiographical approach was of great importance. Research results. The way of formation of M. Karminskyi’s individuality, development of his innate musical inclinations to successful realization of talent is crowned with creation of compositions of various genres, both largescale – partitas, operas, music to performances, and chamber – vocal-choral and instrumental miniatures, among which the piano music for children and youth audiences appealed to the style of Ukrainian folklore occupies a significant place. Ukrainian literature, in particular, works by Taras Shevchenko, Lesia Ukrainka, and Ivan Franko, which were carefully studied by M. V. Karminskyi as a student of the Faculty of Journalism at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv State University, had a significant influence on the formation of the composer’s worldview and aesthetic priorities. Probably, it was the love for literature that determined the programmatic narrative nature of M. Karminskyi’s compositions. However, the love for music itself prevailed: M. Karminskyi continued his studies at the Kharkiv Conservatory in the class of Professor D. Klebanov possessed in perfection by the musical artistic heritage and was able to transfer creatively this knowledge to students. M. Karminskyi’s later applied the skills acquired from him in his work. In those years, the Kharkiv School of Composition stood out among other music unions of Ukraine with a high level of creative competence: composers sought their own way and artistic individuality, creating a modern musical language. However, even in this highly educated environment, the personal potential of Mark Veniaminovich, his highly artistic taste and erudition rose. Mark Veniaminovich is sometimes called “the knight of the country of childhood” thanks to his brilliant compositions for children. The composer speaks to the children’s audience with the help of intonations and artistic techniques available to the child’s worldview, but he does not adapt to the child, but teaches him to develop thinking, show strong emotions. Pupils like program music with interesting content that evokes familiar associations, specific ideas. Therefore, in many of his works M. Karminskyi turns to the literary basis, clear concrete and dynamic images, heightened emotionality (“Steppe, steppe...”, “Autumn Day”, “Lyrical intermezzo”, etc.). Such approach motivates children not to perform works abstractly and mechanically, but to bring their own emotions and understandings into them. M. Karminskyi uses clear three-part or couplet forms that contain repetition (the plays “Favorite Tale”, “Ancient History”, “Merry Trumpeter”, etc.), he is characterized by conciseness of melodic phrases. The texture is convenient for children’s hands: parallel intervals, counterpointing voices, organ points of the lower voice, melodic figurations and harmonic degrees sustained in the middle line, register dynamics are used. These and other techniques promote students’ technical capabilities by developing mobility and finger strength. Continuing the traditions of the Ukrainian singing school, M. Karminskyi pays a lot of attention to the techniques of cantilena performance, forcing students to master the art of playing the pedal, which requires careful sound control. Piano ensembles, unique in their poetic beauty, were created by the composer at the end of his not too long life. These plays use themes from the music to the play “Robin Hood”, and the musical images of the pieces are extremely clear even in the names: “Old Grandfather Kohl”, “Lady Tambourine”, “Road to the Temple”, “Crazy Waltz”. M. Karminskyi, feeling a passionate interest in theatrical action with its playful moments and the task of embodying specific images, created music for performances. The radio production “Robin Hood” with the participation of the country’s leading artists, based on the poems of the famous Scottish poet R. Burns translated by S. Marshak and imbued with romantic sublimity, lyricism and sincerity, received a special resonance; it contains expressive melodies that are quickly memorized. In 1978, the company “Melody” released a stereo disc “Robin Hood” with a recording of this radio show. The variety of artistic tasks of the ensemble music of M. Kaminskyi leads to the formation of a variety of pianistic skills. The predominance of playful, moving images in plays develops motor technic and synchronization in performing. The meter and the rhythm of the works are complicated using the measures 6/8, 9/8 or size change in one work: 2/4; 3/4; again 2/4; then 4/4. This technique allows you to transmit movement and free breath of a musical phrase. Karminskyi actively uses chords from fourths and fifths intervals characterized the repertoire of Ukrainian bandura players. Conclusions. The composer gave the children a lot of strength and inspiration, creating music for them in accordance with high moral and ethical criteria and filled with vivid emotions, theatricality, and visible concrete imagery. Miniatures for the children’s choir, the master’s piano pieces have a high spiritual meaning and are among the best achievements of Ukrainian children’s musical literature. The piano music of M. Karminskyi is marked by a tendency to search for a new national style: the composer does not quote folk melodies, creating original musical images in the spirit of folklore. The multi-genre works of M. Karminskyi embody the eternal themes of good and evil, love and death, betrayal and fidelity with the emotional strength inherent in his music, demonstrating the composer’s deep erudition and human decency, originality, uniqueness of his personality and his talent.

The author carried out the research aimed both to determine the factors of creation of S. Gulak-Artemovsky's opera "Zaporozhets beyond the Danube" and to reveal its characteristic features. Changes in the libretto of the work were proved, their influence on the development of the conflict, the peculiarities of its resolution in the implementation of the play were indicated. Due to the review of literary sources, their thematic systematization was carried out according to the following parameters: features of the life of the Transdanubian Cossacks after the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich; preservation of national traditions, customs, rites of the Ukrainian ethnos abroad; the specifics of the manifestation of the mentality of Ukrainians against the background of their coexistence with another nation, which differs in cultural and religious identification. The methodological study of educational issues through the prism of a comprehensive cross-sectoral understanding of the historical, socio-psychological, cultural, musicological and theatrical aspects of the opera is outlined. Peculiarities of the musical dramaturgy of the work, its construction on the synthesis of creatively reconsidered genre-style features of the French and Italian lyric-commission opera with the Ukrainian song and dance folklore are published. Three dramatic lines in the opera are characterized: lyrical-romantic (images of Andrew and Oksana), comic (images of Karas and Odarka), patriotic (generalized image of the people). The process of creating a holistic vocal-stage image of the heroine was analyzed through the prism of the author’s article E. Kolesnyk who was the performer of Oksana's part under the guidance the Chief Choirmaster of the National Opera of Ukraine L. Venediktov. The individual specific approaches of the artist to the deepening of the psychology of the heroine’s artistic image through the use of a synthesis of various means involved in stage expression were determined. The fruitfulness of the outstanding choirmaster's cooperation with the experience of an opera conductor and singer in revealing the musical drama of opera composition in accordance with the composer's idea is proved. The author predicted the prospects for further explorations of the concept concerning the creating of holistic vocal and stage characters which goal is to find and display new synthesis of artistic means of expression with their inclination to neo-syncretism.

The problem of perceiving fiction has aesthetic, sociological, historical and psychological aspects. In this regard, in the methodology of teaching Russian literature to the national audience, special attention is paid to the deep, faithful and subtle reproduction of the literary works of writers, the development of the reader’s talent. Fiction as a form of art is a special area of the aesthetic. In a truly fictional work, all its elements are subordinate to the expression of a certain content, expressive, figurative, therefore, the reader’s understanding of a literary work is not only aesthetic, but also evaluative in nature. There are three stages of students’ perception of the writer’s creation: 1) recreation and experience of images of the work, with the leading process of imagination; 2) understanding of the ideological content; V.G. Belinsky called this stage “true pleasure”; 3) the influence of fiction on the personality of the reader as a result of the perception of the work. Fiction affects the worldview, speech, moral behavior in society, aesthetic and artistic development, in general, the formation of a person’s personality. The teacher tries to ensure that students have the necessary knowledge, developed, recreational imagination, emotional sensitivity, a sense of the poetic word, observation, the ability to make comparisons, comparisons, generalizations, conclusions. Their perception of a work of art is a difficult process that directly depends on previous knowledge of literature, facts of the history of culture, history of society. The complexity of the spiritual world of a modern young person is due to the development of personality in the context of the rapid progress of society. All this poses a difficult task for methodological science - to diversify the means of analysis, its types and techniques, effective ways of influencing art on students. In the national audience, the main problem of studying Russian literature - the teacher needs to reveal Russian-national literary ties with specific examples, based on certain historical conditions, national specifics, use translations of the works of the Russian writer into the native language of students, literary local history material, highlight the attitude of cultural figures of the native people to the work of the Russian writer, to his personality.

The article is devoted to the study of the topos home as a stable image with spatial characteristics in the book by M. Petrosyan “House in Which ...”. The aim of the article is to identify the possibility of functioning of the topos home in the novel as a heterotopy, i.e. a space that is outside other places, but certainly interacts with them according to the principle of juxtaposition or opposition. To achieve the aim, a complex method was used, including structural-semiotic, mythological, cultural-historical methods, which made it possible to describe the structural and semantic features of the topos home (basic binary oppositions and metaphors that make up the core of the topos), as well as its role on the real, perceptual and conceptual levels of artistic space. The main results of the study include the following statements. The topos home in the book of M. Petrosyan is presented both as a place of action of the characters, as an anthropomorphized environment, and as a space of the author’s consciousness, and as an image-symbol, a space of memory. The concept of “house“ is associated with all aspects of human existence, and therefore the main oppositions that form the structure of the topos home in the novel reveal ontological, axiological, social, psychological, epistemological problems. The topos home approaches the topos world and the paradigm of its subtopos (world is a book, world is a temple, world is a garden, world is a person) and performs a world-modeling function that is actualized in the transitional periods of historical and cultural development. It functions as a heterotopy, overcoming the principle of binarity, suggesting the “opening of time” (a break with traditional, real time, the emergence of perceptual and mythological time), isolation and at the same time permeability of spaces (House, appearance, wrong side are only relatively closed and suggest the possibility of communication), which raises the question of the degree of reality or illusory nature of space through the creation of places-heteroclites (in the novel, this is the exterior, the wrong side, the forest, the mirror, human consciousness, etc.).

The article proves that in the academic folk-instrumental art of Ukraine the personality of Lubov Mandziuk is significant. This is evidenced by her active concert and performance activities, a high level of teaching skills in the training of future bandura specialists, the identity of scholarly intelligence, organizational talents and the promotion of bandura performance in the world. It is understood that in the modern conditions of development of Ukrainian culture in general and musical art in particular, the versatility of Lubov Mandziuk’s personality is revealed in various manifestations. And it’s not just talents, skills, abilities, beliefs, value orientations, a kind of architectonics of musical thinking, a culture of feelings, diligence, will etc. It is emphasized that, first of all, the existence of Lubov Mandziuk’s personality in creativity is determined by the fact that she is self-fulfilling, because the existential release of creative energy and its direction to the development of the essence of spiritual potential depends on the level of actualization of personal self-realization. Not everyone succeeds, because it requires a lot of effort. A special reason for the author’s thoughts is the comprehension of the intentional space of the creative life of Lubov Mandziuk, which is manifested not only through the demonstration of her own virtuoso performance and artistic abilities, teaching creativity and wisdom, scientific originality, etc., but also through entelechical (movement that embodies the goal in itself) orientation on universal values in life. It is postulated that the personal attitude to one’s existence in the work of Lubov Mandziuk is perceived as the realization of a vocation that has an imperative and evaluative character, is formed on stable moral, psychological and social values, and hence the ability to deal with their own shortcomings, not hide them, uphold beliefs, constantly educate themselves and teach others. The purpose and task of the article is to identify and comprehend the features of the phenomenon of being in the work of personality Lubov Mandziuk. Analyze aspects of her creative self-realization as the realization of spiritual potential. The methodology is based on a set of research approaches to the study of the proposed issues. The basis is a comprehensive approach that combines the principles of systematic, determinism, functional-structural and activity-value methods of analysis. Conclusions The multifaceted figure of Lubov Mandziuk – a musicianvirtuoso, an experienced teacher, researcher certainly deserves special attention of scholars. After all, her creative existence is a transcended movement from a certain self-overcoming, constant self-development to self-realization as the achievement of the fullness of personal life. It (being) is interesting for the multilevel stereoscopicity of the life and professional position of the individual, which involves the mobilization of spiritual potential, all intellectual, psychological, physical resources, which ultimately form the life credo of Lubov Mandziuk. Of course, this is the achievement of a person who perceives his existence as a unique phenomenon and makes significant efforts to master the complex art of “being” in art. Thus, such individuals with a high level of professionalism, an impressive range of worldviews and original strategies for solving professional problems can help overcome the spiritual crisis of modern society, which requires the formation and upholding of spiritual values aimed at national cultural and historical creation.

