Journal articles on the topic 'Acting Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)'

Background. Actuality of the research theme. The awareness of the importance of mastering the treasures of the native language is dictated by the rapid development of modern Ukrainian statehood. The problems of artistic culture are very acute today, and the educational role of national literature, theater, cinema, broadcasting, television in modern society is increasing. One of the ways of forming a linguistic culture is the constant contact of the country’s population with the artistic word presented at the appropriate professional level. Therefore, the professional skill of the artist-actor as the bearer of the artistic word and the direct interpreter of cultural values embodied in the artistic work becomes of great importance as a means of fulfilling this vital aesthetic-educational mission. Thus, the study of the process of improving the actor’s professional skills of the stage language, the ways of optimizing of modern education in this field seems very relevant. Analysis of recent publications on the research topic. The problems of the culture of speech, the expressiveness of the oral word, the creative nature of the artistic language and its contemporary sound on the stage are highlighted in many scientific works of theatrical teachers, linguists and theatrical scholars, psychologists and sociologists. The special investigations in the field of stage language in recent years are the works of the practitioners of artistic word, the Ukrainian actors and teachers R. Cherkashin, Yu. Sheyko, L. Vazhniova, A. Gladysheva and others. So, Yu. Sheyko pays much attention to the norms of Ukrainian oral literary speech, and insists on the need for the development of the intelligence of a contemporary actor. As the techniques of speech are an integral part of the learning process, the tutorials of L. Vazhniova and A. Gladysheva are devoted to the development of skills of high-artistic embodiment of the work. However, the special studies devoted to the formation of actor voice skills as part of the process of understanding the important role of punctuation marks in the artistic interpretation of the work were not carried out. Methodology, goals, objectives, practical value of the research. The combination of training and creative aspects of the theory and practice of the stage language requires a great deal of methodological flexibility. The proposed article, devoted to the improvement of the actor’s educational activity on mastering the skills of the stage language, uses a complex methodological base, which combines a wide cultural and highly specialized, purely methodical, approaches to the analysis of the process of work on the acquisition of practical skills of the stage language. The first involves entering adjoining artistic spheres – literary and musical; the second refers to concrete – to the practice of stage action. Their combination allows us to construct an optimal algorithm for the work of the actor over the interpretation of artistic text within the framework of the study, which is his goal. Such an algorithm, aimed at perfect mastering the heights of professional skill, can be used successfully in the acting practice of the stage speech. The results of the study. The article emphasizes the importance of the stage of analytical work with literary text, both in a broad historical and stylistic context, and in details, in order to “appropriate” the position of author of the work and, further, create self-own actor’s interpretation. A versatile analysis of the text, preparing it for reading, can be done in this way. 1. Determine the type of work – is this the entire work or a fragment; if this is a fragment, then what is exactly? (Excerpt from the poem, a passage from the ballad, prose, etc.). 2. Having defined the species, it is necessary to give the work the cultural and historical characteristic (at what time it is written, to which national culture belongs, on which social ground it arose, what is the outlook and life positions of the author of the text and peculiarities of his work, the place of work in the author’s creativity, the distinctive features the era in which the author worked, and the one about which the work tells, is the text original or translated etc.). 3. To carry out the ideological-thematic and plot analysis of the work, to determine its main idea, to disclose in connection with it the logical content of the text, to determine what kind of plot vicissitudes prevail. 4. To analyze, how much the author turns to sensual, visual, auditory phenomena. 5. Identify and “view” the spectacular content of the text. 6. It is necessary to understand what the form of a work is, which stylistic and author’s techniques are used to create an artistic whole. 7. On the basis of such a detailed analysis, one should check the first impression of the whole and redefine the content-like structure of the work. 8. Determine the personal attitude to the work. 9. To work on the “vision” of the text. 10. Based on our findings and in depth study of the work, we should outline the line of the dynamic and tempo-rhythmic interpretation of the work. Assistants of the actor in the awareness of the author’s intention become punctuation marks, which also mark the way to artistic expression of speech. Like a musician, an actor should distinguish them by intonation: by changing pitch, volume, tempo, rhythm of speech. Therefore, in our opinion, the creative using of analogies with musical syntax (pauses, leagues, rubato, etc.) and with performing touches of a musician (legato, marcato, etc.) is appropriate in working on the stage speech. The next key point in creating a convincing stage interpretation is his own acting “visions” (K. Stanislavsky’s term), which the performer creates in his imagination based on his previous sensual, intellectual, life experience. Tied to a verbal text, they make it possible for an actor to experience an emotoin of such a force that is able to establish “feedback” with the audience at the time of the stage embodiment of the work. Conclusions and perspectives of the research. The presence of a “feedback” with audience is a prerequisite for the fact that the stage speech, as a special kind of literary language and, at the same time, a socially prestigious form of communication, forms a linguistic culture. It is inextricably linked with the development of society and is the bearer of language traditions of the people. Therefore, the prospects of studying the speech art are seen in the ways of its improvement: the creative decision of the main tasks of the course of the stage speech, the most important of which is a full and meaningful presentation to the audience of art intention through a set of skills aimed at voice expressiveness, precision of diction and clarity of pronunciation in the process of theatrical communication. Punctuation is the way to expressive speech. Punctuation marks discipline our language, and this must be remembered by everyone – students, actors, everyone who is working on a language, because excessive hastiness is the greatest enemy of beginners.

The Subject of the study is personal resistance, which occupies an important place among the objects of philosophical understanding. Therefore, its implementation in fiction, especially in the Ukrainian drama of the last decade, is quite relevant. The Revolution of Dignity has made its adjustments in understanding the motives of resistance, compared to previous revolutions and coups, because that experience took place with completely different information and technical capabilities, and they are important for the organization of people. In addition, the motive of resistance has its own tradition in Ukrainian literature, consisting of works by Taras Shevchenko, poets of “Visnyk”, sixtiers, and dissidents. However, it is mainly journalism and poetry. A new wave of Ukrainian resistance poured into literature. But it is especially important to study the motive of resistance in the dramatic sense, because it is a somewhat new experience. Any resistance movement has a number of organizational and psychological conditions under which it takes place. These conditions are reflected, if not differently, then with shifted accents in the texts of the plays. The article considers dramatic works written before, during and after the Revolution of Dignity. The aim of the article is to trace how the artistic understanding of the social causes and identity of the participant of the resistance movement has changed in the plays dedicated to the Maidan in 2013–2014 and the events taking place in Ukraine as a result of the Revolution. Special attention is paid to the formation of the image of a hero, fighter, patriot. The development of personal resistance in accordance with the described events and the time of their action are considered. Methods of plot and textual analysis, conflict studies and intertextual methods have been used to achieve the set tasks. The study is based on two anthologies of modern Ukrainian drama “Maidan. Before and after” and “Labyrinth of ice and fire”. Due to their structure, these collections allow us to consider personal resistance as a dream, as a real acting image and as a heroic, patriotic feat. Also, the article traces the literary means of creating such an image, and how these means change depending on the development of the image in the texts. All dramas create a generalized image of a Ukrainian, who has all the best qualities, impulses and views, he has high patriotism, willpower, courage, etc., and is thus the image of the Ukrainian who “lacks” the country. This is a dream hero. However, in different sections of the collections, this image changes, transforms and improves. And at the same time the motive of the participant's resistance changes. For the first time, it is traced how Ukrainian playwrights felt and understood the reasons and the course of social, including personal, resistance that led to the Revolution of Dignity. Particular attention is paid to differences in the artistic interpretation of the same motive of social and personal resistance. Also, for the first time, the connection of the resistance motive with the artistic conflicts of the plays of the collections “Maidan. Before and after” and “Labyrinth of ice and fire” is retraced. The material can be used for further in-depth research on this topic, such as the study of texts of epic genres about the Maidan and even poetry collections.

We consider the phenomenon of network literature as an integral part of the modern literary process. We analyze such a phenomenon as a “writing blog” for its compliance with the basic requirements of the neterature: hypertextuality, interactivity, multimedia, informality and pro-cessuality of the text, as well as its semantic content. We conduct a study of the author’s blogs of D. Glukhovsky, E. Vodolazkin, E. Grishkovets, on the one hand, as methods of creating an artistic work, on the other, as ways of promoting the personality and creativity of the writer. Meanwhile, we identify not only the author’s peculiarities of blogging and communication of writers with the readership, but also the individual approaches of particular artistic individuals to the creation and popularization of their works (collective texts writing, combining an artistic work with multimedia content, etc.). We consider the issue of studying online literature in secondary educational institu-tions, and also develop ways to solve it. In particular, we propose an introduction to the educational process of research project work on topical issues of neterature, modern interactive teaching methods, as well as communication of schoolchildren with modern network writers in the format of forums and blogs.

The problem of Nabokov’s artistic identity is relevant for contemporary literature studies. The researchers interpret writer’s estimation of his Russian works differently: in his American years, Nabokov (1) created a new artistic identity (A. Dolinin) and started a new career (N. Cornwell) or (2) developed his general themes (B. Boyd), targeted at English readers. The unique status of the texts written in French is defined by their “phantom” nature (M. Malikova) and the “final work with the literature legacy” (A. Babikov). In our research, the problem of Nabokov’s identity is analyzed for the first time in its connection with the methods of creation of the “phantom” fictional world. Our research subject includes the poem “The Poets” and the short story “Vasiliy Shishkov”. The texts are considered within the literary-critical and artistic contexts. The purpose of this article is to determine how the reflection of one’s own and other people’s creativity is built in these works, taking into account that perceptual imagery serves as tools for aesthetic assessment for Nabokov. The main research method in the work is structural-semiotic analysis: perceptual images are characterized by the variety of their localization, by the method of creation and distribution, by their attitude to the background, etc. The structural-semiotic approach to the analysis of literary texts has revealed the value of “phantom” or “distinctness” in Nabokov’s artistic optics. The intensity of sensations is directly related to the status of the subject of perception and to its position in the hierarchy of fictional worlds (Vasily Shishkov is the fiction of the narrator, the narrator is the fiction of the emigrant writer Nabokov). The impossibility of reliable perception, its continuity and limitation within the framework of an entire era or individual life are assessed by Nabokov as important conditions for creative development, especially significant in a situation of reflection on a new addressee art creation.

The article deals with teaching and researching stage speech on the supposition that researching stage speech influences how we teach stage speech. Stage speech is an artistic speech that researchers try to study and explain in a scientific manner, i.e. with scientific terminology and methods. Modern studies of stage speech are interdisciplinary (they combine phonetics and theatre studies, literary theory and history, sociology, etc.) and no longer just studies on a stricly linguistic (phonetic) level. The article shows a model of a scientific and interdisciplinary study of stage speech and its influence on or connection to how it is taught. The teaching of stage speech, which is shown on the example of students of Stage Acting at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, balances between science and art as well as between theory and practice. The article demonstrates that researching stage speech influences the teaching that is also interdisciplinary, based on artistic and scientific concepts and constantly combines theory and practice.

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.

Mei Lanfang's contact with Stanislavsky during his 1935 tour in the Soviet Union and the latter's often-cited ‘appraisal’ of the acting of traditional Chinese theatre have exerted a profound and lasting influence on the Chinese understanding and evaluation of the art of their traditional theatre. Through extensive research into the related archival material, as well as contemporary records, this article investigates the historical facts and circumstances that underlie this historic intercultural moment on the twentieth-century international stage. It unweaves the historical construction of this remarkable intercultural phenomenon and exposes its political and ideological underpinnings as well as its theatrical and artistic placements and displacements. It underscores the necessity of deconstructing the creation of such an intercultural myth for today's historical understanding of the art of traditional Chinese theatre and, by implication, in a larger context, of the global making of twentieth-century intercultural theatre.