The text is an attempt to present possible dialogical connections between works of literature and visual arts as an expression of the building up aspiration of the creative spirit to give rise to ideas ,by constructing the universe in fictional worlds. Such dialogue is far from utilitarian and bears the traces of artistic freedom; it is a kind of a play and provocation because it handles artifacts in which spiritual experience has crystallized, knowledge is preserved, and the coordinate system of values characterizing periods or communities is outlined. Although recreated through a different type of expression, a different articulation of meaning - verbal or non-verbal, they are manifestations of a worldview and moral convictions and fulfillment of aesthetic views - the author shows subjectivism regarding the choice of life material, regarding the scheme of its organization, the way its interpretation and the degree of distance from reality. In this sense, the analytical observations on works of literature and fine arts can be based on similar tendencies, related to the prerequisites for their emergence, the influence of sociocultural factors, and the distinction of imaginative, ideological, thematic and stylistic parallels.The characteristics are even more clarified in the contact zone of the two arts.Attention is drawn to icon and illustration, which are to some extent interconnected because, despite their iconographic, stylistic and printing differences, they can be defined as a plastic narrative. They are similar due to the presence of stylization and decorativeness in the image. Their aesthetic nature and social function are a kind of projection of the ideological and artistic tendencies in the spiritual pursuits of the community and the understanding of the role of the creative personality in the cultural and social life.Their juxtaposition with literary texts is conditioned by the possible thematic, ideological, figuratively-emotional and stylistic parallels, which are the basis of the functionality of similar psychological preconditions that determine their creation, as well as of similar aesthetic categories and social tasks to which the authors are subject. In such a view, the unique in both arts is more clearly distinguished, but at the same time, through the different languages, the “spirit of time” in its sociocultural condition is more fully reconstructed.The dialogue between works of literature and fine arts outlines a cultural field in which parallel worlds intersect. The various aspects of the relationship between them are examined - conflicting or complementary, with an emphasis on the idea of their mutual transformation or their clear separation. It is a communication in which meaning penetrates and dissolves into other cultural fields, overcomes limitations and generates additional nuances when it comes to ideas and emotions.The dynamics of their encounter, overlay, transformation or complementarity contribute to create a panoramic picture of the spiritual life over a period of time, to trace cultural interactions and to clarify the specifics of a work of art as an artifact.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the morphological transformations of the audiovisual sphere and the sphere of creative industries in the first quarter of the XXI century. The object is the audiovisual sphere and the sphere of creative industries. The subject is morphological transformations in the specified areas in the first quarter of the XXI century. The relevance of this article lies in the need to understand the convergence of the morphological foundations of the audiovisual sphere with the morphology of modern creative industries and their mutual transformations. The methodology of the theoretical analysis in this article is based on both the whole complex of ideas related to the object of research and a specific scientific toolkit formed by the morphological methodological discourse. It is noted that in Ukraine, the school and directions of research of Ukrainian morphologists are only being formed. In the works of T. Borsunivska (theory of literary genres), I. Yurchenko (visual and morphological regularities of ornament) and some others, only certain local aspects of morphological issues were considered. The authors of the mentioned article also published works related to the principles of the functioning of the morphological system of audiovisual art in the modern age, its formation, etc. The article takes into account the concepts of post-industrial society by D. Bell, the concepts of information society and society of network structures by M. Castells. interesting concepts of “creative economy” by J. Hawkins, “cultural economy” by D. Throsby and A. J. Scott, “flowing modernity” by Z. Bauman, etc. The results. 1. Periodization of morphological transformations of the first quarter of the XXI century, which included two stages — from the 2000s to the 2010s — changes at the stage of “primary” digitization; from 2011 to today — at the stage of “secondary” digitization. A comparative analysis of these changes in both spheres of the West and Ukraine in the temporal dimension shows that in our country there is a certain delay in “secondary” digitization, both for objective reasons (the COVID-19 pandemic; the Russian-Ukrainian war) and sub-objective (insufficient development of the digitized Ukrainian environment). However, Ukraine strives to overcome these shortcomings. 2. The conclusion that in the temporal dimension both spheres, both in the West and in Ukraine, were morphologically structured almost synchronously, although they had different morphological sources of this structuring 3. The conclusion that in the spatial dimension, the transformations touched on the level of formation — changes in the “boundaries” of the “internal” and “external” space of both audiovisual artistic form and creative practice; at the level of species and genre creation — in a significant strengthening of the non-hierarchical nature of both spheres (and therefore turbulence) and an almost complete transition to a network type of functioning. There is also an active convergence of the morphologies of both spheres and the strengthening of mutual influences between them. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the morphological transformations of the modern audiovisual sphere and the sphere of creative industries are studied for the first time. A comparative analysis of these changes between the West and Ukraine was made. The analysis was made based on the temporal and spatial existence of both morphological systems. The practical significance of the article lies in the fact that the scientific analysis made allows us to identify the phases of the lag in both of these spheres in Ukraine from the European ones, and to determine on its basis strategies for overcoming this lag in the future.

One article describes the writings of Uldis Bērziņš, one of the most prominent Latvian poets and translators (and also a dissident) who made his debut in the 1960s. It focuses on the aspect of time and space. The 20th century is a time of re-evaluation of values and of a search for new ways of self-expression. Entrenched mythical notions experience transformation and renaissance. Hystorical myths as a source of instigation for Latvian literature (also in folklore) reach their climax in the 1920-40s and 1960-80s, i.e. in a period when problems of ethnic identity were emphasized more than ever. Uldis Bērziņš in his poetry successfully blends trends of modernism (and some of postmodernism) with mythical reality. He thereby refreshes the message of Latvian life, as well as reinforces particular trends common for whole humankind, which the author accomplishes with the help of cultural signs densely introduced into the texts. The objective of the paper is therefore to identify and emphasize dominant details of mythical time and space in the following anthologies by the Uldis Bērziņš: „Piemineklis kazai” („A Goat’s Monument”, 1980), „Poētisms baltkrievs” („The Poetism Belarussian”, 1984), „Nenotikuši atentāti” („Assassinations which never took place”, 1990), „Laiks” („Time”, together with Juris Kronbergs, 1994) and „Nozagti velosipēdi” („Stolen bicycles”, 1999). For the more detailed description of the peculiarities of the author’s works and for understanding the connection between the linguistic elements and the ethnical specifics of thinking, it was decided to use methods which are new to Latvian literary theory and are not so commonly referred to. Namely, a philological method was used for the in-depth text analysis (Николина 2007), and a linguo-culturological one for researching the connection of language and culture (Хороленко 2006). Speaking about U. Bērziņš’ notion of mythical time and space, it is referred to as an „eternal now” situation, which also includes details of historical and psychological time and space. However, mythical time and space is dominant: texts of the poems contain a very dense layer of mythologems (Odin, Odysseus, Thor), images (trees, mountains, wheels) and mythical concepts. This layer very often merges with the layers of folklore and religion which are introduced into the texts by means of stylization and reminiscences or allusions. The paper is organized according to the three dominant features of myths in the texts of Uldis Bērziņš – dichotomy, cyclicity, and syncretism. These are revealed with the help of particularly rich micro details and cultural signs and the transformation of folklore motives. Dichotomy as a disclosure of two aspects of one whole is carried out in the artistic space within the oppositions here and there, on the top and on the bottom, center and periphery, or insider and alien. These are characterized by symbolic notions of a mountain or a bridge, images of Riga and the Daugava, as well as the introduction of a mediator (a goat, bird or a ghost), which reach over the borders of time and space. Thereby the poet emphasizes fundamental ontological aspects which are concentrated in the semantic meanings of the notions of time, eternity and lifetime. In turn, by means of linguistic elements (not only semes, but also syntactical structure and pragmatic elements) Uldis Bērziņš pays attention to the multifunctionality and uniqueness of a language, and is trying to reach the level of a parent language. Within these dichotomies, the images, motives and signs also actualize a historic time and space. Thereby, a background for the disclosure of subtextual layers is organized, and simultaneously a point of view for several artistic chronotopes is expressed, which is interpreted as a symbiotic process in the poetry of Uldis Bērziņš. The search of oneself in the context of eternity is expressed with the help of the cyclicity principle. This is at the same time a tool for the illustration of different time spaces, which creates a synthesized model of an artistic world with a polyphony of linguistic elements. The cyclicity indicators in the poetry of Uldis Bērziņš are the images of a wheel, mill, and ball, as well as the interaction of the change of cycles of nature and human life. Special attention is paid to the points of intersection of time, thereby marking the Latvian year and the course of human life. In addition, the acknowledgment that the cycle is never-ending and repetitive, makes us look for interconnections with the philosophy of existentialism and a possible fulfillment of the meaning of life. Syncretism, on the contrary, as a combination of several different traditions, allows Uldis Bērziņš to emphasize features of cultural, linguistic and ethnic identity. In the united whole, i.e. in the interpretations of a sign, motive, image or myth, there is an accumulation of a few notions that create a peculiar effect of surrealism in a poetic text. For Bērziņš, syncretism is discovered in an image of a city, a sound, personal names (Peteris, Juris), religious characters (Jesus Christ, Krishna), and myths of the creation of the world. To find features of syncretism in a text, a reader does not only have to have some knowledge of mythology, religion, or culturology, but also needs associative thinking, since the poet often plays with phonemes and facts by linking them in rhythmically symbolic combinations. To sum up Uldis Bērziņš’ notions of mythical time and space, it can be concluded that the poet successfully uses the means of language, its meanings, its peculiar functions and associative nets in order to create a synthesized model of the mythical, historical, and psychological time space. This requires additional attention from a reader, because each poem is a subtextually dense discloser of a cultural heritage and an indicator of the search of oneself.

Summary. The development history and peculiarities of the psychological school in literature and linguistics at the 20th century acquires a new meaning and is updated in our time. Modern social circumstances create a need for a modern interpretation of domestic psychological thought the formation of the psychological school at the 20th century and its development at the 21st century. The problem of understanding social, cultural, political and ethnic aspects is particularly relevant, as a source base for elucidating many factors in the psychological thought formation, revealing the dynamics of ethnogenesis, the process of mental reality subjects self-awareness. Psychological knowledge, reinterpreted by a researcher of the history of psychology, makes it possible to choose the right vector in understanding the polyphony of the modern psychological paradigm. The purpose of the article is to consider the significant contribution of psychological school representatives, who focused their attention on the study of artistic creativity and language from the point of view of the psychological component and eidos. The main goals of the article are: to consider the theory of imagery of O. O. Potebnya and thorough works of his followers; to determine the influence of the psychological school on the development of philological science. To reach goals set in the work few methods were used: information analysis method, synthesis method, descriptive method. The methodological basis of the study is the basic literature provisions of the eidos theory. In domestic literary studies, the theoretical foundations of the psychological school were laid by the works of O. O. Potebny (the theory of the «inner form of the word» and the «inner form of art» – the work «Thought and Language»). D. M. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky and L. S. Vygotsky are considered the most outstanding followers of O. O. Potebnya. Under the influence of the works of O. O. Potebnya, D. M. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky developed a persistent desire to approach any phenomenon of language and literature in order to reveal its psychological essence. The psychological method with a sociological orientation becomes the main one in the literary activity of D. M. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky. «Cultural-historical theory», developed by L. S. Vygotsky, became one of the most important theories formed in the 1920s and 1930s. L. S. Vygotsky reflects on the specifics of the inner, mental world of a person, defines the mechanisms of its formation, distinguishes two levels of mental functions – natural and higher. Natural functions characterize a person as a natural being, and higher mental functions are mediated – this is imagination, purposeful thinking, etc. Conclusions. The psychological school is of inescapable importance for the development of modern literary studies and language. It is indisputable that turning to the problems of language and thinking, to the theory of artistic imagery, to the psychology of creativity and the perception of artistic works in the study of the historical-literary process contributed to the development of philological science.

This article explores the XX―XXI centuries scientific critical investigations devoted to the study of the Ukrainian writer`s Hryhoriy Tiutiunnyk creativity. Researchers of the 1960-1980s (P. Havrilov, Yu. Barabash, L. Volovets, etc.) keep focus primarily on revealing the relationship between the personality of the writer as a Soviet patriot and his work, as well as an analysis of such types of person represented by the writer as a Soviet man, a peasant man, a man-leader, a man-warrior and patriot-one, etc. Notwithstanding the prominent ideology of this period literary exploration, a number of important aspects related to the author`s style, problem content of works, peculiarity of the ideological and aesthetic evolution of the writer, originality of the artistic reproduction of the author's concept were analyzed. Most scholars focus on the analysis of the novel “Vir”. M. Lohvinenko, K. Volynsky, B. Chip, L. Volovets, I. Semenchuk, Y. Barabash draw attention to the lyricism of the narrative in the novel and to the peculiarities of scenery images as a way of revealing character`s inner world. L. Volovets P. Havrilov, I. Semenchuk emphasize the psychological representation of characters images of the novel. Y. Badzo, L. Volovets, K. Volynsky and P. Serdyuk distinguish the motive of finding the truth in the writer`s works. The aforementioned researchers place emphasis on the analysis of war factor as a mean of revealing characters` personalities in the novel “Vir”. M. Lohvynenko, K. Volinskyi, B. Chip, L. Volovets, S. Lisovska, I. Semenchuk, Y. Barabash draw attention to the narrative lyricism of author`s work. L. Volovets, P. Gavrilov, I. Semenchuk emphasize the psychological nature of character image in the novel. Recently, S. Lisovsky's works on poetry of his works have appeared. As well as O. Nezhyvyi, who outlines the history of novel publication and carry out a textual analysis of the first print, the modern version and the main text. It is proved that a comprehensive study of Hryhoriy Tiutiunnyk`s work of has not been accomplished yet.