The books’ role in the German Enlightenment discourse explores the intersection of different but complementary disciplines: bibliology, philosophy of culture and «text linguistics», as well as the history of literature that expands the possibilities of studying cultural and public communication. A text (magazine, book) is interpreted as a mechanism that controls the process of learning and understanding. To illustrate the study theoretical foundations, the author considers the historical practice of the literary era in Germany in 1770-1790. The struggle of «cilturtregers» to renew German culture moved from the political sphere to journalism and literature. The author concludes that the book (both scientific and artistic) and reading became a factor of social communication. The struggle for the renewal of German culture, its national identity preservation due to a number of historical reasons hindering the development of the country moved from the political sphere to the journalism and literature field. It was closely connected with the whole complex of the European Enlightenment ideas. The book - both scientific (philosophical work, art treatise) and artistic one (literary and journalistic composition, dramatic creation, etc.) became an indispensable tool of the nation aesthetic education. In such circumstances, a book obtains the significance of not only the «source of knowledge» but a kind of «catechism» to struggle for national culture. Thus, considering a book text as a phenomenon of the German culture of the Enlightenment century with ideological and aesthetic significance, it should be especially notes that such a «text» (a book of scientific, philosophical, moralistic or artistic content) is addressed both to a specific reader, a representative of some class, and to a «collective reader». The German novel (it is the genre of «trivial» literature that is considered directly) is a product of the era. The dialogue «author - reader» (or a complicated triad «author - publisher - reader») was the basis of the nation estetic education. Reading became a fact (and a factor) of social communication. The German book has been transformed from an expensive and exclusive «source of knowledge» targeted for scientists, connoisseurs of «beauty» to a catechism (available for the ordinary reader) of the national struggle to preserve the German culture self-existence and to acquaint the nation to the treasures of the world classical «ancient» and modern literature.

The main purpose of this article is to introduce readers to the linguistic embodiment of the teacher’s image in the short stories by A.P. Chekhov. In recent decades the linguistic personality of the characters of artistic works has often become the subject of thorough linguistic and literary analysis. A.P. Chekhov, being the master of humorous stories, aims at introducing certain features typical only for the images of characters representing various professions but at the same time corresponding to the genre of the work itself. Attention to details, many artistic features are the hallmark of this writer’s work. A.P. Chekhov works through each image at all levels: structural, semantic and linguistic (thesaurus). That is why Chekhov’s works arouse research interest among both literary critics and linguists. The linguistic personality of the teacher in Chekhov’s stories is formed in accordance with the tasks that the writer sets at the time of the creation of the work (for example, a humorous short story, memoirs, etc.). Analysis of the character’s speech characteristics, the verbal portrait of the character allows us to identify the distinctive features of Chekhov’s language and form an idea of the writer as a thinker and researcher of the native language. Working on the semantic level of the linguistic personality allows to reflect on the moral and ethical potential of the characters of Anton Chekhov’s stories.

Modern researchers consider the oeuvre of Sigizmund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky, the Russian-speaking writer of Polish origin, to be a “literary phenomenon” and a “literary discovery” of the twentieth century. Publications, translations into many world languages and active scholar familiarization with the writer’s heritage begins in the end of XX – at the beginning of XXI centuries. The article examines the Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s prose that presents the original artistic heterogeneous universe, where a “multidimensional world” becomes the structure creating model. In the Krzhizhanovsky’s prose a word-creative experiment plays an important role in the creation of many interconnected worlds. The number of writer’s occasional forms even does not undergo an approximate estimation. The second important factor of creating a model of “multidimensional world” is defamiliarization (by Victor Shklovsky) as a phenomenological and gnoseological principle and method. The writer’s artistic consciousness is based on the phenomenon of understanding, connected with the change of vision and understanding, which pulls objects or things out of usual contexts of recognition and re-describing them as a “new discovered” phenomena. Due to this the usual appears unusual, strange. Krzhizhanovsky creates conditional, metaphysical, phantasmagorical and paradoxical worlds. In these strange worlds boundaries of Real and Irreal are blurred, the fiction itself acquires a real image, and reality emerges fantastic. The “logic” of alogism and paradoxes often functions in these worlds. In the artistic language the writer uses the strategy of “morbid” nomination that creatively enriches speech resources and refreshes the literary thesaurus. In the Krzhizhanovsky’s artistic world dominant narrative and pictorial strategies are also based on the next methods: the reviving of things, phenomena and abstract notions, thoughts and words, etc.; materialisation and narrative implementation of metaphors; the use of grotesque. An important role is played by the saturated intertextuality and game modus at different levels: from language and speech to codification of culture. In such a way the author’s model of Philosophy of creativity and philosophy of culture as an endless polyphonic polylog, continuous creative process and boundless creative imagination is realized.

The given article deals with Klen’s research of the German dramatist George Kaiser. The main parameters of artistic universe of this author are presented in the article. There are also outlined the methodological strategies of research the German dramatist’s creativity by Yuri Klen – a well-known Ukrainian literary critic. Georg Kaiser is one of the brightest representatives of theatrical and literary expressionism. His plays are the unique phenomenon in the 20th century drama. His expressionism appeared to be the special one and the global and scope of plots allowed scientists to call G. Kaiser a «new myth creator». Among world scientists, who comprehended the features of author manner of this sign artist for history of world drama, a main place belongs to the Ukrainian literary critic – Yuri Klen. In his scientific work there is the article «George Kaiser», which an author compositionally divides into seven parts. Its pre-condition is an original metaphorical lineation (vivid registration of which is adopted from astronomy), structural-semiotics assertion that every writer creation has a basic idea or favourite main image, that can be found in many writings of the author. However, in the Ukrainian literary critic’s opinion, it is not impossible to say it on the first sight about George of Kaiser because every work of this author has a new incarnate idea, new and unexpected development of a plot, new and original interpretation of that problem which has been solved in his previous works. In the article “George Kaiser” by Yuri Klen the biographic approach can be highlighted while analyzing creative works of the German dramatist. The Ukrainian literary critic also outlines the secrets of psychology of the German artist creation in expressionism manner. Expressionism drama is always drama of ideas; therefore acting persons of this drama are not individuals, but types which helps writer to lead the general action of the characters. Yuri Klen asserts transformation of images in dramas by George of Kaiser, their original reduction up to separate characters and allegories: his characters lost the outlines of people and become symbols of idea, super individual creatures, typical samples, and logic of acting can be sacrificed for the sake of the higher logic – logic of composition and dramatic construction. Few times a researcher accents on closeness an artistic world view of the German dramatist to cubism: characters mainly don’t have the names, but appear on the stage under the names: a «father», «multimillionaire», «black», «yellow» – they are structural formulas. Summarizing these the structural-semiotics searches, Yuri Klen marks once again that in George Kayiser’s works can be found: 1) central idea of man renewing which is peculiar for all his creative work; 2) leading motive of escape-chasing and 3) element of contingency which manages events, that is a case-shove which suddenly gives dynamic of action and sets fire before a man as a distant lighthouse – dream about renewal. It is also possible to assert that researches of expressionism by some authors whose creation correlates with expressionism views demonstrates complete maturity of Yuri Klen to be a serious literary critic armed by the newest methodological approaches to study literature as theoretician and practician of literature studies.

We analyze a number of significant issues of historical lexicology and dialectology related to the development of the Russian literary language, as well as to the study of the nature of its inclusion in the national language. We trace the connection of the codified language with such extra-literary elements as folk patois, vernacular, jargons, we determine their historical significance for the creation in the 18th–19th centuries of a new formation language, built on a democratic basis. Northern Russian patois, including Kostroma, are regarded as the most archaic layer of linguistic phenomena that influenced the Moscow Koine, on the basis of which the literary language was later formed. In this study, the North Russian dialect vocabulary and narrower, Kostroma, is considered as a source of the formation of the vocabulary fund of the literary language, and the artistic, journalistic and scientific works of Kostroma writers and local historians of the late 19th – 20th centuries (A.O. Ablesimov, N.A. Nekrasov, А.N. Ostrovsky, S.V. Maksimov, I.M. Kasatkin, E.V. Chestnyakov, N.N. Vinogradov, V.I. Smirnov, A.V. Gromov, etc.), related to the Kostroma region, as one of the channels of the “migration” of a regional word into the literary language, which largely contributed to its adaptation and consolidation in a standardized language, the de-velopment of extensive lexical and semantic connections and relationships.

This article analyzes the anthroponymy of the detective novella “Wolves Do Not Sleep” (1974) by Lev Gabyshev and Ivan Zozulya, which reflects the author's message, promotes understanding and perception of the text by readers. The subject of this research is the semantics and functions of literary names in artistic space of the text, process of adding meaning, and saturation of content of onym. The goal of this work is to determine functions and multidimensional semantics of anthroponyms based on the internal form of the word, connotations and paronymic associations, as well as reveal the impact of all implicit and explicit components of onym upon discovery of intentions and worldview orientations of the authors. The article is first to analyze the system of literary names of the novella “Wolves Do Not Sleep” by L. Gabyshev and I. Zozolya, and reveal the meanings and functions of the last names of the protagonists. The work contributes to further development of methodology of analysis of proper nouns in artistic space of the text, specification of such fundamental concepts as connotative semantics, function of onym, text, language game, etc The conclusion is made that the literary names of the novella differ in semantic diversity, have a vast and complex lexical background, and characterized as multifunctional symbols. Onyms perform the role of linking structural elements of semantic space of the text, ensuring its coherence. In addition to the text-forming function, anthroponyms fulfill a characteristic and meaning-making function; indicating the spatial-time coordinates of the text as a whole, they localize the character in a certain time and geographical space, giving information on his national affiliation. Being involved in creation of semantic multidimensionality of the text, literary names are verbal means for realization of the author's intentions and worldview.

This article is part of a deeper study of the phenomenon of "picto-poetry" on the example of Paul Eluard and Man Ray's collection "Free Hands". The article proves the intermediality hypothesis of a collection based on the history of its creation, where the two types of arts not only complement each other, but merge into one, creating new forms and genres of French poetry. The purpose of the study is to determine the nature and imagery of the interaction of visual and verbal codes of artistic reality in the collection "Free Hands", as well as to identify the basic features of the composition " in four hands" on the example of the frontispiece of the collection. Research methods: descriptive, structural and semantic analysis methods that allow the identification of relationships between different sign systems (visual, plastic, etc.). The main feature of Paul Eluard and Man Ray's picto-poetic collection "Free Hands", in the preface to which P. Eluard outlined the principles of a single picto-poetic reproduction of the world, is the special principle of organizing the artistic space, when graphic realities also become "literary text", and the poetic text and its graphic "second voice" cannot be interpreted separately. The multi-layered and heterogeneous internal connections in the texts and graphics of authors serve as a form of reproduction of the underlying processes that take place in the human psyche, and the texts of Eluard create visual metaphors that resemble dreams.

The author considers the problem of stylistic functions of linguistic units in modern Russian prose works through analyzing phraseological units in the detectives of B. Akunin. The article presents the most frequent types of phraseological units (idioms, set phrases, proverbs, sayings, popular expressions and other types of clichéd utterances) as representation of a personal literary style of this author. The research results point to their stylistic variety with high literary, colloquial, low colloquial, and slang units among them. The major types of phraseological unit conversion are distinguished as a prove of the writer's personal style, including, complete deformation of a component composition of a set phrase, reduction of the lexical length of phraseological units (implication), distribution of any component composition of the unit (explication), combining two or more phraseological units into a single set expression (contamination), replacement of a component in the composition of phraseological units with words of general literary layers (lexical variation), etc. The stylistic functions of all phraseological units under study are interpreted as retro-representation of the language of a certain time period, stylistic imitation of the communicative tone of oral speech, verbal characteristics of the characters who are referred to various social groups, and creation of humorous tone of the story. A comprehensive description of phraseological units used in modern fiction has revealed their artistic and stylistic potential.

The article discusses the features of the formation and functioning of irony as a way of expressing evaluation in the relationship of the characters of works of art A. T. Averchenko. The importance of this phenomenon is determined by the dependence of the elements of its construction, as well as the external historical and literary vertical context, language elements that form the emotional and expressive marking of the statement. Therefore, it is possible to distinguish some types of ironic evaluation: non-reflexive and reflexive. Acting as a means of language comedism, pun in the humorous prose of Arkady Averchenko structurally-semantically organized, and, as an element of the language game, has the laws of construction and selection of stylistic techniques of creation and influence characteristic of the works of the writer. Therefore, the variety of means of creating a comic assessment in the artistic texts of the author suggests that the choice of a particular technique depends on the language personality of the writer, the ratio of linguistic and extralinguistic means of representing the evaluation in the literary text, because the meaning of the phrase predicted by the addressee is created at the expense of the expected word order for the original syntax. Consequently, the realization of the ironic meaning inherent by the Creator of the work of art in the lexemes, becomes clear only from the surrounding context. Since the game is the basis of any culture, the ratio of these concepts becomes the leading person playing, manifested in the manner of speech behavior of the linguistic personality of both the author-Creator and the character - his creations. Therefore, it is appropriate to state that the linguistic personality exists in the space of culture, and, therefore, it can be presented as a linguocultural type as an image recognizable by representatives of a certain national culture, embodied in the character of an artistic work as a creative and playing unique linguistic personality.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the special place of language creation and the estrangement of language in literary and professional translation. The research methodology is determined by the search for a balance between the approach to the internal form in Oleksadr Potebnia’s school and to the external form in literary formalism. To make translation a solid foundation for education, it must be correct. The reliability of translation should be based on adequate translation practices, which are determined by following the correct principles of handling the language of translation. Hermeneutics focuses on the language of the original text, revealing its hidden meanings and alternative interpretations. Instead, professional translation also takes into account the creative potential of the language of translation. If in previous times the translator was a servant of the author of the original, then in the age of postmodern and intertextuality the translation sometimes turns into a kind of quest for the reader, and even an experienced consumer of translation does not always manage to unravel the translation idea and reproduce the author's original text intention. All this raises the question of the admissibility of language searches – language creation, estrangement of language, etc. – in translation. The translator inevitably appears as another author, which must, however, be minimally tangible to the reader. Only as an exception, the merit of a good translator is language creation, but where it is really needed: the translator have to be a language creator – at least not worse than the author of the original text. Often the translator acts as a co-creator of the native language – because it is through him that foreign words, artistic images, new language themes and language forms usually come into the language. This is especially evident in the translation of poetic works. Renaissance and Baroque give classic examples of active work of translators as creators of the language. In Ukrainian history, such features were generously endowed with the Ukrainian avant-garde of the early twentieth century.

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 paper focuses on the development and description of an environmental scenography model. The presented material seeks to characterize the concepts included in the complex of “architectural and design scenography”, to identify and summarize thestructural-component composition of thearchitectural and design scenography. The paper is based on the synthesis of the conceptual framework of stage scenography and environmental approach in the design of the architectural environment. Based on the specific experience of architectural theorists and practitioners who experimented in stage scenography, organization of production processes outside the theaters, the parallels were drawn between the theory and practice of environmental and stage scenography.In view of the foregoing, the nomenclature of environmental scenography has been clarified and expanded. It was found that the architectural and design scenography is implemented in the formation of visual impressions as part of various scenarios of user and environment interaction. At the same time, the environment and its components are “mobile substance”, which is perceived in dynamics, in the course of its interaction with users, in spatial amplifications, metamorphoses, overlapping of “pictures”, etc. With a scenographic approach to the design of the architectural environment, the organization of various connections comes to the fore for a variety of visual contact conditions between the environment and the user.The paper describes the concept of “architectural and design scenography” (ADS), outlines the scope of its application in the architectural design, emphasizes the priority of visual perception, provides examples of the mutual enrichment of the scenographic and architectural practice. The definition of ADS as a type of artistic design of the architectural environment aimed at creation of its graphical-plastic image, and the definition of the visual and aesthetic significance of the environment image are clarified. The main functions of the environmental scenography are listed: character,acting functions and designation of the scene.The structural-component composition of the ADS includes 3 compositional systems, 3 architectonic levels, 4 content-related levels, means of expression, composite components, and stages.

After the end of the Second World War and the creation of the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (since 1963 the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia) the Ruthenians in the new state, although a small national community, could accomplish their national rights, among them the most important were: the right of gaining education in their native language; founding of cultural, educational and national organizations, the right to be informed and have publications in their native language etc. In the period after the war, as well as in the interwar period, the Ruthenian community encountered many dilemmas, opposing views and polemics concerning the basic issues on their ethnicity and national identity. The part of the Ruthenian intellectuals advocated of the Ruthenians as members of the Ukrainian nation, striving to establish stronger cultural, educational and national connections with Ukraine and Ukrainian Diaspora. On the other hand, a part of intelligentsia, which leaned on the authorities and the Communist Party, advocated a pro-Ruthenian attitude, claiming that the Ruthenians living in this region were autochthonous, special Slavic people and that they didn’t have their Motherland. Yugoslav authorities seemingly didn’t participate in the discussions and polemics between the two Ruthenian options, but nevertheless they supported the protagonists of the pro-Ruthenian orientation and favored the attitude that the Ruthenians didn’t have their Motherland. As the most signifi cant achievement of the Ruthenian community in Yugoslavia in that period was the education in the Ruthenian language in the eight-year elementary school, publishing of weekly newspapers, magazines, annual books — calendars, literary works, radio shows in the Ruthenian language, establishing cultural and artistic societies, drama clubs, music festivals etc. Another signifi cant success was establishing connections and cooperation with Ukraine and Ukrainians in Diaspora in the fi eld of literature, publishing, science and mass culture. Certainly, there was a rise and fall in that cooperation, mostly depending on the attitude of the authorities towards the concrete actions and their protagonists.

The research paper presents the imagery means of the subjective personal assessment in literary works. The aim of the study is the analysis of imagery means when describing characters; their classification and role when depicting characters to identify the stylistic features of German classics as well as thorough study of stylistic means by using specific examples. The linguistic and stylistic analysis of the work is inseparably linked with the general literary work analysis. It plays a significant role when learning foreign languages and it is important for studying the foreign writers’ style. The methods of character creation as well as the language role are considered in the research paper. The huge impact of living colloquial speech on the author's language and how it influences the main features of the imagery-syntactic structure of the character’s direct speech are studied. It is suggested that the stylistic features of characterology should be considered with their functional correspondence to images, aesthetic motivation and appropriateness. One should focus on the general, typical repetitious features of the images, which are determined by the stable concept of the writer’s personal characteristic. When motivating a stylistic phenomenon it is advisable to proceed not only from the figurative idea but also from the author's worldview and the subjective properties of the portrayal object as these subjective properties are reflected in the subjective writer’s vision. The purpose of the study is to identify the techniques used by such writers as E. M. Remarque, T. Mann, A. Zegers and others as well as the means of imagery they used by establishing the peculiarities of the author's language, the language in general and the language of the characters, by classifying the means of imagery according to stylistic and emotional characteristics. The linguistic description method has been used for this purpose. The features of direct and indirect speech are analyzed on the basis of the well-known novels. The significant role in the creation of the literary and artistic character portrait belongs to the character speech, transmitted in a literary text by such methods as direct, indirect, improper direct speech and their mixed forms. It has been found out that direct speech is a method of language transmission that provides linguistic autonomy of characters; indirect speech is a form of coexistence of author’s language and the characters’ language within certain grammaticalized structures. The research demonstrates the role of using indirect speech in showing the ironic content, some characters’ thoughts, gossips etc.

In the 1920s–1930s a significant number of Latvians lived in the USSR (the number of Latvians in the USSR ranged from 120,000 to 200,000 in these decades). The USSR Latvian diaspora had a small contact with the Latvian population in Latvia, but despite this, a separate, unique Latvian culture was formed – a network of Latvian schools, technical schools, periodicals, theatres, publishing houses, etc. Literature was also of great importance – it helped to improve the Latvian language, as well as intellectually unite the wide-spread Latvian diaspora in the USSR. The choice of Latvians to live in the USSR rather than in Latvia in the 1920s–1930s, could be interpreted as submission to the Soviet regime and even betrayal of Latvia, therefore, even today, the life of Soviet Latvians, and especially literature, has been relatively under-researched. In the 1930s in the USSR, there were six novels published in Latvian. They were written in the context of the totalitarian rule when the process of literary control was intensified, so writers had to be subject to the principles of socialist realism. The focus of the research is on the last Soviet Latvian novel issued in the 1930s –“Meži šalc” (1936) by Oskars Rihters (1898–1938). In the analysis of the novel, attention is drawn to its creation, perception, cultural, and historical context, as well as its artistic structure and value. The novel is an apology of Marxist-Leninist ideology. “Meži šalc” has similarities with canonical Russian texts (for example, “How the Steel Was Tempered” (Как закалялась сталь, 1934) by Nikolai Ostrovsky (Николай Островский, 1904–1934)). The novel represents the USSR trend in art not only thematically, but also in compositional form. Hence, this novel should be regarded as the first consistent novel of socialist realism in the history of Latvian literature.

Charles Bally’s works laid the basis for the linguistic interpretation of the conceptions of association and associativity and understanding of associative mechanisms with regard to the fundamentals of psychology and systemacy of semantic links in thinking and language. The foundation of the modern theory of associativity is the classification of associations (mnemonic and necessary, close and distant, internal and external) developed by Charles Bally in his works. In linguo-stylistics the conception of association and associativity are associated with understanding of the psycholinguistic mechanisms of figurative use of language units and the realization of the aesthetic function of a literary language (S.Ya. Yermolenko, A.A. Moisiienko, L.V. Tailor, O. Malenkov, H.M. Siuta). Among the mechanisms for the formation of linguistic associations are the following factors: objective, social and intellectual experience, dependence on cultural and historical traditions, the gender identity of the speaker, etc. One of them dominates in each specific communicative situation. Currently known classifications of types of associative links take into account the basic positions of psycholinguistics, and the needs of lexicology and stylistics, etc. General differentiation is carried out: 1) for contiguity, similarity and contrast, 2) according to the scheme “word-stimulus, word-reaction”, 3) according to the type of relationship between the stimulus and the associate). Deep differentiation of associations according to the type of relationship between stimulus and associate) determines the allocation of several associative types: paradigmatic (food – bread) / syntagmatic (food – consume); thematic (friend – childhood > childhood friend); empirical (associated with the subjective experience of the speaker); social (associated with the social experience of the speaker), etc. The use of other criteria motivates the allocation of these types of associations: a) audio, visual, adorational, tangential; b) the usual and unexpected; c) direct and indirect, mediated; d) positive and negative; e) cultural, ethnic and author’’s individual. Understanding the connection between associativity and imagery is a primary issue in the modern literary language theory. Being a basis of concrete and sensual perception of the literary text, associations serve as a basis of creation of character in literature (S.Ya. Yermolenko, L.O. Pustovit, L.O. Stavitska, V.A. Chabanenko). It is necessary to consider the ideas of Franko’s treatise according to the history of the formation of the associativity theory. In particular, the proposed division of poetic associations by content (“ordinary”, that is, simple, and “linked by force”, that is, complex), remains undeniable. During the twentieth century the understanding of the mechanisms of implementation of associativity significantly deepened. One of the main subjects of intensive processing was the paradigmatic ordering of words in language and in human memory, the presence of clear mental connections between certain objects, realities on the basis of commonality or adjacency of their individual traits, features, etc. (compare.: spring – green, light, sun, warmth, flowers, feelings). This motivates the associative grouping of words into semantic fields. From linguo-stylistics point of view the associative-semantic field is a text structure, the model of the functional and stylistic implication of lexical-semantic units. The core of such a field, as a rule, are the keywords – the semantic and estimated coordinates of the entire work. Another type of lexicon combination, taking into account the associative links between the components, is an associative and imaginative field. It arises on the basis of associative and semantic or lexical and semantic association due to the identity of the denotative properties of linguistic signs, the general tradition of common language and poetic usage. Its center is the most active unit (dominant) – the core component of the series, which organizes the relationship of all other components. Associative-figurative series (lexical-thematic lines) go from this dominant, which work together semantically with the center for associative and creative field. Associativity is one of the key concepts of modern linguistic style. Terminological functionality of the conception of association and associativity is associated with the activity of cognition of the problems of “language association”, “artistic association”, “associativity and creative work”.