Background. One of the main issues of linguistics of the XX – early XXI century is a comprehensive study of the concept of discourse, which reflects a variety of real manifestations of human language communication in certain social spheres of its communicative space. The actualization of this concept in various scientific fields, the representatives of which study the essence and mechanisms of interaction of constants of such linguistic and philosophical dichotomies as “language and society”, “language and man”, has led to the need for its clear definition and typology of discourses etc. Despite the fact that linguists use a number of methods of discursive analysis of linguistic units, there is currently no single approach to their study within the theory of discourse.The purpose of the article is to identify and substantiate the features of the literary text in terms of modern discourse. The main objectives of the article: to determine the typological and categorical features of artistic discourse, to establish and describe the most important aspects of the study of artistic texts of different genres within discourse.Methods. The paper uses general scientific methods of observation, analysis, synthesis, comparison; linguistic methods, including the descriptive method – to interpret the discursive status of the literary text; the method of integrative analysis, which is the basis of a comprehensive study of a set of different aspects used in the study of the literary text as the embodiment of individualauthorial communicative intentions; the contextual-interpretive method – to identify probable reading strategies of reception of the literary text and its components.Results. The concept of discourse in the broadest sense is associated with all manifestations of communication. Discourse is a consequence of modeling knowledge structures that provide strategic planning, flow and control of communication, the operation of mechanisms of communicative competence, regulation of interactivity processes and more. An important communicative-semantic segment of the holistic nature of the analyzed concept is its interaction with various factors that reflect the essence of communication, in particular with the concept of the text. The linguistic tradition still has a great influence on the development of theoretical principles of categorization and typology of the concept of discourse, because until recently the discourse was often identified with the text as a complex linguistic sign that arises as a result of the process of language formation. Currently, researchers outline the structural and semantic parameters of the text with a number of features that also appear relevant and objective for the discourse: completeness; coherence; integrity; lexical, grammatical, logical, stylistic, semantic coherence; compositional completeness; communicative and pragmatic orientation, etc. Differentiation of discourses is one of the most important issues of modern discourse, which is currently a problem that researchers, based on a wide range of different socio-linguistic manifestations of communication, solve differently. To establish a typology of discourses, as well as texts, it is necessary to develop common criteria for their classification and determine the main categories of text and discourse. Artistic discourse, in contrast to other discourses, involves indirect communication of the author (sender) with numerous readers (addressees). When creating a text, the writer predicts the expected reaction to its content from readers, instead of “translating” the literary text into the discourse, the recipients carry out in their own way, based on their own knowledge, experience, feelings and emotions. The interaction of the addressee author with numerous addressees is devoid of real communicative factors, in particular temporal and local fixation. Despite the lack of direct contact, the writer's communicative influence on readers is obviously effective: if the artist has a deep knowledge of the language, individualizes and emphasizes linguistic means, it evokes a certain attitude to his literary texts and their evaluation by readers.Discussion. At the present stage of development of texts of any styles and genres requires discursive analysis, because in the language of fiction recorded authorial intentions that should “decipher” speakers in the process of dynamic cognition of semantic and semantic depths of a text, involving their own practical experience and knowledge during its decoding. We see prospects for further research of this topical problem in the study of features of artistic discourses of classic writers and famous contemporary artists, whose language creation is organically connected with the development of the Ukrainian literary word as an important component of the linguistic and cultural universe.

In the article on the material of the short stories «Chrysanthemum» (in the rhythm of the waltz), «Adducted Ksenia, abducted ...» (Semi-extravaganza in the rhythm of the tango), «Oleksa» (Tragedy polka on two sides), «We are Dancing”(In the rhythm of the incendiary hopak) by contemporary Ukrainian writer VolodymyrKorniychuk explores the specifics of the artistic embodiment of the choreographic material at different levels – genre, plot creation, mood-intonation, problem-thematic, visual, rhythmic, syntactic. Each work, taking into account the subtitles, has its own choreographic code, which reveals a hidden melodic line, emphasizes the event, marks the dynamic pattern of the piece in the appropriate sense. So, thanks to the dance (its motives) Volodymyr Korniychuk's works are enriched with new psychological meanings, creating an original figurative model. The dance in short stories is implemented in various artistic and semantic formats. The waltz in «Chrysanthemums» drivesthe plot and is the culmination of the relations of heroes, an eloquent exponent of the characters’ feelings. Artistic mastering of the dance form of tango in the short story «Adducted Ksenia, Abducted ...»is a successful attempt of updating modern small prose by the author. The musical form of the polka is skillfully sustained in the work of «Oleksa»; the rhythmic pattern of the short story«We are Dancing» is more expressive with the help of verbal repetitions (fragments of rehearsal work with the children's choreographic collective). Despite of the different aspects of the development of choreographic constructions, the original rhythm is common for short stories. An intermedial approach to the analysis of short stories by Volodymyr Korniychuk provides a diverse and deep reading of complex texts, where music and choreographic material is an organic component of a literary work, a means of characterizing the heroes, their complex world of feelings and emotions. Paratextuality sets the reader to a promising dialogue with the text, maximizes the decoding of choreographic indicators, verbalized in the text, which are rhythm, figures, tact, dramatic situation, tonality of interpersonal relationships of dance performers.

The diary papers of V. Vynnychenko (1911—1925) as a special interpretive field for studying the author’s world-view aesthetics and his creative intentions are analyzed. The text of the diary is systematized, based on the relevant material: the author’s thoughts on the nature of creativity as a special way of comprehending the world and a person in it; creativity as a manifestation of a person’s specific mental organization; creativity as an opportunity for self-manifestation in the present/future dyad; etc. The degree of correlation of conditions and possibilities to create, which were important for V. Vynnychenko as a politician while the fundamental changes at the beginning of the XXth century in Ukraine took place are also noticed in the article. The author’s issues given in the diary are considered in the aesthetic context of the literary process at the turn of the XIX-XXth centuries, when cardinal changes took place under the influence of interpretative changes of the world picture in philosophy and culture in general are represented in the given work. In addition, attention was paid to the concept of «creative act» and its understanding by V. Vynnychenko as a staged phenomenon: the plan, the stages of its realization, the role of intuition, fiction, fantasy in the creation of the another reality. The author’s interpretation of the author’s phenomenon taking into account to the interaction of the concepts of «endowment», «talent» and «genius» is given and commented. The emphasis is placed on V. Vynnychenko’s diary thoughts about the latest trends in Ukrainian literature of the early XXth century: homocentration, modernism as an art system renovation of the genre and poetic paradigm. To sum up, this allowed to understand the creative laboratory of the author more deeply and earnestly. The diary material is directed to the artistic creation of V. Vynnychenko - the play «The black Panther and the White Bear» for their semantic proximity: the process of creativity, psychological, aesthetic dominant of creativity, symbolism, artist’s essence researches. The perspective of the proposed direction of studying mnemonic and literary material is grounded, which allows the use of an interdisciplinary methodology for understanding aesthetic phenomena.

The relevance of the subject is determined by the growing interest of contemporary literary criticism to the problem of the spiritually mysterious aspects of human nature and behavior described in the Leskov’s art. The author brings it closer to the New Literature of the turn of the 19–20 centuries.The purpose of the article is the characterization of esthetic mysterious and playful features the Leskov’s art. The object of the work is study the novel “The ghost in the Engineering Castle” belonging to the “Christmas Stories” (1889) and “Neglected People” (1865) and “The Devil Dolls” (1891). These works are distinguished by genres and time of writing. On the other hand, the existence of mysterious, deception, switch, masquerade, dream motives unites these novels. This fact defines the study matter.As it turned out, Leskov uses literary devices such as parody, caricature, black humor, poetics of masquerade, dreams and fantasy, complicated storylines, etc. All of them relate to the poetics of game. The most important among them are changing the points of view, the game with the reading expectations and the author’s irony.As a whole, researched motives, methods, the poetics of game and the experiments with the genre show us Leskov’s artistic innovation, “transitional” phenomenon in the literature of the end of 19 century. Either it shows us certain convergences with New Prose of the turn of 19 and 20 centuries. Furthermore, the research has shown that Leskov uses the game to find out the signs of human being mystery in everyday life. His fact transfers the prose perception from the moral and psychological field to ontology.

Purpose of the study: The purpose of the study is to identify the originality and ideological functional status of the ethnomental component in the works of F. Dostoevsky. Methods: The work integrates a complex of modern approaches and methods, mainly focusing on the ideas and principles of the traditional, cultural and historical method, which demonstrates the general cultural, sociological, and psychological aspects of the study of Dostoevsky’s literary heritage. The typological method has contributed to the literary clarification of the ethnomental components in fiction and journalism of the writer. The narratological approach is used to analyze the narrative structure of Dostoevsky’s works, the correlation of the writer’s and other people’s speech, to identify various points of views on the problem, and to establish the ambiguity of the writer’s position. The contextual analysis allowed analyzing the images of characters, first, within the local context and, second, within the macrocontext, which includes other literary sources, appropriate comparisons and build a verification model of the study. Main results: The analysis of the writer’s life, his philosophy of life, sacrifices, social ambivalence, predisposition to reflection, etc. suggests the presence of certain mental foundations. The main ideas, attitudes, spiritual discoveries of the artistic worlds created by the writer are determined by the ethnomental basis of his worldview. This makes it possible to determine and understand the originality and uniqueness of Dostoevsky in the context of Russian literature. Application of the study: The conclusions of the study can serve as the basis for an accurate idea of the correlation of the writer’s worldview and his work. The materials and conclusions of the study can be used in university courses on the history of Russian literature, in special courses and special seminars on the works of Dostoevsky, for term papers, graduation papers, and dissertations. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the ethnic component in the ideological and artistic system of Dostoevsky who was a Pochvennik writer (i. e. belonged to the Pochvennichestvo movement) was first considered in the context and through the prism of both the life experience of the writer himself and the general anthropological orientation of the writer as well as his understanding of human nature. This study provides not only the opportunity to analyze the ethnic identity of Russian literature but also to trace the influence of the ethnic mentality of Dostoevsky on his worldview embodied in his fiction.

The article presents a comprehensive semantic, poetological and contextual analysis of the poem Red Tomatoes («Кончусь, останусь жив ли…») written by the Russian poet Boris Chichibabin with consideration of debatable aspects of existing interpretations. The significance of this creation for the poet’s personal and creative formation has been specified. The interpretation of the poem’s key symbolic image has been amplified, and a real comment has been attached to it. Archetypical, folkloric and literary pretexts of the poem have been characterized. The correlation between the external, biographical and lyrical plots has been commented on. The semantic load of all formal components of the poem, such as composition, verse structure, phonics, and metrics, has been checked up. It has been shown that the poetic construction appears to be nearly the only support in a torn, hostile world, in which a prisoner found himself; at the same time, along with a classic verse structure, the poet uses non-classic metrics – a fuzzy three-ictus accentual verse, thus demonstrating the possibilities of a “free” poem. The meeting points of Chichibabin’s poem and the “semantical poetics”, created by Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova, have been detected (such as the understanding of the connection between history and a person, infusion of creation into life, turning words to deeds, relatedness of a poem to a real-life situation, prosaic character of the poem, combination of the generalized and philosophical notions with the specific and sensual ones, etc.) The prosaic character of the poem is reflected in the introduction of the elements with a plot, hidden dialogue, the use of colloquial intonations, playing with tenses, as well as the cinematic hints. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that the poem written by young poet signifies not only his young creative maturity but also a special poetic intuition – while revealing an enhanced semantic character of all the elements of the poem and implementing the performative possibilities of the poetic expression, Chichibabin’s text correlates with the perspective artistic discoveries of post-Symbolistic epoch.