Charles Bally’s works laid the basis for the linguistic interpretation of the conceptions of association and associativity and understanding of associative mechanisms with regard to the fundamentals of psychology and systemacy of semantic links in thinking and language. The foundation of the modern theory of associativity is the classification of associations (mnemonic and necessary, close and distant, internal and external) developed by Charles Bally in his works. In linguo-stylistics the conception of association and associativity are associated with understanding of the psycholinguistic mechanisms of figurative use of language units and the realization of the aesthetic function of a literary language (S.Ya. Yermolenko, A.A. Moisiienko, L.V. Tailor, O. Malenkov, H.M. Siuta). Among the mechanisms for the formation of linguistic associations are the following factors: objective, social and intellectual experience, dependence on cultural and historical traditions, the gender identity of the speaker, etc. One of them dominates in each specific communicative situation. Currently known classifications of types of associative links take into account the basic positions of psycholinguistics, and the needs of lexicology and stylistics, etc. General differentiation is carried out: 1) for contiguity, similarity and contrast, 2) according to the scheme “word-stimulus, word-reaction”, 3) according to the type of relationship between the stimulus and the associate). Deep differentiation of associations according to the type of relationship between stimulus and associate) determines the allocation of several associative types: paradigmatic (food – bread) / syntagmatic (food – consume); thematic (friend – childhood - childhood friend); empirical (associated with the subjective experience of the speaker); social (associated with the social experience of the speaker), etc. The use of other criteria motivates the allocation of these types of associations: a) audio, visual, adorational, tangential; b) the usual and unexpected; c) direct and indirect, mediated; d) positive and negative; e) cultural, ethnic and author’’s individual. Understanding the connection between associativity and imagery is a primary issue in the modern literary language theory. Being a basis of concrete and sensual perception of the literary text, associations serve as a basis of creation of character in literature (S.Ya. Yermolenko, L.O. Pustovit, L.O. Stavitska, V.A. Chabanenko). It is necessary to consider the ideas of Franko’s treatise according to the history of the formation of the associativity theory. In particular, the proposed division of poetic associations by content (“ordinary”, that is, simple, and “linked by force”, that is, complex), remains undeniable. During the twentieth century the understanding of the mechanisms of implementation of associativity significantly deepened. One of the main subjects of intensive processing was the paradigmatic ordering of words in language and in human memory, the presence of clear mental connections between certain objects, realities on the basis of commonality or adjacency of their individual traits, features, etc. (compare.: spring – green, light, sun, warmth, flowers, feelings). This motivates the associative grouping of words into semantic fields. From linguo-stylistics point of view the associative-semantic field is a text structure, the model of the functional and stylistic implication of lexical-semantic units. The core of such a field, as a rule, are the keywords – the semantic and estimated coordinates of the entire work. Another type of lexicon combination, taking into account the associative links between the components, is an associative and imaginative field. It arises on the basis of associative and semantic or lexical and semantic association due to the identity of the denotative properties of linguistic signs, the general tradition of common language and poetic usage. Its center is the most active unit (dominant) – the core component of the series, which organizes the relationship of all other components. Associative-figurative series (lexical-thematic lines) go from this dominant, which work together semantically with the center for associative and creative field. Associativity is one of the key concepts of modern linguistic style. Terminological functionality of the conception of association and associativity is associated with the activity of cognition of the problems of “language association”, “artistic association”, “associativity and creative work”.

The article deals with the stories of Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski emigration period in view of the historical nature. The various Polish epochs described in the writer’s stories are given in chronological order. The attention is paid to the individual style and changes of the author’s philosophical positions. A special place is devoted to Kraszewski Sarmatian visions and the influence of Volyn life and creativity period on emigration literature. The ideal of the Polish knight-Sarmatian is characterized. Both the writer emigration and Dresden creativity period lasted for 20 years and was especially fruitful in historical subjects, since it was then that the idea to create a whole chronological series of historical stories appeared. Thanks to the creation of this cycle J. I. Krashewski became famous not only for his peasant tales, but also as a novelist of historical direction. Josef Kraszewski did not often go to Karlovy Vary for treatment as well as to Greater Poland and Galicia from Dresden. In 1883 while Kraszewski was going back from treatment in France he was arrested and charged with “state betrayal” in Berlin. After a long trial to which Bismarck himself was involved the writer was sentenced to three and a half years in Magdeburg fortress. Kraszewski did not stop his literary activities in the prison. In Magdeburg, he created such works as “Adventures”, “Over the Abyss”, “The King in Nesvizh”, “Yustka”, “God’s Wrath”, etc. On November 7, 1885 he was fired thanks to the help of friends but the writer’s health was finally blown up. The artist died in Geneva on March 19, 1887. Historical themes became the leitmotif of his emigration creativity. Those researchers who are looking for historical accuracy won’t find it in Kraszewski’s prose since the author puts a special emphasis on the purpose of his writings such as the patriotic spirit awakening, the nation revival, the restoration and development of the statehood in Poland. Taking into account the goals it can be argued that despite the incredible writer awareness of the history, his artistic talent outweighed the historical fact. It was a conscious choice of the artist who chose the literature as an instrument of his life goal embodiment among the history and literature.

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.

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.

Victor Sokolov’s article «Genesis and features of the functioning of illegal libraries in Ukraine: historical and socio-political factors» examined the peculiarities of formation, characteristics and peculiarities of illegal libraries, as well as socio-political factors, social conditions and main directions of these collections, mainly in Ukraine. The purpose of the proposed article is to identify and study the characteristics of illegal libraries, study their types, analysis and generalization of information about the peculiarities of the creation and operation of these collections in Ukraine, as well as characteristics of the main forms and directions of their activities. In his work, the author widely used general scientific and historical research methods: comparisons, analogies, deductions, descriptive, analytical, typological methods, as well as historical-comparative, historical-genetic and other methods of scientific research. The author proved that the most developed were the illegal libraries of political organizations and circles, which collected literature from various fields of knowledge, but most of them were publications in the social sciences (history, philosophy, sociology, etc.). Many illegal libraries, including marxist organizations and circles, were interconnected in centralized systems. In terms of the number of books, the funds of some illegal libraries of political organizations can be compared with the funds of public, church-parish, county and township libraries. However, most of them had up to 300 books. However, their activities had a certain impact on the socio-political life of society, on the formation of consciousness, cultural and educational level, mostly, the lower strata of the population. It was found that in the context of police persecution, «employees» of illegal libraries quickly adapted to new circumstances and needs of readers and often changed the forms, methods, principles of work in order to steadily pursue the main line of these collections – to disseminate certain ideas and principles of public life. Illegal libraries often operated under the guise of self-education, literary and artistic, public, women’s, family and leisure, educational and other societies and clubs. In general, they were characterized by the presence of almost all organizational and structural subsystems that had official public libraries: they had a fund of various types of documents, a catalog, a contingent of readers, facilities, library staff and documentation. In illegal libraries, for the first time, active forms and methods of book promotion were born, which were used and researched during communication with users of book collections, whose reading needs were also periodically studied. It was found that illegal libraries, including political organizations and circles, performed both educational and ideological tasks, and organizational (they became organizational centers of political struggle, in particular the premises of illegal libraries were a place of appearances, a point of agitation and propaganda, storage of revolutionary literature, etc.). A study of the history of illegal libraries, in particular, political organizations, educational and cultural-educational societies, proves that certain democratic, progressive elements of library development were formed in their activities, some of which were inherited and developed by domestic library science and practice.

The article is devoted to the study of the historical development of the territory of the Chernihiv-Siversky Podesennya by the researcher-archaeologist Vasily Eliseyevich Kurylenko, to the learning of his role in the development of Ukrainian archaeological science, museum affairs and his educational activities. The author analyzes the life and search path of the researcher, describes the importance of field archeological activity and museum-educational work. The study tested the significance of scientific (archeological), literary heritage and educational activities for the development of modern views on the ancient history of Ukraine. The study of the historical processes of the Desnian region for some reasons has not been sufficiently disclosed. Among them, the Mizun stand, named after the culture of the Eastern player of Sivershchyna, which is the most prominent archaeological sites, whose age reaches 20-18 millennium BC. The Mizun stand testifies the transition of people in ancient times at the turn of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic period from the caves of natural origin in handmade dwellings built from the bones and skins of mammoths. The opening of the Mizun stand nowadays equates to the opening of Troy by H. Schliemann, Trypillia culture by V. Khvoika, the Scythian Golden pectoral by B. Mazolevsky, the value of Egyptian hieroglyphs be Zh.F. Champolion. Having analyzed the formation of V.E. Kurylenko as an archaeologist-researcher focuses on the significance of his archaeological researches, scientific activity, literary-journalistic, artistic, educational, museum-heritage for the development of contemporary views on the ancient history of Ukraine, on the factors of the formation of the Ukrainian ethnic group, and the consolidation of civil society. In the article the significance of V.E.Kurylenko’ researches of the Mizun bracelets, fragments of the original products with ornament, which was deciphered by the scientist, the monthly protocalendar of the hunters and fishermen of the Neolithic Age, the protozoan instruments, etc., which do not have world analogues were noted. By deciphering the Mizun bracelets the scientist launched a new direction in archaeological science - astroarheology. The researcher has developed a scientific method of complex study of cultures of the district. V.Kurylenko looked for traces of the Mesolithic and Neolithic settlements in the district of Mizin on Podesennya during 46 years (from 1965 to 2011). He found the second Mizun Paleolithic stand "Kostomakh’ well”. V.Kurylenko discovered more than 60 archeological artefacts, found on the banks of the Desna more than twenty different cultures, in particular - previously unknown − Preyukhnov culture. V.E.Kurilenko collected more than 54,000 archaeological finds, systematized them, classified and created archaeological museums for them, among them a museum near the world-famous Mizun stand. V.Kurylenko studied the interconnection, interplay of chronological changes in the cultures of a particular region., avoid pseudo-scientific, imposed, ideologically-ordered conclusions. He created the Ukrainian concept of museum creation.

Background. Today in the minds of Ukrainians there is a process of reappraisal of values, which requires new approaches to the cultural education of citizens. At the current stage of the formation of the Ukrainian state, in front of its culture, in particular, children education, important and responsible educational tasks arise for the younger generation to develop a worldview focused on national ideals and traditions, preserved in folk songs, tales, in outstanding literary, musical works and other significant achievements of spiritual culture. That is why there is a need to study the children musical and dramatic heritage of the past – an inexhaustible treasury of cultural and educational ideas that in modern conditions can get their new life. The pearl in this treasury are the children plays by Olena Pchilka. The lack of research that fully and comprehensively covers the scientific and practical significance of children musical plays by the writer for the development of children theater in Ukraine determines the relevance of the chosen topic. Appeal to it seems very timely, given the growing popularity of the children musical genre today both in the world and in Ukrainian musical culture. The process of creative development of this genre is now one of the important problems of a modern professional theater for children. Olena Pchilka’s work has been studied by such scientists as D. Dontsov (1958), I. Denysiuk (1970), N. Kuprata (1998), H. Avrakhov (1999), L. Miroshnichenko (1999, 2014), L. Novakivska (2002), L. Drofan (1992, 2004), O. Mikula (2007, 2011), V. Shkola (2010), A. Zaitseva (2014), I. Shchukina (2015), O. Yablonska (2019) and others. In critical and scientific studies, innovative genre features of the writer’s work are identified, attention is focused on the specifics of his problematic and thematic range, the features of literary and aesthetic, sociopolitical, pedagogical views of the writer. However, there is still no work that would comprehensively reveal our chosen topic. The purpose of the article is to show Olena Pchilka’s contribution to the development of children musical theater in Ukraine on the basis of a study of the children’s musical and dramatic work of the writer. The research methodology is comprehensive. The work uses knowledge from various fields of art and related sciences: the history and theory of theater, the theory of music, music and theater psychology, vocal and theater pedagogy. Analytical method is applied for Olena Pchilka’s musical plays for children’s theater, which are the material of this study. Results of the study. Results of the study. An outstanding Ukrainian writer, translator, editor, teacher Olga Petrovna Dragomanova-Kosach (1849–1930) is known better under the nickname Olena Pchilka. Half of all her works are works for children and youth: poems, translations, tales, stories, plays. Olena Pchilka’s legacy in the field of children theater, in terms of his qualities – an active educational orientation, a benevolent understanding of the child’s inner world and its highly artistic reflection in word and music – is a unique cultural phenomenon. During her lifetime, only three of her twelve plays for children were published. However, every play was put on the school stage. The author herself usually directed performances. The writer’s awareness of musical folklore formed the foundation for the creation of children plays. The author interweaves melodies in the texts of plays (“Melodies for singing”, as Pchilka called it) as an organic component of the child’s very existence, they sound in a dance, game or some imaginary action of children, thereby “feeding” and directing the Grand vector of the stage action. There is the information that Olga Petrovna became the author of some songs. The writer outlined the creative directions of her future children theater: 1) dramatizations of a “suitable” literary work; 2) a children musical play; 3) an original dramatic work with a wide use of poems, fables, folk songs, ritual dances with singing, children games with toys, and the like. “Honor your native...”, “...it is good to know your own folk language, song...” – expressions from Olena Pchilka’s article “Work of upbringing” formulate the dominant of her creativity, pedagogy, social and scientific activities and, to a high degree, her children drama. Olena Pchilka considered the life and work of Taras Shevchenko one of the most influential sources of education of conscious Ukrainians. Therefore, in her children theater, the theme of his life and creativity is a leitmotif (the play “Spring morning of Taras” etc.). Olena Pchilka was convinced that the Ukrainian language, song and native nature are a necessary and irreplaceable environment for a child. Folk art and folk mythology reign in a number of her children plays. In one of them (“Dreamdreamy, or a Fairy tale of a Green Grove” – “Son-Mriya, Kazka Zelenogo Gayu”) we meet a Forest Mouse, a Cuckoo-a girl, a Nightingale-a boy, a Crow-a girl, a Sparrow-a boy, children-Quail, Forest Mermaid, Goblin (Lisovik), Field Mermaid. For this play the author introduced the row of various songs, from the song of field workers to lullaby. The play “Bezyazykiy” (“Without tongue”) touches on the theme of refugees, the psychology of the child, his behavior in the school team, and at the same time the ethical problems of teaching. The play also includes the songs. The operetta “Two Sorceresses” (1919) is the pinnacle of Olena Pchilka’s children drama. The writer repelled from folk melodies and poems; games, ceremonies, festivals; from children’s naturalness, clarity, rainbow imagination, playfulness, organically weaving into the fabric of their works their own verses and melodies to them. The play contains a variety of numbers: solo (“Singing of the Earth”, “Singing of Santa Claus” and others), choral (“Choir of boys and girls”, “Spring-Beauty is coming”, etc.), conversational and vocal scenes (“I’m Winter, Winter”, “Girl, Fish”, “We are the clear rays of the sun”, “Lala, bobo”, etc.). Another title of the work is “Winter and Spring”, so the names of the main characters who oppose each other are placed in the title. The presence of conversational and vocal scenes, folk games and dances, comedy episodes allows us to consider the play as the predecessor of the modern genre of “musical” for children. The festive theme continues in the one-act play “A Christmas tale”. The play traces the process of becoming a person as a person. A large amount of ethnographic musical material has been introduced into the artistic structure of the work. The writer meant the “Christmas fable” as a dramatic action. To “AChristmas Fable” the author has included Ukrainian folk songs: the Christmas Carol “New joy”, a Christmas caroling girls “Oh red, plentiful viburnum”, the dance song “Dance of the groom” (“Kozachok”), the refrain “At the house of Pan Semen” etc. In 1920, in Mogilev-Podolsk, Olga Petrovna Kosach, a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature, organized a children’s drama Studio at the Ivan Franko school, where almost all the plays of her “Ukrainian children theater” were staged: “Peace-Peace!” (Mir-Mirom), “Kiselik” and “Treasure” (“Skarb”). The play “MirMirom!” is based on the games of preschool children: the song “Go, go, rain”, the game for friendship “Peace-Peace!”, the song “My mother gave me a cow” and other. Among Olena Pchilka’s children plays, there are “tales” of Patriotic content. “Treasure” performance in one action, which also include the songs, is teaching for responsibility and patriotism. In her play “Out of captivity”, where the Ukrainian childhood during the October revolution shows, the children sing the choral “liberated singing” – the singing of the Ukrainian anthem. Conclusions. It is concluded that Olena Pchilka contributed to the creation of the foundations for the formation of children musical theater in Ukraine with her creative heritage and practical activities, developing a new literary genre of musical children play, which we can call the genre of musical in modern times. After all, Olena Pchilka’s plays, written in a form accessible to children, are examples of Patriotic and cultural education, full of music, singing, folk and household melodies, folk songs, carols, poems, games, dances, rituals, celebrations. This problem is poorly understood and requires further research.

Background. Within the framework of art-historical discourse, the peculiarities of the influence of design developments and concepts on progress of humanity are considered. Researchers offer ambiguous estimates of this phenomenon, discussions are lasting and different opinions on the issues of influence of design on technological and cultural progress of human society are putting forward. The aim of the paper is to systematize and generalize scientific concepts about the design role in the society progress. Novelty of the research consisting in synthesis of information on features of development of design for the last years in various spheres of culture and social practice defines its practical significance: the Ukrainian educators and art critics can consider the information contained in the article useful to develop new strategy of training in bases of design to non-specialist students. Methodology. Major publications and monographs on the subject have been reviewed. It has been found that terminological judgment of design began with the middle of the XX century, first, within postmodern paradigm. The design as a component of culture correlates with cultural and art traditions, philosophy, ecology and other areas of public and humanitarian knowledge. Hence, the study of the role of design in ensuring progress provides for the wide use of theoretical and methodological tools not only of design theory, but also of other disciplines: art history, cultural studies, social psychology, aesthetics, ecology, etc. The design is considered both as universal and as a national phenomenon. The definitions of design in the works of a number of domestic and foreign authors in the context of its cultural-creative influence are compared. The analysis of design in its connection with artistic creativity is carried out. The components of contemporary design art are determined, the characteristic to the newest manifestations of design is given. Results. The design represents the hierarchical structure expressed by means of а material, space and balance of proportions, contrasts, repetitions (in ornaments, etc.), scale and a form, a size, a color and density, texture and weight, and other. It is possible to consider culture of design as the huge multilayered text, which is written down by different ways in different spheres of culture and art. However the dilemma “art or production” in the sphere of design is inevitable. Design is directly involved in technical progress in material culture and uses the art of planning, invention, modeling as a method, also introducing new object forms (see, for example, Vershinin & Melentyev, 2005: 1001). The design role in culture is connected with creation of esthetically perfect fine environment. At the same time, it is differentiated essentially depending on the region of the world. So, design creativity is reasonably considered a manifestation of project activities and project culture of the 20th century. However, the progressive function of design at the beginning of the 21st century is that design is becoming a way to bridge the gap between technical civilization and spiritual culture, and design projecting is becoming a way of harmonizing human life in a modern environment. The importance of design for the progress of humankind is clearly demonstrated by the modern ecological direction, one of the components of the international movement of “green” design, namely, “environmental” design. This concept implies the creation of products that are compatible with the environment, the reduction and complete elimination of the negative impact on nature through the use of alternative resources and energy, as well as non-toxic materials. Ideally, the design should be in line with the “3R” ecological principle: reduce, reuse, and recycle. The value of design for progress in art can be understood, having only tracked integration of painting, architecture, industrial and graphic design and having seen what the role in tangled process of creation of design is played by contents and a form, which also are the expression of the thought, the point of view and social responsibility of the designers. It is also important to emphasize the role of the designer’s profession, because for many artists design and art is a cultural mission, where life and work are inseparable. Judgments of design in art are formed, proceeding from two types of estimates: symbolical, or associative (external), and formal (internal). Symbolical estimates are mostly subjective and have no relation to design or art per se, being most often based on a habit, rumors, others thought, personal factors, prejudices, misunderstanding, that is on social, psychological, political, financial and even religious factors. Internal assessments concern an esthetics and actually design (appearance of the work of art, its visual quality) regardless of what it personifies. If external estimates belong to contents, then internal – to beauty. The latter is difficult to measure it and here such factors as talent, erudition, taste, susceptibility, experience and visual feeling matter. When determining a role of design in art, it is also necessary to remember that the principles of laconicism, laws of color, a rhythm and even plot equally work in any material, these fundamentals exist out of time, space, the state, school or style. To resume, human progress is largely driven by the positive influences of design concepts. Summarizing the views of Ukrainian and foreign researchers, it can be argued that design as a type of purposeful creative activity of mankind contributes to progress, since: 1) provides support for the development of civilization by creating new and improving known man-made objects; 2) creates an optimal human environment in order to achieve maximum comfort of his existence; 3) contributes to the formation of creative personality traits, its purposeful activity, which is one of the main social tasks. Design acts as an universal phenomenon, which covers different spheres of human activity, being, at the same time, the factor of socio-cultural communication and the basis for personality realization. As the socio-cultural phenomenon, it correlates with understanding of the person as source of intrinsic forces acting like the harmony catalyst in space.

The objective of the paper is to reveal the main structural features of Latgalian animal anecdotes in the context of animal epics. According to the fundamental and universal laws of folklore it can hypothetically be assumed that Latgalian animal anecdotes are an ethnic version of international zoomorphic anecdotes. When analyzing the structure of the zoomorphic anecdotes, it is essential to consider them in the context of the whole animal epic, which allows to acknowledge typological similarities and coherence in the creation of the animal images and the most typical motives. A comparative analysis illustrates that the structural features of both Latgalian and Latvian zoomorphic anecdotes are vitally associated with the whole context of animal epics, and especially with fairy tales. Some of the functions of fairy tales, as outlined by the Russian scientist V. Propp, band together, thereby forming the most typical motives of zoomorphic anecdotes, which can be found in the folklore and the literary traditions of different nations. Therefore it is possible to conclude that the Latgalian animal anecdotes preserve all those structural features of the zoomorphic anecdotes which are common for animal anecdotes in general, irrespective of the area where an anecdote is told, the nationality of a narrator or the topic. A structural analysis of the anecdotes shows the manifestation of regularities of the genre of anecdotes and its structural features, as well as a mutual interaction of the peculiarities of composition in the context of animal epics in general. A fundamental analysis of the structure of an anecdote implies identifying a motive, whose successful scientific interpretation reveals the interconnection of the structure of the fairy tales and the anecdotes. The understanding of a motive is based on the dichotomic comprehension as practiced in folklore studies, whose founder – the American folklorist A. Dandes – based it on the theory of fairy tales functions as elaborated by the Russian folklorist V. Propp. According to A. Dandes’ theory, the understanding of a motive in narrative folklore virtually merges with the understanding of the function in the morphology of fairy tales, which allows the comparison of any motive in an anecdote with the corresponding function in a fairy tale. V. Propp distinguishes 31 functions in fairy tales: eight of them have to do with the introduction (set off, prohibition, violation of the prohibition, deception, revelation of a secret, telling a secret, help, sabotage), three have to do with the nodus (mediation, initiation of counteraction, sending away or reproach), eleven have to do with the main part of the message (the first function of the sender, the hero’s response, acquisition of a magical asset, a movement of the hero, a fight, a distinctive action of a hero, victory, prevention of a shortfall, return, chase, rescue), and finally, the last nine functions (the return fails to be recognized, grudge of a false hero, a difficult task, its solution, exposure, transfiguration, punishment, wedding, reign) (Пропп 1998). Naturally, due to their compact structure, anecdotes cannot include all the functions mentioned by V. Propp. However, when banding together, several of the most typical motives of the Latgalian zoomorphic anecdotes become dominant (for example, motives of competition, truth, seeming departure, etc.), which can be found also in fairy tales about animals and other genres of animal epics. In these, every motive can be identified not on its own, but in inseparable connection with a particular message, because one motive can have different roles within different ideas. Besides, several types of artistic ideas can be distinguished in animal anecdotes as models of various life situations. Laconism in an anecdote often depends on the inclusion of a narrated element in it. Therefore, dialogues, monologues and narrated texts carry a very important meaning in an anecdote. These brilliantly reveal the most characteristic peculiarities of the genre – a short, concentrated dialogue, monologue or message elaborated to the minimum reveals personal characteristics and social realias attributed to the animals, which in reality characterize people and their mutual relations. Whereas a fairy tale’s plot contains more elaborated elements, anecdotes consist of separate compositional elements (only dialogue or monologue, or any expressive figure of repetition, etc.). Also, whereas in fairy tales the number of the plot elements is mainly constant, in the Latgalian animal anecdotes they can be variable and incomplete. As far as the compositional peculiarities of anecdotes are concerned, we can also talk about elements of verbal and nonverbal communication, which in particular cases can become a prerequisite for the creation of a comic pathos. A particular part assigns the following structure to the compositional models of the Latgalian and Latvian animal anecdotes: - components of fairy tale motives, i.e. images, compositional stages, as well as types of texts and models included into the motives, - models of structures of the anecdotes – combinations of message elements and positions of verbal and nonverbal communication. Taking into consideration that the Latgalian animal anecdotes in terms of an understanding of the motives and the organization of the structural elements show little or no difference from the Latvian anecdotes – their structure is virtually identical to the Latvian zoomorphic anecdotes – it is safe to consider the Latgalian animal anecdotes as an ethnic version of international zoomorphic anecdotes.