Teesid: Oktoobrirevolutsiooni järgne vene emigratsioon, mida teaduskirjanduses traditsiooniliselt nimeta takse esimeseks laineks, valgus mööda ilma laiali ning oli seninägematult arvukas, haarates kaasa miljoneid endise Tsaari-Venemaa elanikke. Sellele nähtusele on pühendatud tuhandeid humanitaartea duslikke, sotsioloogilisi, politoloogilisi jm uurimusi, mis kajastavad vene eksiilkultuuri eri tahke. Vene emigratsioon puudutas ka Eestit ning enamik käsitletud ilmingutest olid otseselt seotud siinse vene kogukonnaga, ent kohati väga erineva tähendusega. Käesoleva artikli eesmärk on lühidalt kirjeldada vene emigratsiooni sotsiaalset ja demograafilist struktuuri, selle keskusi, emigrantide rolli oma ja võõra kultuuri säilitamisel, põlvkondadevahelist aspekti, eelkõige kirjanduselus, ning haridusküsimusi. Lähemalt on käsitletud vene emigrantide rolli Eesti kultuuris muu maailma taustal. SU M M A R Y After the October Revolution a mass of emigrants, all citizens of the former Tsarist Russia dispersed in the world. In the scholarly literature this dispersal of upwards of a million people has come to be referred to as the first wave of Russian emigration. Thousands of scholarly articles from the humanities, sociology, political science and other disciplines have been devoted to various aspects of Russian exile culture: descriptions of exile cultural centres (including Paris, Berlin, Constantinople, Brazil, and the USA); various cultural phenomena (literature, film, theatre, fashion, journalism, art, etc.). As was true of the large part of Europe, the Russian emigration impacted Estonia, as it did across the rest of Europe; however, the fate of the Russian community in Estonia had strikingly original features. Some of these derived principally from Estonia’s position as a border state, as well as from the fact that even in the days of the Russian Empire, over 40000 Russians resided in Estonia. Theoretically, this should have made it easier for Russian emigrants to assimilate to Estonian conditions (for example, Russian schools existed from an earlier period, along with the requisite complement of teachers; Russian-language journalism existed, etc.). However, in reality, most of the promoters of local Russian culture emerged from among the emigrants, new settlers in Estonia.The purpose of this article is briefly to describe the social and demographic structure of the Russian emigration (military personnel will be treated separately) and the question of their legalization, which was solved in 1921 by the renowned Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. At his initiative, the Intergovernmental Conference of the representatives of 34 nations that met in Geneva adopted the designation refugee, which for the time being only referred to stateless people of Russian origin. The legitimation of these people as refugees was contingent on the acceptance of a statute confirming the use of a heretofore nonexistent International identity document, the so-called Nansen Certificate. This certificate enabled Russian emigrants to claim refugee status in several nations, which included the attribution of rights and freedoms equal to those of citizens of these nations. Approximately 450 000 Nansen Certificates were issued over a period of several years.The article contains brief descriptions of centres of exile, the circumstances and chronology of their foundation, the perceived role of emigrants in the preservation of their own culture and a culture foreign to them. The intergenerational conflict that occurred in cultural, in particular literary life is discussed. Among other topics considered are issues concerning publication, journalistic activity, and educational activities; a brief consideration is given to the positions of different nations on the support and preservation of Russian-language education. A very important influence on Russian emigration was Vladimir Lenin’s so-called „gift“— the expulsion of over 200 scholars from Soviet Russia in the year 1921.A special place is accorded in this article to the role of Russian emigrants in Estonian culture, including the role played by Russian cultural figures (scholars, military personnel, artists, etc.) in building up the young Estonian Republic. The most active participation of Russians was occasioned by the creation of Estonia’s own legal system. In addition, Russians participated in organizing the Estonian postal system and local transportation. The role of Russian emigrants in the development of the educational system of the Estonian Republic is also significant. The article describes the leadership provided by the local Russian community, particularly in the establishment in 1924 of the tradition of Russian cultural festivals, which was then disseminated globally in Russian exile culture.Brief consideration is given to local Russian culture and its importance in the development of Estonian culture. The most important facet of this was the Estonian ballet, born of Russian traditions and experience. Reportedly the first professional ballet troupe was assembled in Tallinn in 1918 by Sessy Smironina-Sevun, but the first actual ballet was performed in 1922, premiering with Coppelia, choreographed by the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina Viktorina Krieger, who played the lead role, and was later to be the artistic director of the Estonia ballet. In 1919, Jevgenia Litvinova, a former ballerina from the Maria Theatre, founded the first ballet studio in Tallinn.Another topic addressed in the article is local publishing and literary activity in the Russian language. Besides Russian publishing houses (Bibliofiil, Koltso, Alfa, Russkaja Kniga), Estonian-language publishing houses printed Russian-language books, textbooks, magazines and newspapers. Up to the year 1940, 91 publishing houses in Estonia printed Russian-language material, many of them only a few Russian books. In addition to publication activities, literary circles were active at different times. Among them was the Revel Literary Circle, founded in 1898, the oldest and most unusual gathering place for educated people. Poets’ workshops in Tallinn and Tartu were among the more interesting societies in Estonia, aimed more specifically at poets of the younger generation. Members of the Tallinn workshop created their own almanac, „Nov“, and published a magazine, Polevõje Tsvetõ.All of these phenomena and problems must be situated in the context of the larger world. The Russian emigration is far from being merely a unique phenomenon of life and work outside of the homeland; indeed, it exerted a strong influence on the culture, scholarship, and literature of the countries of settlement. Among the greatest achievements of 20th century humanity are the works of Nobel laureate and writer Ivan Bunin, prose writer Vladimir Nabokov, artists Marc Chagall, Konstantin Korovin, Aleksander Benois, and Vassily Kandinsky; the theories of Noble laureate, physicist and chemist Ilya Prigogine; the works of composers Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Igor Stravinsky; actor and theatre director Mikhail Chekhov; constructor Igor Sikorsky; chemist Vladimir Ipatjev. No less important in Estonian culture were poet Igor Severjanin, architect Aleksander Vladovski, representatives of Russian classical ballet (Tamara Beck, Jevgenia Litvinova); artists Anatoli Kaigorodov, Nikolai Kalmakov, and Andrei Jegorov.

“As the old technologies become automatic and invisible, we find ourselves more concerned with fighting or embracing what’s new”—Dennis Baron, From Pencils to Pixels: The Stage of Literacy Technologies Popular music is firmly rooted within realist practice, or what has been called the "culture of authenticity" associated with modernism. As Lawrence Grossberg notes, the accelleration of the rate of change in modern life caused, in post-war youth culture, an identity crisis or "lived contradiction" that gave rock (particularly) and popular music (generally) a peculiar position in regard to notions of authenticity. Grossberg places rock's authenticity within the "difference" it maintains from other cultural forms, and notes that its difference "can be justified aesthetically or ideologically, or in terms of the social position of the audiences, or by the economics of its production, or through the measure of its popularity or the statement of its politics" (205-6). Popular music scholars have not adequately addressed issues of authenticity and individuality. Two of the most important questions to be asked are: How is authenticity communicated in popular music? What is the site of the interpretation of authenticity? It is important to ask about sound, technology, about the attempt to understand the ideal and the image, the natural and artificial. It is these that make clear the strongest connections between popular music and contemporary culture. Popular music is a particularly appropriate site for the study of authenticity as a cultural category, for several reasons. For one thing, other media do not follow us, as aural media do, into malls, elevators, cars, planes. Nor do they wait for us, as a tape player paused and ready to play. What is important is not that music is "everywhere" but, to borrow from Vivian Sobchack, that it creates a "here" that can be transported anywhere. In fact, we are able to walk around enveloped by a personal aural environment, thanks to a Sony Walkman.1 Also, it is more difficult to shut out the aural than the visual. Closing one's ears does not entirely shut out sound. There is, additionally, the sense that sound and music are interpreted from within, that is, that they resonate through and within the body, and as such engage with one's self in a fashion that coincides with Charles Taylor's claim that the "ideal of authenticity" is an inner-directed one. It must be noted that authenticity is not, however, communicated only via music, but via text and image. Grossberg noted the "primacy of sound" in rock music, and the important link between music, visual image, and authenticity: Visual style as conceived in rock culture is usually the stage for an outrageous and self-conscious inauthenticity... . It was here -- in its visual presentation -- that rock often most explicitly manifested both an ironic resistance to the dominant culture and its sympathies with the business of entertainment ... . The demand for live performance has always expressed the desire for the visual mark (and proof) of authenticity. (208) But that relationship can also be reversed: Music and sound serve in some instances to provide the aural mark and proof of authenticity. Consider, for instance, the "tear" in the voice that Jensen identifies in Hank Williams's singing, and in that of Patsy Cline. For the latter, voicing, in this sense, was particularly important, as it meant more than a singing style, it also involved matters of self-identity, as Jensen appropriately associates with the move of country music from "hometown" to "uptown" (101). Cline's move toward a more "uptown" style involved her visual image, too. At a significant turning point in her career, Faron Young noted, Cline "left that country girl look in those western outfits behind and opted for a slicker appearance in dresses and high fashion gowns" (Jensen 101). Popular music has forged a link with visual media, and in some sense music itself has become more visual (though not necessarily less aural) the more it has engaged with industrial processes in the entertainment industry. For example, engagement with music videos and film soundtracks has made music a part of the larger convergence of mass media forms. Alongside that convergence, the use of music in visual media has come to serve as adjunct to visual symbolisation. One only need observe the increasingly commercial uses to which music is put (as in advertising, film soundtracks and music videos) to note ways in which music serves image. In the literature from a variety of disciplines, including communication, art and music, it has been argued that music videos are the visualisation of music. But in many respects the opposite is true. Music videos are the auralisation of the visual. Music serves many of the same purposes as sound does generally in visual media. One can find a strong argument for the use of sound as supplement to visual media in Silverman's and Altman's work. For Silverman, sound in cinema has largely been overlooked (pun intended) in favor of the visual image, but sound is a more effective (and perhaps necessary) element for willful suspension of disbelief. One may see this as well in the development of Dolby Surround Sound, and in increased emphasis on sound engineering among video and computer game makers, as well as the development of sub-woofers and high-fidelity speakers as computer peripherals. Another way that sound has become more closely associated with the visual is through the ongoing evolution of marketing demands within the popular music industry that increasingly rely on visual media and force image to the front. Internet technologies, particularly the WorldWideWeb (WWW), are also evidence of a merging of the visual and aural (see Hayward). The development of low-cost desktop video equipment and WWW publishing, CD-i, CD-ROM, DVD, and other technologies, has meant that visual images continue to form part of the industrial routine of the music business. The decrease in cost of many of these technologies has also led to the adoption of such routines among individual musicians, small/independent labels, and producers seeking to mimic the resources of major labels (a practice that has become considerably easier via the Internet, as it is difficult to determine capital resources solely from a WWW site). Yet there is another facet to the evolution of the link between the aural and visual. Sound has become more visual by way of its representation during its production (a representation, and process, that has largely been ignored in popular music studies). That representation has to do with the digitisation of sound, and the subsequent transformation sound and music can undergo after being digitised and portrayed on a computer screen. Once digitised, sound can be made visual in any number of ways, through traditional methods like music notation, through representation as audio waveform, by way of MIDI notation, bit streams, or through representation as shapes and colors (as in recent software applications particularly for children, like Making Music by Morton Subotnick). The impetus for these representations comes from the desire for increased control over sound (see Jones, Rock Formation) and such control seems most easily accomplished by way of computers and their concomitant visual technologies (monitors, printers). To make computers useful tools for sound recording it is necessary to employ some form of visual representation for the aural, and the flexibility of modern computers allows for new modes of predominately visual representation. Each of these connections between the aural and visual is in turn related to technology, for as audio technology develops within the entertainment industry it makes sense for synergistic development