Background. The contemporary choral art has accumulated many bright samples, which present various performing directions and genres. Particularly interesting are those that include the traits traditionally not inherent to the choral performance. We will consider some of the requirements for the performance of choral music, put forward by the composers of the twentieth century, in particular, representatives of the new Viennese school and the Italian avant-garde, as well as the performance conditions, which require the tendency to adaptation for the stage of choral works and the improvisational component of musical thinking today. The need for such analysis is connected with vocal-performing training of contemporary choirmasters. The choral collective is a complex musical organism, and its successful work depends not only on the conductor, but also on the performers, therefore, there is a question of improving the complex development of the vocal-technical skills of the choirmaster, taking into account the specifics of his/her future activities. Methods. The scientific and methodological basis of improving the performing skills must be deepened in the issues of the psychology of performance and expanded with the questions of combining the choral performance with theatre. Due to such a methodological basis, it is possible to study extremely complex psychological processes of artistically meaningful vocal intonation, formation, control and implementation of performing skills, peculiarities of the psychological state of the choir performers, etc. The article is based on the analysis of materials on the development of the choral performance in various artistic directions and their synthesis (Kyrylenko, Ya., 2017; Ryzhynsky, A. 2015, 2016; Saponov, M., 1982), as well as the study of psychophysiological regularities of the vocal education in different performance conditions (Lukishko, A. 1984; Morozov, V., 2008, Selezneva, N., 2005). Objectives. The purpose of the article is to consider the performance tasks in the contemporary choral art and to outline the factors that shape the skills for the implementation of these tasks. Results. The analysis of the development of the vocal-choral art proves that vocal-technical means are defined and formed in unity with the performing tasks that characterize certain musical trends, styles or genres. Throughout the 20th century, in the choral art appears the works that became the result of the composers’ search for new versions of the timbre sound. The representatives of the new Viennese school A. Schoenberg and A. Webern were the first to overcome the timbre “conservatism” of the choir. In the choral creative activities by A. Schoenberg, the experiments with the use of timbre can be found. Namely, the use of expressiveness of the unison of the alt and tenor and the falsetto singing of the tenor, which provided for the alignment of the timbre and corrected dynamic misbalance of the artificial ensemble of tenor and soprano. However, the further introduction of falsetto singing was no longer a technical necessity, but became a means of a new expressiveness. The experiments are typical for the choral creativity by A. Webern, where the following two tendencies are clearly distinguished: 1) the jump-like structure of the melody in combination with syllabics; 2) the presence of pauses, which divide the motive into separate intonations. The purpose of the texture transformation was to uncover a fundamentally new sound of the choir, the creation of a new choral timbre. A. Webern achieves the timbre richness through a constant game with various nuances, strokes, and juxtaposition of the singing registers. The Italian composers L. Nono (1924–1990), B. Maderna (1920–1973) and L. Berio (1925–2003) became the followers of Webern’s creative experiments with regard to the organization of sound, the texture of the composition and timbres. In their creative work, they showed the possibility of an organic combination of centuries-old traditions of the vocal art with the latest composition techniques. In the modern choral art, a great interest is paid to theatrical actions during the choral performance. Hence, the new performing tasks rise for both, the conductor and performers of the choir. So, in the dramatized choral performance, a personality of an actor-singer is characterized by a certain complex of skills. The latter include ownership of different types of expressive intonation: vocal intonation, the verbal intonation and the acting intonation or the intonation of the gesture. The choral performer’s instrument is a singing voice. The vocal development of choral singers bases on the objective laws of the singing, the basis for understanding of which is the positions of musical acoustics. The choirmasters need to know, which acoustic patterns influence the formation of the singing voice in the choir, which of its properties develop automatically, and which require special techniques that stimulate an individual development. Another important aspect on which it is necessary to focus attention in the modern vocal education is the improvisational thinking, the ability to creative ingenuity. The tasks of the modern choral art are the preservation, the development, and sometimes the revival of the traditions of improvisational vocal-ensemble music. The solutions of these tasks one should look for in several directions. The first of them is the preservation of the traditions of Western European professional polyphonic (counterpoint) music, which is determined by the highest level of combination of the canonically invariable melody, of the cult or secular, with improvisational melodic decorations. The second is due to the preserving the traditions of collective vocal improvisation in folk singing cultures. The third direction is due to performance tasks, which are provided by the composers’ creativity of contemporary authors. Conclusion. The contemporary choirmaster needs to have a wide range of knowledge in the questions of history and theory of the world music, choral science, vocal pedagogy, acting skills, psychology, without which it is impossible to solve numerous issues that constantly arise in practice. The choirmaster must develop a critical and analytical thinking in him/her, be able to judge right the work of his/her mind and be thoughtful in the actions. The creative approach in work contributes to the flexibility in solving any problems – perhaps, it allows to abandon the usual techniques in work, which at the present moment do not produce the desired results. Practice is the only criterion for the truth of the selected actions.

Background. The modern science reconsiders various conceptions, which were influencing the theory and practice of musical art over the centuries. Particularly, there is much talk today about the fact that marking of female opera roles as “coloratura” according to the principle of their technical complexity and diapason wideness is quite nominal and not connected directly with singing voices’ gradation. Gradually entrenched tendency of denial of the female voice’s definition as “coloratura” has developed, and it is based on the argument that this characteristic reflects parameters of composer’s objectives rather than the voice’s nature. Probably, that’s why there are works in repertoire of certain female vocalists (for instance, Maria Callas and contemporary Canadian singer Natalie Choquette), which are usually performed by owners of “different” voices. However one cannot deny the fact that certain opera roles are composed specifically for coloratura soprano, despite the fact that indications of it are missing in manuscripts. N. Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera heritage is exponential in this connection; the destination of particular female roles for coloratura soprano is unquestionable – Snow Maiden, Marfa, Volkhova, Tsaritsa of Shemakha, etc. And though this roles are performed by female vocalists of various voices in today’s theatrical practice, it seems to us that voice’s characteristics have principal significant for appropriate implementation of author’s conception. Objectives. Thus, the purpose of the study is to identify the significance of the voice’s particularity factor as a carrier of a certain imagery in the composer’s conception and in the performer embodiments of opera parts (separated opera arias). Methods. The methodological basis of the study is the unity of scientific approaches, among which the most important is a functional one, associated with the analysis of the genre as a typical structure. Results. The Gogol’s plot became the basis of several operas, the most famous of which are “Cherevichki” (“The Little Shoes”) by P. Tchaikovsky and “Noch’ pered Rozhdestvom” (“Christmas Eve”) by N. Rimsky Korsakov. The comparison of this two works clearly shows the fundamental difference in composers’ conceptions. In P. Tchaikovsky’s interpretation the lyrical line is extracted from the literary primary source. But for N. Rimsky Korsakov the comparison of the real and fantastic world becomes the main thing in this opera. Therefore the role of Vakula is written quite schematically, but Oksana’s image is interesting developed, it is presented in progress – from carefree girl to loving woman. This progress is obvious when comparing Oksana’s Arias from Act I and Act IV. The Aria from Act I is a peculiar synthesis of national and Italian singing traditions, a prime example of entrance aria (di sortita), which presents the character’s portrayal and comprises such basic components as slow introduction and episodes demonstrating technical possibilities of the voice. Oriental intonations, which are specific for composer’s vocal works, coupled with coloraturas, give the impression that Oksana is “not from this world”. According to lots of researchers, the whole N. Rimsky Korsakov’s opera “metacycle” is an artistic integrity united by a generic idea that defined the unity of approach to implementing of “type” (including female) characters. The intonational canvas of every particular role (the choice of so-called intonational complexes – “a cold” or “a warm”) is determined by character’s affiliation with natural or fairy-tale locus. Oksana’s portrayal for N. Rimsky Korsakov has been ambivalent. On the one hand, she doesn’t relate to “another world” like Snow Maiden or Volkhova; on the other hand – Oksana is a fairy-tale character. Therefore composer uses partly the same strokes in the development of the portrayal as for female fairy-tale characters. However, the formation of this character’s personality is revealed through the transformation of “cold” (fairy-tail) intonational complex to “warm” (“alive”). Two performances of the first Oksana’s Aria are briefly reviewed as an example: the concert performance by Gohar Gasparyan, an Armenian lyrical coloratura soprano (1924–2007), and a recording from the Inessa Prosalovskaya’s CD “Arias from operas”, the Russian lyrical dramatic soprano (born in 1947). G. Gasparyan’s idea was to present the portrayal of a young girl of the people. Therefore the singer levels virtuosic components of music material as much as possible, and a coloring of her voice, for which it was easy to sing the second A sharp above middle C, emphasizes lyrical hints of Oksana’s Aria. Also the significant textual cuts becomes one of important parameters of creation of a “gentle” young girl’s portrayal; they not only transform the expanded aria into the form, which is close to a song in scale, but also significantly reduce specifically those snippets, in which technical difficulties are concentrated. Version by I. Prosalovskaya presents another interpretation, original sound of which is largely due to the singer’s timbre of voice. Its deepness, expressivity and completion absolutely modify personal characteristics of the N. Rimsky-Korsakov’s character. Therefore we observe not a young girl already, but a woman – passionate and confident. Thus, it could be concluded that timbre color’s specificity of the voice of female opera singer has a significant impact on features of the character that she embodies. It is obvious that this specificity determines all the parameters of the performer’s version of the composer’s work (both a separate aria and the opera as a whole). A more detailed study of the relationship between the voice timbre and the semantic and compositional decisions characterizing an individual performer style seems to us a promising direction for further research.

The characteristic features of I. Kavaleridze’s drama is considered in the article. It is noted that there are signs of the artist’s individuality, attraction to expressionist forms, artistic techniques characteristic for the art of sculpture: symbolism, monumentality, hyperbole. I. Kavaleridze was well versed in the drama laws, understood the specifics of the stage events construction, had a large arsenal of literary means, thanks to which the characters’ monologues and dialogues were extremely expressive and colorful. In his work, he implemented original solutions that were ahead of time. Therefore, many of the artist’s ideas and achievements received due recognition only after his death. I. Kavaleridze’s creative heritage covers a wide range of both purely artistic and general philosophical problems. Among them the formation of the era of modernism and its features in the Ukrainian art of the early XX century, the impact of revolutionary ideas on the work of the 1920s, the role of spiritual leaders of the Ukrainian people T. Shevchenko and G. Skovoroda in the formation of national consciousness, political and ideological pressure on figurative art language and the formation of a socialist-realist canon, etc. The analysis of the productions of I. Kavalerizde’s plays “The First Furrow” and “Gregory and Paraskeva” on the stage of the Mykhailo Shchepkin Sumy Theater of Drama and Musical Comedy in 1970-1972. The article notes that these plays were staged in Sumy for the first time in the history of Ukrainian theater. The premiere of “The First Furrow” (the play was called “Old Men”) took place on March 19, 1970. The figure of the national genius Hryhoriy Skov oroda was als o embodied for the first time on t he stage in Sumy in th e play “Hryhoriy and Paraskeva”. It premiered on October 21, 1972. I. Rybchynsky, Honored Artist of the USSR, performed the production. Creating generalized historical outlines of people’s life, features of life at that time, depicting psychological portraits of people in various, sometimes-dramatic collisions, in the productions of I. Kavaleridze’s plays on the Sumy stage the emphasis was on universal values such as virtue, love. The main character was the Ukrainian people, who nurtured such large-scale historical figures, gave them strength and wisdom for great achievements. Based on publications in periodicals of that time, memoirs of Ukrainian directors, the peculiarities of the director’s interpretation, stenographic and musical design of these plays on the Sumy stage are considered. Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of acting works in I. Kavaleridze’s plays. In particular, the peculiarities of the actor’s embodiment of the image of the national genius Hryhoriy Skovoroda on the stage are presented. It is noted that I. Kavaleridze’s plays, created in a difficult political, social and ideological context, are rightly considered to be highly artistic works of Ukrainian drama. Their staging was carried out on various theatrical stages, including Mykhailo Shchepkin Sumy Theater of Drama and Musical Comedy is an important page of national theatrical art.

Artikkel annab ülevaate 20. sajandi alguse kirjandusliku avangardi suhetest tehnikaga. Avangardi (eriti futurismi) jaoks pidi tehnika saama loomise eeskujuks ja masinate seadused esteetilise loovuse seadusteks. Artikkel väidab, et paljud avangardi tekstiuuenduslikud ideaalid on vastuolus tehnika ideaalidega ja iseloomustavad ennekõike loodust. Tehnika väärtustas tulemust, avangard protsessi. Tehnika väärtustas süsteemsust, ennustatavust, koopialisust, avangard vabarütme, ennustamatust ja originaalsust. Tehnika nõudis ratsionaalsust ja eesmärgipärast tegutsemist, avangard kuulutas intuitsiooni ja prohvetlikku kujutlust. Tehnika tõi odavad masstooted, avangard hindas haruldust. Tehnika väärtustas funktsionaalsust, avangard ebafunktsionaalsust. Tehnika väärtustas puhtust ja hügieeni, avangard järgis inetuse esteetikat. Tehnika nõudis tootmises vigade ja häirete vältimist, avangard tõstis vea loovaks ideeks. The article examines the relationship between the early twentieth century international and Estonian literary avant-garde and new technology, which radically changed life and interpersonal relationships in Europe and America (trains, airplanes, metro, telephone, telegraph, skyscrapers, fast food, etc.). At first, I highlight general features connecting the new technology and its products, which emerged in distinct opposition to nature. The central activity in the world of technology appeared to be efficient, planned, and purposeful production, in which the main agents were engineer, designer, and worker. The new technology emphasized the value of the product, which rapidly became standardized and cheaply made mass-produced perfect copies of each other. The beauty of the new era was to be a technological, functionalist beauty. Production as a process had to operate without failures and the ideal product had to be without any defects. Therefore, the technological process had to be clean, even hygienic. The new technology established its own rhythm in modern cities, characterized by repeatability and predictability. At the same time, the technology covered cities by the voices that made up the noise of technology. It could be said, even, that the new technology exceeded the limits of time and space. The result was a world of simultaneity. At the same time, relationships and links between people became increasingly loose and the world and man’s worldview was characterized by increasing fragmentation. The early European avant-garde at the beginning of the twentieth century greeted the new world of technology and speed with great enthusiasm (Italian futurism, constructivism, etc.). Perhaps only early expressionism and Russian futurism had even more ambivalent attitude to the technology. The First World War significantly decreased the pre-war fascination with technology. The war destroyed the faith in the machines; the machine now became a destroyer, and the new mechanical man (a fusion of man and machine) came into view as a killer with killed soul. At the same time, modern technology became more and more common in the everyday life, and, hence, the attitude towards technology changed. The technology became a harrowing phenomenon. For early European avant-garde, the new technology was supposed to become a model for the creation and laws of machines laws of aesthetic creativity (Marinetti). We can find several features in the texts of avant-garde (especially in poetry), which are in accordance with the new world of speed and technology. Simultaneous and fragmented text represented simultaneity and fragmentarity of the world. The speed was intermediated by the telegram style, parataxis, glossolalia, onomatopoeia, mathematical symbols, etc. The artist’s ideal was engineer and machine had to become a model for making the text. I present examples of such new texts in Estonian avant-garde poetry and prose. However, much of the avant-garde ideas and ideals for textual innovation contradicted the ideals of technology. Whilst technology predominantly esteemed the result, the avant-garde valued the process of making the text. In addition, the world of technology expected systematics, predictability, repetitive rhythms, and copies while avant-garde proclaimed free rhythms, free verse, unpredictability, and originality. Technology insisted on rational and purposeful acting; avant-garde proclaimed intuition and prophetic imagination. Technology brought cheap mass products; avant-garde appreciated the rarity and expensiveness. Technology promoted utilitarianism and functionality; avant-garde non-functionality. Technology put stress on the cleanliness and hygiene of the products; avant-garde often followed the aesthetics of ugliness. Technology required efficiency and economy of production, avoiding mistakes and disturbances; avant-garde regarded error as a creative idea. I argue that many of these avant-garde ideas are very similar to nature. For example, chaos, illogicality, glossolalia, words-in-freedom, and zaum truly characterize nature. Originality, variability, unpredictable rhythms, non-systematicity are also the qualities of nature. Lack of purpose, irrationality, and lack of thought are features of nature. An error or a shift as the basis of creation and inefficiency characterizes nature, too. The aesthetics of ugliness parallels the ugliness of nature. Thus, the observance of the avant-garde ideals results in a text that, on the one hand, craves the world of technology and machines, but on the other hand goes back to the ideas and ideals of nature and seeks solutions largely in the same way as nature.

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.

Рассматривается актуальный вопрос современного литературного образования – поиск, разработка и апробация деятельностных форм освоения поэтики художественного текста. Обозначены сложившиеся методические подходы к изучению художественного пространства на уроках литературы, описан потенциал образовательного квеста, основные этапы реализации квеста как образовательной технологии. Представлены авторский квест, созданный по материалам творчества В. Набокова, ход и итоги участия в нем обучающихся разного уровня подготовленности (студентов-филологов первого курса и десятиклассников негуманитарного профиля подготовки). Апробация показала, что процесс прохождения квеста обеспечивает погружение участников в художественный мир романа В. Набокова «Машенька», способствует структуризации представлений не только о художественном пространстве, но и о поэтике произведения в целом (сюжетная логика, динамика образа персонажа и пр.). Важно, что постижение структуры художественного пространства и авторской концепции произведения через квест происходит в сжатый временной период. The article deals with a topical question of modern literary studies – research, development and approbation of the active forms of mastering the fiction poetics. The article indicates the existing methods of the artistic creations in literature classes, describes the prospects of the educational quest and the main stages of realization of the quest as an educational technology. The article represents the quest based on the creative works by Vladimir Nabokov, the process and results of its testing on participants with different levels of knowledge (freshmen philologists and high school students). In understanding the methodological principles of working with space in the lessons of literature, we rely on the works of E. I. Korostileva, Yu. G. Pykhtina, S. V. Kashirina, A. K. Gaisina, Yu. G. Pykhina, O. I. Fedotov. When developing the quest, three methodological grounds were taken into account. 1. The use of analytical types of tasks. 2. Reliance on the literary tradition of the study of artistic space. 3. Literary analysis should precede the methodical development of the quest. Approbation showed that the process of passing the quest makes the participants deep into the creative world of the novel “Mashenka” by V. Nabokov and helps with structuring not only artistic creation but also the fiction poetics in general (plot logic, dynamics of the character development, etc.). The comprehension of the fictional structure and the author’s concept of work through the quest is achieved in a rather short period.

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 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.

"Literary translation is a form of artistic creation ...", that is why translation is an extremely difficult task.The aim of our paper is to consider the Georgian translations of Ivan Krylov's fables, to compare two different translations of the same fable.We have selected Iv. Krylov's fable "Dragonfly and Ant" and his two Georgian translations, Akaki Tsereteli and Raphael Eristavi. The following research method is used in the paper: Contrastive - comparative analysis of the original text and its translation.Akaki Tsereteli translated and rewrote Krylov 152 fables. Krylov was translated by Ioseb Grishashvili, Konstantine Chichinadze, Alexander Abasheli, Grigol Tsetskhladze, Davit Gachechiladze, V. Gorgadze and etc. We have focused on two completely different translations of Krylov's fable ("The Dragonfly and the Ant"): Akaki Tsereteli and Raphael Eristavi.Two Georgian writers translated this truly amazing work by Ivan Krylov. Akaki Tsereteli and Raphael Eristavi selected different ways of translation.The translation of Raphael Eristavi is as close as possible to the original text: with word order, with a carefully translated vocabulary, with an almost accurate translation of the phraseologies, with a sequence of the predicate.Akaki Tsereteli has slightly adapted Krylov's fable, the writer presents an almost independent work and, at the same time, it is a brilliant translation.Phraseologisms and metaphors are used in both translations, both translations are brilliantly executed. But we still prefer Tsereteli's translation because of its script, melody, and drawing.We think that our research-comparison will contribute to the study of Krylov's work, in general, the translation of fables will be useful.

Kultuuripärandi säilimine kultuurimälus, selle osalus kultuuriidentiteedi väärtustamises ja kultuuri kestlikkuse tagamises sõltub tema meelespidamise viisidest. Tänapäeval on nendeks viisideks transmeedialisus ja digitaalne lugemine. Pärandi vahendajatena ilmuvad raamatute kõrvale digitaalsed platvormid. Nende eesmärk on ühtlasi kultiveerida uusi kirjaoskusi, mis ei põhine üksnes verbaalsel emakeelel, sest kultuuris osalemine eeldab üha enam ka pildiliste ja helilis-pildiliste märgisüsteemide valdamist nii tõlgendamises kui eneseväljenduses. Artikkel põhineb TÜ transmeedia uurimisrühma kogemusel (humanitaar)hariduslike platvormide loomisel, tuues selle pinnalt välja mõned digitaalses keskkonnas eriti selgelt esile tulevad kultuurisemiootilised printsiibid. Traditionally, books have been considered as one of the most valuable elements of culture (Kroó 2019, Torop 2019). Mediating unique literary/artistic texts, they also appear as models of culture. The book as a model of culture represents readiness to understand culture as a whole and the same attitude is echoed within the digital book. The changes that digitalization has brought along do not concern merely shifts in formats or new types of texts. From the perspective of cultural heritage, new ways of communicating with literary texts and changes in reading practices matter most. Hereby we suggest that digital reading is reading, watching and listening a conceptualized whole on a platform, where primary and secondary texts (and/or their fragments), interpretations, intersemiotic translations and instructions for users exist together. This conceptual whole has a transmedial nature. Digital educational platforms may both undermine and facilitate accessibility of education as a common good. However, in the situation of the deluge of digital information, delimiting and systematizing information for educational needs is desperately needed and digital platforms offer a solution. Together with the Transmedia Research Group working at the department of semiotics at the University of Tartu, we have been developing the platform Education on Screen (Haridus Ekraanil) for secondary school students to help cultivate both cultural and digital literacies. In the present article we give an overview of the cultural semiotic principles that have been governing our work and that we suggest are especially relevant in the digital cultural space. The digital environment allows to overcome spatial limitations of the pre-digital media and highlight the heterogeneity and fluidity of literary experience. Providing almost unlimited storage capacities, it also brings into question the principles of selection and organization of the material, raising new theoretical problems for textual analysis, from the unit for textual analysis to the boundary between text and context etc (Bolin 2010, 74). We propose the distinction between crossmediality and transmediality as a methodological starting point. The crossmedia aspect hereby refers to the way the publishing of a literary text is increasingly accompanied by other (online) texts that together make up a relatively coordinated whole. In most cases these are compressed and fragmentary versions of the core text such as book trailers, book covers featuring a still frame from a cinematic adaptation, social media profiles etc. Thus, the crossmedia aspect consists in a pragmatic communicative strategy directed towards the receiver and the target text. The transmedia aspect concerns the spontaneous pulverisation of a text into a diversity of texts in different media. The spontaneity refers to the relative unpredictability of the artistic language of the authors of these new texts, which can appear over a very long period of time as we have seen in the continuing adaptations of canonical texts. This is in contrast with the coordinated manner in which most crossmedia texts enter culture over a much more limited time frame. Another distinction between the two is that the transmedia process is dominated by the source text as the individual parts are not coordinated mutually. Printed book represents the holistic dimension of culture by offering the possibility of complementing the core text with forewords, illustrations, comments etc. Digital book uses the same possibilities in a more dynamic manner, because its multimodality is much richer and audio, audiovisual as well as other modes can be integrated into the whole in an organic manner. While both printed book and digital book are still based on one core text, then digital platform allows for the synthesis of divergence and convergence and creation of a conceptual whole on the basis of a series of fragments and interpretations. Such transmedial whole reflects the value of the canonic literary text in culture and at the same time allows for the experience of analysis of its intersemiotic and multimodal interpretations.