to occur with visual media technologies. Yet popular music scholars routinely analyse aural and visual media in isolation from one another. The challenge for popular music studies and music philosophy posed by visual media technologies, that they must attend to spatiality and context (both visual and aural), has not been taken up. Until such time as it is, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to engage issues of authenticity, because they will remain rootless instead of situated within the experience of music as fully sensual (in some cases even synaesthetic). Most of the traditional judgments of authenticity among music critics and many popular music scholars involve space and time, the former in terms of the movement of music across cultures and the latter in terms of history. None rely on notions of the "situatedness" of the listener or musicmaker in a particular aural, visual and historical space. Part of the reason for the lack of such an understanding arises from the very means by which popular music is created. We have become accustomed to understanding music as manipulation of sound, and so far as most modern music production is concerned such manipulation occurs as much visually as aurally, by cutting, pasting and otherwise altering audio waveforms on a computer screen. Musicians no more record music than they record fingering; they engage in sound recording. And recording engineers and producers rely less and less on sound and more on sight to determine whether a recording conforms to the demands of digital reproduction.2 Sound, particularly when joined with the visual, becomes a means to build and manipulate the environment, virtual and non-virtual (see Jones, "Sound"). Sound & Music As we construct space through sound, both in terms of audio production (e.g., the use of reverberation devices in recording studios) and in terms of everyday life (e.g., perception of aural stimuli, whether by ear or vibration in the body, from points surrounding us), we centre it within experience. Sound combines the psychological and physiological. Audio engineer George Massenburg noted that in film theaters: You couldn't utilise the full 360-degree sound space for music because there was an "exit sign" phenomena [sic]. If you had a lot of audio going on in the back, people would have a natural inclination to turn around and stare at the back of the room. (Massenburg 79-80) However, he went on to say, beyond observations of such reactions to multichannel sound technology, "we don't know very much". Research in psychoacoustics being used to develop virtual audio systems relies on such reactions and on a notion of human hardwiring for stimulus response (see Jones, "Sense"). But a major stumbling block toward the development of those systems is that none are able to account for individual listeners' perceptions. It is therefore important to consider the individual along with the social dimension in discussions of sound and music. For instance, the term "sound" is deployed in popular music to signify several things, all of which have to do with music or musical performance, but none of which is music. So, for instance, musical groups or performers can have a "sound", but it is distinguishable from what notes they play. Entire music scenes can have "sounds", but the music within such scenes is clearly distinct and differentiated. For the study of popular music this is a significant but often overlooked dimension. As Grossberg argues, "the authenticity of rock was measured by its sound" (207). Visually, he says, popular music is suspect and often inauthentic (sometimes purposefully so), and it is grounded in the aural. Similarly in country music Jensen notes that the "Nashville Sound" continually evoked conflicting definitions among fans and musicians, but that: The music itself was the arena in and through which claims about the Nashville Sound's authenticity were played out. A certain sound (steel guitar, with fiddle) was deemed "hard" or "pure" country, in spite of its own commercial history. (84) One should, therefore, attend to the interpretive acts associated with sound and its meaning. But why has not popular music studies engaged in systematic analysis of sound at the level of the individual as well as the social? As John Shepherd put it, "little cultural theoretical work in music is concerned with music's sounds" ("Value" 174). Why should this be a cause for concern? First, because Shepherd claims that sound is not "meaningful" in the traditional sense. Second, because it leads us to re-examine the question long set to the side in popular music studies: What is music? The structural homology, the connection between meaning and social formation, is a foundation upon which the concept of authenticity in popular music stands. Yet the ability to label a particular piece of music "good" shifts from moment to moment, and place to place. Frith understates the problem when he writes that "it is difficult ... to say how musical texts mean or represent something, and it is difficult to isolate structures of musical creation or control" (56). Shepherd attempts to overcome this difficulty by emphasising that: Music is a social medium in sound. What [this] means ... is that the sounds of music provide constantly moving and complex matrices of sounds in which individuals may invest their own meanings ... [however] while the matrices of sounds which seemingly constitute an individual "piece" of music can accommodate a range of meanings, and thereby allow for negotiability of meaning, they cannot accommodate all possible meanings. (Shepherd, "Art") It must be acknowledged that authenticity is constructed, and that in itself is an argument against the most common way to think of authenticity. If authenticity implies something about the "pure" state of an object or symbol then surely such a state is connected to some "objective" rendering, one not possible according to Shepherd's claims. In some sense, then, authenticity is autonomous, its materialisation springs not from any necessary connection to sound, image, text, but from individual acts of interpretation, typically within what in literary criticism has come to be known as "interpretive communities". It is not hard to illustrate the point by generalising and observing that rock's notion of authenticity is captured in terms of songwriting, but that songwriters are typically identified with places (e.g. Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Liverpool, etc.). In this way there is an obvious connection between authenticity and authorship (see Jones, "Popular Music Studies") and geography (as well in terms of musical "scenes", e.g. the "Philly Sound", the "Sun Sound", etc.). The important thing to note is the resultant connection between the symbolic and the physical worlds rooted (pun intended) in geography. As Redhead & Street put it: The idea of "roots" refers to a number of aspects of the musical process. There is the audience in which the musician's career is rooted ... . Another notion of roots refers to music. Here the idea is that the sounds and the style of the music should continue to resemble the source from which it sprang ... . The issue ... can be detected in the argument of those who raise doubts about the use of musical high-technology by African artists. A final version of roots applies to the artist's sociological origins. (180) It is important, consequently, to note that new technologies, particularly ones associated with the distribution of music, are of increasing importance in regulating the tension between alienation and progress mentioned earlier, as they are technologies not simply of musical production and consumption, but of geography. That the tension they mediate is most readily apparent in legal skirmishes during an unsettled era for copyright law (see Brown) should not distract scholars from understanding their cultural significance. These technologies are, on the one hand, "liberating" (see Hayward, Young, and Marsh) insofar as they permit greater geographical "reach" and thus greater marketing opportunities (see Fromartz), but on the other hand they permit less commercial control, insofar as they permit digitised music to freely circulate without restriction or compensation, to the chagrin of copyright enthusiasts. They also create opportunities for musical collaboration (see Hayward) between performers in different zones of time and space, on a scale unmatched since the development of multitracking enabled the layering of sound. Most importantly, these technologies open spaces for the construction of authenticity that have hitherto been unavailable, particularly across distances that have largely separated cultures and fan communities (see Paul). The technologies of Internetworking provide yet another way to make connections between authenticity, music and sound. Community and locality (as Redhead & Street, as well as others like Sara Cohen and Ruth Finnegan, note) are the elements used by audience and artist alike to understand the authenticity of a performer or performance. The lived experience of an artist, in a particular nexus of time and space, is to be somehow communicated via music and interpreted "properly" by an audience. But technologies of Internetworking permit the construction of alternative spaces, times and identities. In no small way that has also been the situation with the mediation of music via most recordings. They are constructed with a sense of space, consumed within particular spaces, at particular times, in individual, most often private, settings. What the network technologies have wrought is a networked audience for music that is linked globally but rooted in the local. To put it another way, the range of possibilities when it comes to interpretive communities has widened, but the experience of music has not significantly shifted, that is, the listener experiences music individually, and locally. Musical activity, whether it is defined as cultural or commercial practice, is neither flat nor autonomous. It is marked by ever-changing tastes (hence not flat) but within an interpretive structure (via "interpretive communities"). Musical activity must be understood within the nexus of the complex relations between technical, commercial and cultural processes. As Jensen put it in her analysis of Patsy Cline's career: Those who write about culture production can treat it as a mechanical process, a strategic construction of material within technical or institutional systems, logical, rational, and calculated. But Patsy Cline's recording career shows, among other things, how this commodity production view must be linked to an understanding of culture as meaning something -- as defining, connecting, expressing, mattering to those who participate with it. (101) To achieve that type of understanding will require that popular music scholars understand authenticity and music in a symbolic realm. Rather than conceiving of authenticity as a limited resource (that is, there is only so much that is "pure" that can go around), it is important to foreground its symbolic and ever-changing character. Put another way, authenticity is not used by musician or audience simply to label something as such, but rather to mean something about music that matters at that moment. Authenticity therefore does not somehow "slip away", nor does a "pure" authentic exist. Authenticity in this regard is, as Baudrillard explains concerning mechanical reproduction, "conceived according to (its) very reproducibility ... there are models from which all forms proceed according to modulated differences" (56). Popular music scholars must carefully assess the affective dimensions of fans, musicians, and also record company executives, recording producers, and so on, to be sensitive to the deeply rooted construction of authenticity and authentic experience throughout musical processes. Only then will there emerge an understanding of the structures of feeling that are central to the experience of music. Footnotes For analyses of the Walkman's role in social settings and popular music consumption see du Gay; Hosokawa; and Chen. It has been thus since the advent of disc recording, when engineers would watch a record's grooves through a microscope lens as it was being cut to ensure grooves would not cross over one into another. References Altman, Rick. "Television/Sound." Studies in Entertainment. Ed. Tania Modleski. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 39-54. Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Death and Exchange. London: Sage, 1993. Brown, Ronald. Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995. Chen, Shing-Ling. "Electronic Narcissism: College Students' Experiences of Walkman Listening." Annual meeting of the International Communication Association. Washington, D.C. 1993. Du Gay, Paul, et al. Doing Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 1997. Frith, Simon. Sound Effects. New York: Pantheon, 1981. Fromartz, Steven. "Starts-ups Sell Garage Bands, Bowie on Web." Reuters newswire, 4 Dec. 1996. Grossberg, Lawrence. We Gotta Get Out of This Place. London: Routledge, 1992. Hayward, Philip. "Enterprise on the New Frontier." Convergence 1.2 (Winter 1995): 29-44. Hosokawa, Shuhei. "The Walkman Effect." Popular Music 4 (1984). Jensen, Joli. The Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialisation and Country Music. Nashville, Vanderbilt UP, 1998. Jones, Steve. Rock Formation: Music, Technology and Mass Communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992. ---. "Popular Music Studies and Critical Legal Studies" Stanford Humanities Review 3.2 (Fall 1993): 77-90. ---. "A Sense of Space: Virtual Reality, Authenticity and the Aural." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10.3 (Sep. 1993), 238-52. ---. "Sound, Space & Digitisation." Media Information Australia 67 (Feb. 1993): 83-91. Marrsh, Brian. "Musicians Adopt Technology to Market Their Skills." Wall Street Journal 14 Oct. 1994: C2. Massenburg, George. "Recording the Future." EQ (Apr. 1997): 79-80. Paul, Frank. "R&B: Soul Music Fans Make Cyberspace Their Meeting Place." Reuters newswire, 11 July 1996. Redhead, Steve, and John Street. "Have I the Right? Legitimacy, Authenticity and Community in Folk's Politics." Popular Music 8.2 (1989). Shepherd, John. "Art, Culture and Interdisciplinarity." Davidson Dunston Research Lecture. Carleton University, Canada. 3 May 1992. ---. "Value and Power in Music." The Sound of Music: Meaning and Power in Culture. Eds. John Shepherd and Peter Wicke. Cambridge: Polity, 1993. Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space. New York: Ungar, 1982. Young, Charles. "Aussie Artists Use Internet and Bootleg CDs to Protect Rights." Pro Sound News July 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Steve Jones. "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php>. Chicago style: Steve Jones, "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Steve Jones. (1999) Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: "Remixing" Authenticity in Popular Music Studies. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php> ([your date of access]).

1. A Minor Philosopher According to Guattari and Deleuze's definition, a 'minor literature' is the literature of a minority that makes use of a major language, a literature which deterritorialises that language and interconnects meanings of the most disparate levels, inseparably mixing and implicating poetic, psychological, social and political issues with each other. In analogy, the Japanese media theorist Toshiya Ueno has refered to Félix Guattari as a 'minor philosopher'. Himself a practicing psychoanalyst, Guattari was a foreigner to the Grand Nation of Philosophy, whose natives mostly treat him like an unworthy bastard. And yet he has established a garden of minor flowers, of mongrel weeds and rhizomes that are as polluting to philosophy as Kafka's writing has been to German literature (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, Kafka). The strategies of 'being minor' are, as exemplified by Guattari's writings (with and without Deleuze), deployed in multiple contexts: intensification, re-functionalisation, estrangement, transgression. The following offers a brief overview over the way in which Guattari conceptualises media, new technologies and art, as well as descriptions of several media art projects that may help to illustrate the potentials of such 'minor machines'. Without wanting to pin these projects down as 'Guattarian' artworks, I suggest that the specific practices of contemporary media artists can point us in the direction of the re-singularising, deterritorialising and subjectifying forces which Guattari indicated as being germane to media technologies. Many artists who work with media technologies do so through strategies of appropriation and from a position of 'being minor': whenever a marginality, a minority, becomes active, takes the word power (puissance de verbe), transforms itself into becoming, and not merely submitting to it, identical with its condition, but in active, processual becoming, it engenders a singular trajectory that is necessarily deterritorialising because, precisely, it's a minority that begins to subvert a majority, a consensus, a great aggregate. As long as a minority, a cloud, is on a border, a limit, an exteriority of a great whole, it's something that is, by definition, marginalised. But here, this point, this object, begins to proliferate ..., begins to amplify, to recompose something that is no longer a totality, but that makes a former totality shift, detotalises, deterritorialises an entity.' (Guattari, "Pragmatic/Machinic") In the context of media art, 'becoming minor' is a strategy of turning major technologies into minor machines. a. Krzysztof Wodiczko (PL/USA): Alien Staff Krzysztof Wodiczko's Alien Staff is a mobile communication system and prosthetic instrument which facilitates the communication of migrants in their new countries of residence, where they have insufficient command of the local language for communicating on a par with the native inhabitants. Alien Staff consists of a hand-held staff with a small video monitor and a loudspeaker at the top. The operator can adjust the height of the staff's head to be at a level with his or her own head. Via the video monitor, the operator can replay pre-recorded elements of an interview or a narration of him- or herself. The recorded material may contain biographical information when people have difficulties constructing coherent narratives in the foreign language, or it may include the description of feelings and impressions which the operator normally doesn't get a chance to talk about. The Staff is used in public places where passers-by are attracted to listen to the recording and engage in a conversation with the operator. Special transparent segments of the staff contain memorabilia, photographs or other objects which indicate a part of the personal history of the operator and which are intended to instigate a conversation. The Alien Staff offers individuals an opportunity to remember and retell their own story and to confront people in the country of immigration with this particular story. The Staff reaffirms the migrant's own subjectivity and re-singularises individuals who are often perceived as representative of a homogenous group. The instrument displaces expectations of the majority audience by articulating unformulated aspects of the migrant's subjectivity through a medium that appears as the attractive double of an apparently 'invisible' person. 2. Mass Media, New Technologies and 'Planetary Computerisation' Guattari's comments about media are mostly made in passing and display a clearly outlined opinion about the role of media in contemporary society: a staunch critique of mass media is coupled with an optimistic outlook to the potentials of a post-medial age in which new technologies can develop their singularising, heterogenic forces. The latter development is, as Guattari suggests, already discernible in the field of art and other cultural practices making use of electronic networks, and can lead to a state of 'planetary computerisation' in which multiple new subject-groups can emerge. Guattari consistently refers to the mass media with contempt, qualifying them as a stupefying machinery that is closely wedded to the forces of global capitalism, and that is co-responsible for much of the reactionary hyper-individualism, the desperation and the "state of emergency" that currently dominates "four-fifth of humanity" (Guattari, Chaosmosis 97; cf. Guattari, Drei Ökologien 16, 21). Guattari makes a passionate plea for a new social ecology and formulates, as one step towards this goal, the necessity, "to guide these capitalist societies of the age of mass media into a post-mass medial age; by this I mean that the mass media have to be reappropriated by a multiplicity of subject-groups who are able to administer them on a path of singularisation" (Guattari, "Regimes" 64). Guattari consistently refers to the mass media with contempt, qualifying them as a stupefying machinery that is closely wedded to the forces of global capitalism, and that is co-responsible for much of the reactionary hyper-individualism, the desperation and the "state of emergency" that currently dominates "four-fifth of humanity" (Guattari, Chaosmosis 97; cf. Guattari, Drei Ökologien 16, 21). Guattari makes a passionate plea for a new social ecology and formulates, as one step towards this goal, the necessity, "to guide these capitalist societies of the age of mass media into a post-mass medial age; by this I mean that the mass media have to be reappropriated by a multiplicity of subject-groups who are able to administer them on a path of singularisation" (Guattari, "Regimes" 64). b. Seiko Mikami (J/USA): World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body An art project that deals with the cut between the human subject and the body, and with the deterritorialisation of the sense of self, is Seiko Mikami's World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body. It uses the visitor's heart and lung sounds which are amplified and transformed within the space of the installation. These sounds create a gap between the internal and external sounds of the body. The project is presented in an-echoic room where sound does not reverberate. Upon entering this room, it is as though your ears are no longer living while paradoxically you also feel as though all of your nerves are concentrated in your ears. The sounds of the heart, lungs, and pulse beat are digitised by the computer system and act as parameters to form a continuously transforming 3-d polygonal mesh of body sounds moving through the room. Two situations are effected in real time: the slight sounds produced by the body itself resonate in the body's internal membranes, and the transfigured resonance of those sounds is amplified in the space. A time-lag separates both perceptual events. The visitor is overcome by the feeling that a part of his or her corporeality is under erasure. The body exists as abstract data, only the perceptual sense is aroused. The visitor is made conscious of the disappearance of the physical contours of his or her subjectivity and thereby experiences being turned into a fragmented body. The ears mediate the space that exists between the self and the body. Mikami's work fragments the body and its perceptual apparatus into data, employing them as interfaces and thus folding the body's horizon back onto itself. The project elucidates the difference between an actual and a virtual body, the actual body being deterritorialised and projected outwards towards a number of potential, virtual bodies that can, in the installation, be experienced as maybe even more 'real' than the actual body. 3. Artistic Practice Guattari's conception of post-media implies criss-crossing intersections of aesthetic, ethical, political and technological planes, among which the aesthetic, and with it artistic creativity, are ascribed a position of special prominence. This special role of art is a trope that recurs quite frequently in Guattari's writings, even though he is rarely specific about the artistic practices he has in mind. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari give some detailled attention to the works of artists like Debussy, Boulez, Beckett, Artaud, Kafka, Kleist, Proust, and Klee, and Chaosmosis includes longer passages and concrete examples for the relevance of the aesthetic paradigm. These examples come almost exclusively from the fields of performing arts, music and literature, while visual arts are all but absent. One reason for this could be that the performing arts are time-based and processual and thus lend themselves much better to theorisation of flows, transformations and differentiations. The visual arts can be related to the abstract machine of faciality (visageité) which produces unified, molar, identical entities out of a multiplicity of different singularities, assigning them to a specific category and associating them with particular social fields (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, Tausend Plateaus 167-91) This semiotic territorialisation is much more likely to happen in the case of static images, whether two- or three-dimensional, than in time-based art forms. An interesting question, then, would be whether media art projects, many of which are time-based, processual and open-ended, can be considered as potential post-medial art practices. Moreover, given the status of computer software as the central motor of the digital age, and the crucial role it plays in aesthetic productions like those discussed here, software may have to be viewed as the epitome of post-medial machines. Guattari seems to have been largely unaware of the beginnings of digital media art as it developed in the 1980s. In generalistic terms he suggests that the artist is particularly well-equipped to conceptualise the necessary steps for this work because, unlike engineers, he or she is not tied to a particular programme or plan for a product, and can change the course of a project at any point if an unexpected event or accident intrudes (cf. Guattari, Drei Ökologien 50). The significance of art for Guattari's thinking comes primarily from its close relation with processes of subjectivation. "Just as scientific machines constantly modify our cosmic frontiers, so do the machines of desire and aesthetic creation. As such, they hold an eminent place within assemblages of subjectivation, themselves called to relieve our old social machines which are incapable of keeping up with the efflorescence of machinic revolutions that shatter our epoch' (Guattari, Chaosmosis 54). The aesthetic paradigm facilitates the development of new, virtual forms of subjectivity, and of liberation, which will be adequate to these machinic revolutions. c. Knowbotic Research + cF: IO_Dencies The Alien Staff project was mentioned as an example for the re-singularisation and the virtualisation of identity, and World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body as an instance of the deterritorialisation and virtualisation of the human body through an artistic interface. The recent project by Knowbotic Research, IO_Dencies -- Questioning Urbanity, deals with the possibilities of agency, collaboration and construction in translocal and networked environments. It points in the direction of what Guattari has called the formation of 'group subjects' through connective interfaces. The project looks at urban settings in different megacities like Tokyo, São Paulo or the Ruhr Area, analyses the forces present in particular local urban situations, and offers experimental interfaces for dealing with these local force fields. IO_Dencies São Paulo enables the articulation of subjective experiences of the city through a collaborative process. Over a period of several months, a group of young architects and urbanists from São Paulo, the 'editors', provided the content and dynamic input for a database. The editors collected material (texts, images, sounds) based on their current situation and on their personal urban experience. A specially designed editor tool allowed the editors to build individual conceptual 'maps' in which to construct the relations between the different materials in the data-pool according to the subjective perception of the city. On the computational level, connectivities are created between the different maps of the editors, a process that is driven by algorithmic self-organisation whose rules are determined by the choices that the editors make. In the process, the collaborative editorial work in the database generates zones of intensities and zones of tension which are visualised as force fields and turbulences and which can be experienced through interfaces on the Internet and at physical exhibition sites. Participants on the Net and in the exhibition can modify and influence these electronic urban movements, force fields and intensities on an abstract, visual level, as well as on a content-based, textual level. This engagement with the project and its material is fed back into the database and influences the relational forces within the project's digital environment. Characteristic of the forms of agency as they evolve in networked environments is that they are neither individualistic nor collective, but rather connective. Whereas the collective is determined by an intentional and empathetic relation between agents within an assemblage, the connective rests on any kind of machinic relation and is therefore more versatile, more open, and based on the heterogeneity of its components or members. In the IO_Dencies interfaces, the different networked participants become visible for each other, creating a trans-local zone of connective agency. The inter-connectedness of their activities can be experienced visually, acoustically, and through the constant reconfiguration of the data sets, an experience which can become the basis of the formation of a specific, heterogeneous group subject. 4. Guattari's Concept of the Machinic An important notion underlying these analyses is that of the machine which, for Guattari, relates not so much to particular technological or mechanical objects, to the technical infrastructure or the physical flows of the urban environment. 'Machines' can be social bodies, industrial complexes, psychological or cultural formations, they are assemblages of heterogeneous parts, aggregations which transform forces, articulate and propel their elements, and force them into a continuous state of transformation and becoming. An important notion underlying these analyses is that of the machine which, for Guattari, relates not so much to particular technological or mechanical objects, to the technical infrastructure or the physical flows of the urban environment. 'Machines' can be social bodies, industrial complexes, psychological or cultural formations, they are assemblages of heterogeneous parts, aggregations which transform forces, articulate and propel their elements, and force them into a continuous state of transformation and becoming. d. Xchange Network My final example is possibly the most evocative in relation to Guattari's notions of the polyvocity and heterogenesis that new media technologies can trigger. It also links up closely with Guattari's own engagement with the minor community radio movement. In late 1997, the E-Lab in Riga initiated the Xchange network for audio experiments on the Internet. The participating groups in London, Ljubljana, Sydney, Berlin, and many other minor and major places, use the Net for distributing their original sound programmes. The Xchange network is "streaming via encoders to remote servers, picking up the stream and re-broadcasting it purely or re-mixed, looping the streams" (Rasa Smite). Xchange is a distributed group, a connective, that builds creative cooperation in live-audio streaming on the communication channels that connect them. They explore the Net as a sound-scape with particular qualities regarding data transmission, delay, feedback, and open, distributed collaborations. Moreover, they connect the network with a variety of other fields. Instead of defining an 'authentic' place of their artistic work, they play in the transversal post-medial zone of media labs in different countries, mailing lists, net-casting and FM broadcasting, clubs, magazines, stickers, etc., in which 'real' spaces and media continuously overlap and fuse (cf. Slater). 5. Heterogenic Practices If we want to understand the technological and the political implications of the machinic environment of the digital networks, and if we want to see the emergence of the group subjects of the post-media age Guattari talks about, we have to look at connectives like Xchange and the editor-participant assemblages of IO_Dencies. The far-reaching machinic transformations which they articulate, hold the potential of what Guattari refers to as the 'molecular revolution'. To realise this revolution, it is vital to "forge new analytical instruments, new concepts, because it is ... the transversality, the crossing of abstract machines that constitute a subjectivity and that are incarnated, that live in very different regions and domains and ... that can be contradictory and antagonistic". For Guattari, this is not a mere theoretical question, but one of experimentation, "of new forms of interactions, of movement construction that respects the diversity, the sensitivities, the particularities of interventions, and that is nonetheless capable of constituting antagonistic machines of struggle to intervene in power relations" (Guattari, "Pragmatic/Machinic" 4-5). The implication here is that some of the minor media practices pursued by artists using digital technologies point us in the direction of the positive potentials of post media. The line of flight of such experimentation is the construction of new and strong forms of subjectivity, "an individual and/or collective reconstitution of the self" (Guattari, Drei Ökologien 21), which can strengthen the process of what Guattari calls "heterogenesis, that is a continuous process of resingularisation. The individuals must, at the same time, become solidary and ever more different" (Guattari, Drei Ökologien 76). References Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Kafka: Pour une Litterature Mineur. Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1975. ---. Tausend Plateaus. (1980) Berlin: Merve, 1992. Guattari, Félix. Cartographies Schizoanalytiques. Paris: Ed. Galilée, 1989. ---. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. (1992) Sydney: Power Publications, 1995. ---. Die drei Ökologien. (1989) Wien: Passagen Verlag, 1994. ---. "Pragmatic/Machinic." Discussion with Guattari, conducted and transcribed by Charles J. Stivale. (1985) Pre/Text 14.3-4 (1995). ---. "Regimes, Pathways, Subjects." Die drei Ökologien. (1989) Wien: Passagen Verlag, 1994. 95-108. ---. "Über Maschinen." (1990) Schmidgen, 115-32. Knowbotic Research. IO_Dencies. 1997-8. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://io.khm.de/>. De Landa, Manuel. "The Machinic Phylum." Technomorphica. Eds. V2_Organisation. Rotterdam: V2_Organisation, 1997. Mikami, Seiko. World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body. 1997. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://www.ntticc.or.jp/permanent/mikami/mikami_e.php>. Schmidgen, Henning, ed. Ästhetik und Maschinismus: Texte zu und von Félix Guattari. Berlin: Merve, 1995. ---. Das Unbewußte der Maschinen: Konzeptionen des Psychischen bei Guattari, Deleuze und Lacan. München: Fink, 1997. Slater, Howard. "Post-Media Operators." Nettime, 10 June 1998. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://www.factory.org>. Wodiczko, Krzysztof. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://cavs.mit.edu/people/kw.htm>. Xchange. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://xchange.re-lab.net>. (Note: An extended, Dutch version of this text was published in: Oosterling/Thissen, eds. Chaos ex Machina: Het ecosofisch Werk van Félix Guattari op de Kaart Gezet. Rotterdam: CFK, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Andreas Broeckmann. "Minor Media -- Heterogenic Machines: Notes on Félix Guattari's Conceptions of Art and New Media." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.6 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/minor.php>. Chicago style: Andreas Broeckmann, "Minor Media -- Heterogenic Machines: Notes on Félix Guattari's Conceptions of Art and New Media," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 6 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/minor.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Andreas Broeckmann. (1999) Minor Media -- Heterogenic Machines: Notes on Félix Guattari's Conceptions of Art and New Media. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(6). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/minor.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction In this article, I explore the phenomenon of augmentation by questioning its representational nature and analyzing aesthetic modes of our interrelationship with the environment. How can senses be augmented and how do they serve as mechanisms of enhancing the feeling of presence? Media art practices offer particularly valuable scenarios of activating such mechanisms, as the employment of digital technology allows them to operate on a more subtle level of perception. Given that these practices are continuously evolving, this analysis cannot claim to be a comprehensive one, but rather aims to introduce aspects of the specific relations between augmentation, sense of proprioception, technology, and art. Proprioception is one of the least detectable and trackable human senses because it involves our intuitive sense of positionality, which suggests a subtle equilibrium between a center (our individual bodies) and the periphery (our immediate environments). Yet, as any sense, proprioception implies a communicational chain, a network of signals traveling and exchanging information within the body-mind complex. The technological augmentation of this dynamic process produces an interference in our understanding of the structure and elements, the information sent/received. One way to understand the operations of the senses is to think about them as images that the mind creates for itself. Artistic intervention (usually) builds upon exactly this logic: representation of images generated in mind, supplementing or even supplanting the existing collection of inner images with new, created ones. Yet, in case of proprioception the only means to interfere with and augment these inner images is on bodily level. Hence, the question of communication through images (or representations) should be extended towards a more complex theory of embodied perception. Drawing on phenomenology, cognitive science, and techno-cultural studies, I focus on the potential of biofeedback technologies to challenge and transform our self-perception by conditioning new pathways of apprehension (sometimes by creating mechanisms of direct stimulation of neural activity). I am particularly interested in how the awareness of the self (grounded in the felt relationality of our body parts) is most significantly activated at the moments of disturbance of balance, in situations of perplexity and disorientation. Projects by Marco Donnarumma, Sean Montgomery, and other artists working with biofeedback aesthetically validate and instantiate current research about neuro-plasticity, with technologically mediated sensory augmentation as one catalyst of this process. Augmentation as Representation: Proprioception and Proprioceptive Media Representation has been one of the key ways to comprehend reality. But representation also constitutes a spatial relation of distancing and separation: the spectator encounters an object placed in front of him, external to him. Thus, representation is associated more with an analytical, rather than synthetic, methodology because it implies detachment and division into parts. Both methods involve relation, yet in the case of representation there is a more distinct element of distance between the representing subject and represented object. Representation is always a form of augmentation: it extends our abilities to see the "other", otherwise invisible sides and qualities of the objects of reality. Representation is key to both science and art, yet in case of the latter, what is represented is not a (claimed) "objective" scheme of reality, but rather images of the imaginary, inner reality (even figurative painting always presents a particular optical and psychological perspective, to say nothing about forms of abstract art). There are certain kinds of art (visual arts, music, dance, etc.) that deal with different senses and thus, build their specific representational structures. Proprioception is one of the senses that occupies relatively marginal position in artistic production (which is exactly because of the specificity of its representational nature and because it does not create a sense of an external object. The term "proprioception" comes from Latin propius, or "one's own", "individual", and capio, cepi – "to receive", "to perceive". It implies a sense of one's self felt as a relational unity of parts of the body most vividly discovered in movement and in effort employed in it. The loss of proprioception usually means loss of bodily orientation and a feeling of one's body (Sacks 43-54). On the other hand, in case of additional stimulation and training of this sense (not only via classical cyber-devices, like cyber-helmets, gloves, etc. that set a different optics, but also techniques of different kinds of altered states of mind, e.g. through psychotropics, but also through architecture of virtual space and acoustics) a sense of disorientation that appears at first changes towards some analogue of reactions of enthusiasm, excitement discovery, and emotion of approaching new horizons. What changes is not only perception of external reality, but a sense of one's self: the self is felt as fluid, flexible, with penetrable borders. Proprioception implies initial co-existence of the inner and outer space on the basis of originary difference and individuality/specificity of the occupied position. Yet, because they are related, the "external" and "other" already feels as "one's own", and this is exactly what causes the sense of presence. Among the many possible connections that the body, in its sense of proprioception, is always already ready for, only a certain amount gets activated. The result of proprioception is a special kind of meta-stable internal image. This image may not coincide with the optical, auditory, or haptic image. According to Brian Massumi, proprioception translates the exertions and ease of the body's encounters with objects into a muscular memory of relationality. This is the cumulative memory of skill, habit, posture. At the same time as proprioception folds tactility in, it draws out the subject's reactions to the qualities of the objects it perceives through all five senses, bringing them into the motor realm of externalizable response. (59) This internal image is not mediated by anything, though it depends directly on the relations between the parts. It cannot be grasped because it is by definition fluid and dynamic. The position in one point is replaced here by a position-in-movement (point-in-movement). "Movement is not indexed by position. Rather, the position is born in movement, from the relation of movement towards itself" (Massumi 179). Philosopher of "extended mind" Andy Clark notes that we should distinguish between a real body schema (non-conscious configuration) and a body image (conscious construct) (Clark). It is the former that is important to understand, and yet is the most challenging. Due to its fluidity and self-referentiality, proprioception is not presentable to consciousness (the unstable internal image that it creates resides in consciousness but cannot be grasped and thus re-presented). A feeling/sense, it is not bound by sensible forms that would serve as means of objectification and externalization. As Barbara Montero observes, while the objects of vision and hearing, i.e. the most popular senses involved in the arts, are beyond one's body, sense of proprioception relates directly to the bodily sensation, it does not represent any external objects, but the sensory itself (231). These characteristics of proprioception help to reframe the question of augmentation as mediation: in the case of proprioception, the medium of sensation is the very relational structure of the body itself, irrespective of the "exteroceptive" (tactile) or "interoceptive" (visceral) dimensions of sensibility. The body is understood, then, as the "body without image,” and its proprioceptive effect can then be described as "the sensibility proper to the muscles and ligaments" (Massumi 58). Proprioception in (Media) Art One of the most convincing ways of externalization and (re)presentation of the data of proprioception is through re-production of its structure and its artificial enhancement with the help of technology. This can be achieved in at least two ways: by setting up situations and environments that emphasize self-perspective and awareness of perception, and by presenting measurements of bio-data and inviting into dialogue with them. The first strategy may be connected to disorientation and shifted perspective that are created in immersive virtual environments that make the role of otherwise un-trackable, fluid sense of proprioception actually felt and cognized. These effects are closely related to the nuances of perception of space, for instance, to spatial illusion. Practice of spatial illusion in the arts traces its history as far back as Roman frescos, trompe l’oeil, as well as phantasmagorias, like magic lantern. Geometrically, the system of the 360º image is still the most effective in producing a sense of full immersion—either in spaces from panoramas, Stereopticon, Cinéorama to CAVE (Computer Augmented Virtual Environments), or in devices for an individual spectator’s usage, like a stereoscope, Sensorama and more recent Head Mounted Displays (HMD). All these devices provide a sense of hermetic enclosure and bodily engagement with its scenes (realistic or often fantastical). Their images are frameless and thus immeasurable (lack of the sense of proportion provokes feeling of disorientation), image apparatus and the image itself converge here into an almost inseparable total unity: field of vision is filled, and the medium becomes invisible (Grau 198-202; 248-255). Yet, the constructed image is even more frameless and more peculiarly ‘mental’ in environments created on the basis of objectless or "immaterial" media, like light or sound; or in installations prioritizing haptic sensation and in responsive architectures, i.e. environments that transform physically in reaction to their inhabitants. The examples may include works by Olafur Eliasson that are centered around the issues of conscious perception and employ various optical and other apparata (mirrors, curved surfaces, coloured glass, water systems) to shift the habitual perspective and make one conscious of the subtle changes in the environment depending on one's position in space (there have been instances of spectators in Eliasson's installations falling down after trying to lean against an apparent wall that turned out to be a mere optical construct.). Figure 1: Olafur Eliasson, Take Your Time, 2008. © Olafur Eliasson Studio. In his classic H2OExpo project for Delta Expo in 1997, the Dutch architect Lars Spuybroek experimented with the perception of instability. There is no horizontal surface in the pavilion; floors, composed of interconnected elliptical volumes, transform into walls and walls into ceilings, promoting a sense of fluidity and making people respond by falling, leaning, tilting and "experiencing the vector of one’s own weight, and becoming sensitized to the effects of gravity" (Schwartzman 63). Along the way, specially installed sensors detect the behaviour of the ‘walker’ and send signals to the system to contribute further to the agenda of imbalance and confusion by changing light, image projection, and sound.Figure 2: Lars Spuybroek, H2OExpo, 1994-1997. © NOX/ Lars Spuybroek. Philip Beesley’s Hylozoic Ground (2010) is also a responsive environment filled by a dense organic network of delicate illuminated acrylic tendrils that can extend out to touch the visitor, triggering an uncanny mixture of delight and discomfort. The motif of pulsating movement was inspired by fluctuations in coral reefs and recreated via the system of precise sensors and microprocessors. This reference to an unfamiliar and unpredictable natural environment, which often makes us feel cautious and ultra-attentive, is a reminder of our innate ability of proprioception (a deeply ingrained survival instinct) and its potential for a more nuanced, intimate, emphatic and bodily rooted communication. Figure 3: Philip Beesley, Hylozoic Ground, 2010. © Philip Beesley Architect Inc. Works of this kind stimulate awareness of both the environment and one's own response to it. Inviting participants to actively engage with the space, they evoke reactions of self-reflexivity, i.e. the self becomes the object of its own exploration and (potentially) transformation. Another strategy of revealing the processes of the "body without image" is through representing various kinds of bio-data, bodily affective reactions to certain stimuli. Biosignal monitoring technologies most often employed include EEG (Electroencephalogram), EMG (Electromyogram), GSR (Galvanic Skin Response), ECG (Electrocardiogram), HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and others. Previously available only in medical settings and research labs, many types of sensors (bio and environmental) now become increasingly available (bio-enabled products ranging from cardio watches—an instance of the "quantified self" trend—to brain wave-controlled video games). As the representatives of the DIY makers community put it: "By monitoring some phenomena (biofeedback) you can train yourself to modulate them, possibly improving your emotional state. Biosensing lets you interact more naturally with digital systems, creating cyborg-like extensions of your body that overcome disabilities or provide new abilities. You can also share your bio-signals, if you choose, to participate in new forms of communication" (Montgomery). What is it about these technologies besides understanding more accurately the unconscious and invisible signals? The critical question in relation to biofeedback data is about the adequacy of the transference of the initial signal, about the "new" brought by the medium, as well as the ontological status of the resulting representation. These data are reflections of something real, yet themselves have a different weight, also providing the ground for all sorts of simulative methods and creation of mixed realities. External representations, unlike internal, are often attributed a prosthetic nature that is treated as extensions of existing skills. Besides serving their direct purpose (for instance, maps give detailed picture of a distant location), these extensions provide certain psychological effects, such as disorientation, displacement, a shift in a sense of self and enhancement of the sense of presence. Artistic experiments with bio-data started in the 1960s most famously with employing the method of sonification. Among the pioneers were the composers Alvin Lucier, Richard Teitelbaum, David Rosenblum, Erkki Kurenemi, Pierre Henry, and others. Today's versions of biophysical performance may include not only acoustic, but also visual interpretation, as well as subtle narrative scenarios. An example can be Marco Donnarumma's Hypo Chrysos, a piece that translates visceral strain in sound and moving images. The title refers to the type of a punishing trial in one of the circles of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy: the eternal task of carrying heavy rocks is imitated by the artist-performer, while the audience can feel the bodily tension enhanced by sound and imagery. The state of the inner body is, thus, amplified, or augmented. The sense of proprioception experienced by the performer is translated into media perceivable by others. In this externalized form it can also be shared, i.e. released into a space of inter-subjectivity, where it receives other, collective qualities and is not perceived negatively, in terms of pressure. Figure 4: Marco Donnarumma, Hypo Chrysos, 2011. © Marco Donnarumma. Another example can be an installation Telephone Rewired by the artist-neuroscientist Sean Montgomery. Brainwave signals are measured from each visitor upon the entrance to the installation site. These individual data then become part of the collective archive of the brainwaves of all the participants. In the second room, the viewer is engulfed by pulsing light and sound that mimic endogenous brain waveforms of the previous viewers. As in the experience of Donnarumma's performance, this process encourages tuning in to the inner state of the other and finding resonating states in one's own body. It becomes a tool for self-exploration, self-knowledge, and self-control, as well as for developing skills of collective being, of shared body-mind topologies. Synchronization of mental and bodily states of multiple people serves here a broader and deeper goal of training collaborative and empathic abilities. An immersive experience, it triggers deep embodied neural circuits, reaching towards the most authentic reactions not mediated by conscious procedures and judgment. Figure 5: Sean Montgomery, Telephone Rewired, 2013. © Sean Montgomery. Conclusion The potential of biofeedback as a strategy for art projects is a rich area that artists have only begun to explore. The layer of the imaginary and the fictional (which makes art special and different from, for instance, science) can add a critical dimension to understanding the processes of augmentation and mediation. As the described examples demonstrate, art is an investigative journey that can be engaging, surprising, and awakening towards the more subtle and acute forms of thinking and feeling. This astuteness and percipience are especially needed as media and technologies penetrate and affect our very abilities to apprehend reality. We need new tools to make independent and individual judgment. The sense of proprioception establishes a productive challenge not only for science, but also for the arts, inviting a search for new mechanisms of representing the un-presentable and making shareable and communicable what is, by definition, individual, fluid, and ungraspable. Collaborative cognition emerging from the augmentation of proprioception that is enabled by biofeedback technologies holds distinct promise for exploration of not only subjective, but also inter-subjective states and aesthetic strategies of inducing them. References Beesley, Philip. Hylozoic Ground. 2010. Venice Biennale, Venice. Clark, Andy, and David J. Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis 58.1 (1998):7-19. Donnarumma, Marco. Hypo Chrysos: Action Art for Vexed Body and Biophysical Media. 2011. Xth Sense Biosensing Wearable Technology. MADATAC Festival, Madrid. Eliasson, Olafur. Take Your Time, 2008. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre; Museum of Modern Art, New York. Grau, Oliver. Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Massumi, Brian. Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Montero, Barbara. "Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64.2 (2006): 231-242. Montgomery, Sean, and Ira Laefsky. "Biosensing: Track Your Body's Signals and Brain Waves and Use Them to Control Things." Make 26. 1 Oct. 2013 ‹http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol26?pg=104#pg104›. Sacks, Oliver. "The Disembodied Lady". The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. Philippines: Summit Books, 1985. Schwartzman, Madeline, See Yourself Sensing. Redefining Human Perception. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2011. Spuybroek, Lars. Waterland. 1994-1997. H2O Expo, Zeeland, NL.

Introduction In the elite space of Haute Couture, fashion is presented through a theatrical array of dynamics—the engagement of specific bodies performing for select audiences in highly curated spaces. Each element is both very precise in its objectives and carefully selected for impact. In this way, the production of Haute Couture makes itself accessible to only a few select members of society. Globally, there are only an estimated 4,000 direct consumers of Haute Couture (Hendrik). Given this limited market, the work of elite couturiers relies on other forms of artistic media, namely film, photography, and increasingly, museum spaces, to reach broader audiences who are then enabled to participate in the fashion ‘space’ via a process of visual consumption. For these audiences, Haute Couture is less about material consumption than it is about the aspirational consumption and contestation of notions of identity. This article uses qualitative textual analysis and draws on semiotic theory to explore symbolism and values in Haute Couture. Semiotics, an approach popularised by the work of Roland Barthes, examines signifiers as elements of the construction of metalanguage and myth. Barthes recognised a broad understanding of language that extended beyond oral and written forms. He acknowledged that a photograph or artefact may also constitute “a kind of speech” (111). Similarly, fashion can be seen as both an important signifier and mode of communication. The model of fashion as communication is one extensively explored within culture studies (e.g. Hall; Lurie). Much of the discussion of semiotics in this literature is predicated on sender/receiver models. These models conceive of fashion as the mechanism through which individual senders communicate to another individual or to collective (and largely passive) audiences (Barnard). Yet, fashion is not a unidirectional form of communication. It can be seen as a dialogical and discursive space of encounter and contestation. To understand the role of Haute Couture as a contested space of identity and socio-political discourse, this article examines the work of Chinese couturier Guo Pei. An artisan such as Guo Pei places the results of needle and thread into spaces of the theatrical, the spectacular, and, significantly, the powerfully socio-political. Guo Pei’s contributions to Haute Couture are extravagant, fantastical productions that also serve as spaces of socio-cultural information exchange and debate. Guo Pei’s creations bring together political history, memory, and fantasy. Here we explore the socio-cultural and political semiotics that emerge when the humble stitch is dramatically amplified onto the Haute Couture runway. We argue that Guo Pei’s work speaks not only to a cultural imaginary but also to the contested nature of gender and socio-political authority in contemporary China. The Politicisation of Fashion in China The majority of literature regarding Chinese fashion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has focussed on the use of fashion to communicate socio-political messages (Finnane). This is most clearly seen in analyses of the connections between dress and egalitarian ideals during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. As Zhang (952-952) notes, revolutionary fashion emphasised simplicity, frugality, and homogenisation. It rejected style choices that reflected both traditional Chinese and Western fashions. In Mao’s China, fashion was utilised by the state and adopted by the populace as a means of reinforcing the regime’s ideological orientations. For example, the ubiquitous Mao suit, worn by both men and women during the Cultural Revolution “was intended not merely as a unisex garment but a means to deemphasise gender altogether” (Feng 79). The Maoist regime’s intention to create a type of social equality through sartorial homogenisation was clear. Reflecting on the ways in which fashion both responded to and shaped women’s positionality, Mao stated, “women are regarded as criminals to begin with, and tall buns and long skirts are the instruments of torture applied to them by men. There is also their facial makeup, which is the brand of the criminal, the jewellery on their hands, which constitutes shackles and their pierced ears and bound feet which represent corporal punishment” (Mao cited in Finnane 23). Mao’s suit—the homogenising militaristic uniform adopted by many citizens—may have been intended as a mechanism for promoting equality, freeing women from the bonds of gendered oppression and all citizens from visual markers of class. Nonetheless, in practice Maoist fashion and policing of appearance during the Cultural Revolution enforced a politics of amnesia and perversely may have “entailed feminizing the undesirable, by conflating woman, bourgeoisie, and colour while also insisting on a type of gender equality that the belted Mao jacket belied” (Chen 161). In work on cultural transformations in the post-Maoist period, Braester argues that since the late 1980s Chinese cultural products—here taken to include artefacts such as Haute Couture—have similarly been defined by the politics of memory and identity. Evocation of historically important symbols and motifs may serve to impose a form of narrative continuity, connecting the present to the past. Yet, as Braester notes, such strategies may belie stability: “to contemplate memory and forgetting is tantamount to acknowledging the temporal and spatial instability of the post-industrial, globalizing world” (435). In this way, cultural products are not only sites of cultural continuity, but also of contestation. Imperial Dreams of Feminine Power The work of Chinese couturier Guo Pei showcases traditional Chinese embroidery techniques alongside more typically Western fashion design practices as a means of demonstrating not only Haute Couturier craftsmanship but also celebrating Chinese imperial culture through nostalgic fantasies in her contemporary designs. Born in Beijing, in 1967, at the beginning of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Guo Pei studied fashion at the Beijing Second Light Industry School before working in private and state-owned fashion houses. She eventually moved to establish her own fashion design studio and was recognised as “the designer of choice for high society and the political elite” in China (Yoong 19). Her work was catapulted into Western consciousness when her cape, titled ‘Yellow Empress’ was donned by Rihanna for the 2015 Met Gala. The design was a response to an era in which the colour yellow was forbidden to all but the emperor. In the same year, Guo Pei was named an invited member of La Federation de la Haute Couture, becoming the first and only Chinese-born and trained couturier to receive the honour. Recognition of her work at political and socio-economic levels earned her an award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Economy and Cultural Diplomacy’ by the Asian Couture Federation in 2019. While Maoist fashion influences pursued a vision of gender equality through the ‘unsexing’ of fashion, Guo Pei’s work presents a very different reading of female adornment. One example is her exquisite Snow Queen dress, which draws on imperial motifs in its design. An ensemble of silk, gold embroidery, and Swarovski crystals weighing 50 kilograms, the Snow Queen “characterises Guo Pei’s ideal woman who is noble, resilient and can bear the weight of responsibility” (Yoong 140). In its initial appearance on the Haute Couture runway, the dress was worn by 78-year-old American model, Carmen Dell’Orefice, signalling the equation of age with strength and beauty. Rather than being a site of torture or corporal punishment, as suggested by Mao, the Snow Queen dress positions imagined traditional imperial fashion as a space for celebration and empowerment of the feminine form. The choice of model reinforces this message, while simultaneously contesting global narratives that conflate women’s beauty and physical ability with youthfulness. In this way, fashion can be understood as an intersectional space. On the one hand, Guo Pei's work reinvigorates a particular nostalgic vision of Chinese imperial culture and in doing so pushes back against the socio-political ‘non-fashion’ and uniformity of Maoist dress codes. Yet, on the other hand, positioning her work in the very elite space of Haute Couture serves to reinstate social stratification and class boundaries through the creation of economically inaccessible artefacts: a process that in turn involves the reification and museumification of fashion as material culture. Ideals of femininity, identity, individuality, and the expressions of either creating or dismantling power, are anchored within cultural, social, and temporal landscapes. Benedict Anderson argues that the museumising imagination is “profoundly political” (123). Like sacred texts and maps, fashion as material ephemera evokes and reinforces a sense of continuity and connection to history. Yet, the belonging engendered through engagement with material and imagined pasts is imprecise in its orientation. As much as it is about maintaining threads to an historical past, it is simultaneously an appeal to present possibilities. In his broader analysis, Anderson explores the notion of parallelity, the potentiality not to recreate some geographically or temporally removed place, but to open a space of “living lives parallel …] along the same trajectory” (131). Guo Pei’s creations appeal to a similar museumising imagination. At once, her work evokes both a particular imagined past of imperial grandeur, against instability of the politically shifting present, and appeals to new possibilities of gendered emancipation within that imagined space. Contesting and Complicating East-West Dualism The design process frequently involves borrowing, reinterpretation, and renewal of ideas. The erasure of certain cultural and political aspects of social continuity through the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the socio-political changes thereafter, have created fertile ground for an artist like Guo Pei. Her palimpsest reaches back through time, picks up those cultural threads of extravagance, and projects them wholesale into the spaces of fashion in the present moment. Cognisance of design intentionality and historical and contemporary fashion discourses influence the various interpretations of fashion semiotics. However, there are also audience-created meanings within the various modes of performance and consumption. Where Kaiser and Green assert that “the process of fashion is inevitably linked to making and sustaining as well as resisting and dismantling power” (1), we can also observe that sartorial semiotics can have different meanings at different times. In the documentary, Yellow Is Forbidden, Guo Pei reflects on shifting semiotics in fashion. Speaking with a client, she remarks that “dragons and phoenixes used to represent the Chinese emperor—now they represent the spirit of the Chinese” (Brettkelly). Once a symbol of sacred, individual power, these iconic signifiers now communicate collective national identity. Both playing with and reimagining not only the grandeur of China’s imperial past, but also the particular role of the feminine form and female power therein, Guo Pei’s corpus evokes and complicates such contestations of power. On the one hand, her work serves to contest homogenising narratives of identity and femininity within China. Equally important, however, are the ways in which this work, which is possible both through and in spite of a Euro-American centric system of patronage within the fashion industry, complicates notions of East-West dualism. For Guo Pei, drawing on broadly accessible visual signifiers of Chinese heritage and culture has been critical in bringing attention to her endeavours. Her work draws significantly from her cultural heritage in terms of colour selections and traditional Chinese embroidery techniques. Symbols and motifs peculiar to Chinese culture are abundant: lotus flowers, dragons, phoenixes, auspicious numbers, and favourable Chinese language characters such as buttons in the shape of ‘double happiness’ (囍) are often present in her designs. Likewise, her techniques pay homage to traditional craft work, including Peranakan beading. The parallelity conjured by these choices is deliberate. In staging Guo Pei’s work for museum exhibitions at museums such as the Asian Civilizations Museum, her designs are often showcased beside the historical artefacts that inspired them (Fu). On her Chinese website, Guo Pei, highlights the historical connections between her designs and traditional Chinese embroidery craft through a sub-section of the “Spirit” header, entitled simply, “Inheritance”. These influences and expressions of Chinese culture are, in Guo Pei's own words her “design language” (Brettkelly). However, Guo Pei has also expressed an ambivalence about her positioning as a Chinese designer. She has maintained that she does not want “to be labelled as a Chinese storyteller ... and thinks about a global audience” (Yoong). In her expression of this desire to both derive power through design choices and historically situated practices and symbols, and simultaneously move beyond nationally bounded identity frameworks, Guo Pei positions herself in a space ‘betwixt and between.’ This is not only a space of encounter between East and West, but also a space that calls into question the limits and possibilities of semiotic expression. Authenticity and Legitimacy Global audiences of fashion rely on social devices of diffusion other than the runway: photography, film, museums, and galleries. Unique to Haute Couture, however, is the way in which such processes are often abstracted, decontextualised and pushed to the extremities of theatrical opulence. De Perthuis argues that to remove context “greatly reduce[s] the social, political, psychological and semiotic meanings” of fashion (151). When iconic motifs are utilised, the western gaze risks falling back on essentialising reification of identity. To this extent, for non-Chinese audiences Guo Pei’s works may serve not so much to problemitise historical and contemporary feminine identities and inheritances, so much as project an essentialisation of Chinese femininity. The double-bind created through Guo Pei’s simultaneous appeal to and resistance of archetypical notions of Chinese identity and femininity complicates the semiotic currency of her work. Moreover, Guo Pei’s work highlights tensions concerning understandings of Chinese culture between those in China and the diaspora. In her process of accessing reference material, Guo Pei has necessarily been driven to travel internationally, due to her concerns about a lack of access to material artefacts within China. She has sought out remnants of her ancestral culture in both the Chinese diaspora as well as material culture designed for export (Yoong; Brettkelly). This borrowing of Chinese design as depicted outside of China proper, alongside the use of western influences and patronage in Guo’s work has resulted in her work being dismissed by critics as “superficial … export ware, reimported” (Thurman). The insinuation that her work is derivative is tinged with denigration. Such critiques question not only the authenticity of the motifs and techniques utilised in Guo Pei’s designs, but also the legitimacy of the narratives of both feminine and Chinese identity communicated therein. Questions of cultural ‘authenticity’ serve to deny how culture, both tangible and intangible, is mutable over time and space. In his work on tourism, Taylor suggests that wherever “the production of authenticity is dependent on some act of (re)production, it is conventionally the past which is seen to hold the model of the original” (9). In this way, legitimacy of semiotic communication in works that evoke a temporally distant past is often seen to be adjudicated through notions of fidelity to the past. This authenticity of the ‘traditional’ associates ‘tradition’ with ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity.’ It is itself a form of mythmaking. As Guo Pei’s work is at once quintessentially Chinese and, through its audiences and capitalist modes of circulation, fundamentally Western, it challenges notions of authenticity and legitimacy both within the fashion world and in broader social discourses. Speaking about similar processes in literary fiction, Colavincenzo notes that works that attempt to “take on the myth of historical discourse and practice … expose the ways in which this discourse is constructed and how it fails to meet the various claims it makes for itself” (143). Rather than reinforcing imagined ‘truths’, appeals to an historical imagination such as that deployed by Guo Pei reveal its contingency. Conclusion In Fashion in Altermodern China, Feng suggests that we can “understand the sartorial as situating a set of visible codes and structures of meaning” (1). More than a reductionistic process of sender/receiver communication, fashion is profoundly embedded with intersectional dialogues. It is not the precision of signifiers, but their instability, fluidity, and mutability that is revealing. Guo Pei’s work offers narratives at the junction of Chinese and foreign, original and derivative, mythical and historical that have an unsettled nature. 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