I first met with the enigmatic Dutch artist-couple, Zoot and Genant, in the Summer of 2000. We talked about their performances as part of the collective Artporn and their later work as a duo. Zoot and Genant combine the best of Amsterdam hippie culture with advanced technological networking. As good Dutch citizens, they intervene in global media debates with bodily performances and a harsh critique of consumerist sex industries. A uniquely burlesque quality pervades their work, as their performances take on dreamy and raw forms. Performance modes are invented ‘from the bottom up’ with performances such as Oysterbarpiece (1995) and Anal Restaurant (1996) translating clever concepts into physically bawdy gestures. In Anal Restaurant, a naked performer is tied to a platform, his/her bottom stuffed with mashed potatoes, and the mixture released into the gallery when the fastly rotating platform is abruptly brought to a halt. In Oysterbarpiece, Genant asks participants to suck oysters from between her legs. She stands on her head with legs wide open and ‘gazes back’ at the participant by taking his/her picture with a camera. By assuming this position, she wants to make audiences aware of their voyeuristic role by ‘reversing their gaze’, as she argues that every voyeur is a sexual being to somebody’s else’s gazing eye. Reversing the gaze means opening up new and uncensored spaces of eroticism – as they write in the Irotic Manifesto: “The historically situated gaze is turned upside down and no longer do we stare into a void. We create many more spaces than are actually allowed … You may enter space with a certain literary baggage, the handcuffs of Sacher-Masoch welded to the wonders of Rabelais” (Artporn). Theories of erotic space are tested in community spaces where special attention is paid to the strong grip of commodified sex regimes on the audience. Zoot and Genant circulate their own sexual energy as ‘art’, distributing it to audiences who react sometimes with their own heightened energy and sometimes half-paralyzed. Zoot explains that the difference between live performances and mediated performances is enormous, as live performances are short-lived and cannot conceal the performer’s body or his/her state of excitement. They opted for an extended internet performance with Fucking Retreat 8x8x72. For this, they held an‘artist retreat’ in the Amsterdam Gallery De Praktijk and demonstrated their sexual intercourse by means of a webcam. Going back to a Taoist ritual, they fucked eight times a day for eight days in a row, with 72 thrusts on each particular occasion and an attempt not to reach orgasm. With this extremely popular web action, they reached a high/height in media activism, as the loving couple became the medium itself, and they were able to manipulate cameras and stream their digital images to hordes of sexually conditioned net viewers. Philosopher Cees Maris signals the performance as ‘post-revolutionary’ as the couple represent the integration of both monogamy and polymorphous perversity in contemporary society. Libidot: Did you want to hold a ‘sexual think-tank’ with Fucking Retreat 8x8x72 and distribute it as free porn on the Internet? Genant: 8x8x72 was an abstraction-exercise in making love within our relationship. It was a performance where we were sealed inside a gallery and used a webcam to enable viewers to participate in the concept of the experiment. But we never intended to distribute ‘pornographic’ images. For many years we have separated the realm of pleasure from that of pornography. We wanted people to participate in the abstract experiment itself, the result of which only we, as performers, could feel in our bodies. Zoot: What we did was an everyday action – fucking – stretched out over a manipulated time-line. As performers it was a challenge to play with the time-line and make it more complex because, on the actual stage, the interaction with the audience is short-lived and intense. It was a very complex experience for me, to engage in such an extremely intimate action in front of a webcam, making love to Genant. A maximum viewing public was created by the computer and cameras, which were also acting as a filter between ourselves and the audience. This filter gave us the possibility of reaching a high level of intimacy and softness, together with lots of laughter – just the way we ourselves are. But it took a while before we figured that out. Once we loosened up and incorporated the technology of ‘streaming’ into the performance, I became aware of the relationship with the public and all the machine-buttons we could manipulate. That is very different from reality television or commercial porn sites, where the machines are owned and steered by a company. The entire complex of autonomous media activism made a big impression on me. We actually accomplished one of our long-time artistic goals, that is, to become the medium itself and to be completely autonomous. Genet: The technological distribution of ‘live’ events has become essential after 9/11. We used machinery welded to physical effort to offer the viewer many options, including going through our web archives. It is momentarily frightening to perform such actions, to do actions in front of a camera using autonomous media. Libidot: You are wary of the Internet’s sexual energy, as you write in your announcement: “Zoot and Genant laugh at those who are excessively sexualized by Internet, they hover above the hypererotic nausea of gazing eyes and digital drifters, performing cyber-squatting amidst digital slavery of cybersexual commodification”. How did your own sexual energy transfer to remote viewers? Zoot: In the first instance the performance was food for the average voyeuristic web user, as the strength of his/her unconscious pornographic desire was nurtured by recognizable movements. Sex is, indeed, the lubricant of the Internet. But the images we delivered to the Internet were of a different nature and, hopefully, caused a mutation in the subconscious pornographic gaze of the viewer. Lots of pleasing reactions resonated in the city. I believe that people started experimenting themselves. I heard from ‘real’ men that they found it hard to believe that we fucked 64 times in 8 days. Why are people looking for quantity rather than quality? In order to be really effective one would have to get feedback from all of those people, but it was hard for us to plough through the endless piles of ‘chat-diarrhea’ in the chatroom. Libidot: Bianca Stigter’s review in NRC Handelsblad indicates that webcams documenting ‘everydayness’ have flooded the Internet and that your work is in line with this trend: “Their webcam is in tune with all the other webcams on the Internet that give access to life here and there, everywhere. In a zoo in Singapore a monkey is eating an apple. Tourists in Times Square are crossing the road. In the Lauriergracht in Amsterdam, two people are fucking” (Stigter). Would it be possible for your performance to be perceived as part of an expanding webcam ‘amateur porn’ industry? Genant: We do not want to add anything to the porn industry. Ours was an art experiment, a physical performance around the subject of physical love. I don’t think that lions in Artis Zoo or whales in Oahu are fucking in a similar series, but our performances do reach similar mass audiences to the Tour de France or American football. Of course we got a big kick when the statistics revealed that we were visited by viewers from 48 countries, including Easter Island. Just the idea that on Easter Island, on the other side of the globe, Rapa Nui in winter time, people were watching a performance in an Amsterdam gallery and chatting with somebody from Japan about the difference between an imagined performance and the actual event: that was a big ‘opening’ for us. Libidot: How does Taoist ritual affect your actual relationship and your sex life? Genant: Taoism is about making a commitment to a partner, cutting through random animal attractions and irritations. Artificial seduction rituals fall apart after a couple of days. In our performance, there was no extended foreplay or afterplay, just an abstention of climax. Before the climax dissipated, our bodies recharged with energy and returned to remembering moments of enjoyment, each time a little more quickly. I got an energy charge from top to toe and by the time I wanted to surrender and come completely, my bodily cells had been exposed to a routine pattern. Abstention then is like a coitus interruptus, a spectacular thing to feel from a partner whom you love. The numbers 8 and 64 are magical. I felt the symbolism of an alchemical wedding as we tuned into the mantra of a fully controlled electronic network. It felt like deafening energy, rather than lust or an act of procreation. The effect of this was very rewarding and, afterwards, we lingered in a state of creative sexual energy for a week. When we arrived home we were free to do whatever we wanted and let the holy juices flow. We realized love was a blessing. We made love day after day and gave energy to each other, as if we were in love for the first time. Sweet monogamic love, we embraced and worshipped her. (Interview translated into English by Katrien Jacobs) Works Cited Artporn. Irotic Manifesto. Unpublished document, 5 Stigter, Bianca. “Een Hobby als Vissen”. NRC Handelsblad, 5 July 2002 (author’s own translation) Stigter, Bianca. “Een Hobby als Vissen, NRC Handelsblad, 5 July 2002 (author’s own translation) To order Zoot and Genant’s 8x8x72 Fucking Retreat on CD-Rom, look for their artist profile on http://www.depraktijk.nl Zoot and Genant can be contacted at zootengenant@newyork.com Links mailto:zootengenant@newyork.com http://www.depraktijk.nl Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style (a.k.a Libidot), Katrien Jacobs. "‘Streaming Physical Love’" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/streamingphysicallove.php>. APA Style (a.k.a Libidot), K. J., (2002, Nov 20). ‘Streaming Physical Love’. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/streamingphysicallove.html

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.

Literary history can be viewed alternately in a perspective of continuities or discontinuities. In the former perspective, what I perversely call postmodernism is simply an extension of modernism [which is], as everyone knows, a development of symbolism, which … is itself a specialisation of romanticismand who is there to say that the romantic concept of man does not find its origin in the great European Enlightenment? Etc. In the latter perspective, however, continuities [which are] maintained on a certain level of narrative abstraction (i.e., history [or aesthetic description]) are resisted in the interests of the quiddity and discreteness of art, the space that each work or action creates around itself. – Ihab Hassan Ihab Hassan’s words, published in 1975, continue to resonate today. How should we approach art? Can an artwork ever really fully be described by its critical review, or does its description only lead to an ever multiplying succession of terms? Michel Foucault spoke of the construction of modern sexuality as being seen as the hidden, irresolvable “truth” of our subjectivity, as that secret which we must constantly speak about, and hence as an “incitement to discourse” (Foucault, History of Sexuality). Since the Romantic period, the appreciation of aesthetics has been tied to the subjectivity of the individual and to the degree an art work appeals to the individual’s sense of self: to one’s personal refinement, emotions and so on. Art might be considered part of the truth of our subjectivity which we seem to be endlessly talking about – without, however, actually ever resolving the issue of what a great art work really is (anymore than we have resolved the issue of what natural sexuality is). It is not my aim to explicate the relationship between art and sex but to re-inject a strategic understanding of discourse, as Foucault understood it, back into commonplace, contemporary aesthetic criticism. The problems in rendering into words subjective, emotional experiences and formal aesthetic criteria continue to dog criticism today. The chief hindrances to contemporary criticism remain such institutional factors as the economic function of newspapers. Given their primary function as tools for the selling of advertising space, newspapers are inherently unsuited to sustaining detailed, informed dialogue on any topic – be it international politics or aesthetics. As it is, reviews remain short, quickly written pieces squeezed into already overloaded arts pages. This does not prevent skilled, caring writers and their editorial supporters from ensuring that fine reviews are published. In the meantime, we muddle through as best we can. I argue that criticism, like art, should operate self-consciously as an incitement to discourse, to engagement, and so to further discussion, poetry, et cetera. The possibility of an endless recession of theoretical terms and subjective responses should not dissuade us. Rather, one should provisionally accept the instrumentality of aesthetic discourse provided one is able always to bear in mind the nominalism which is required to prevent the description of art from becoming an instrument of repression. This is to say, aesthetic criticism is clearly authored in order to demonstrate something: to argue a point, to make a fruitful comparison, and so on. This does not mean that criticism should be composed so as to dictate aesthetic taste to the reader. Instead, it should act as an invitation to further responses – much as the art work itself does. Foucault has described discourse – language, terminologies, metaphorical conceits and those logical and poetic structures which underpin them – as a form of technology (Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge and History of Sexuality). Different discursive forces arise in response to different cultural needs and contexts, including, indeed, those formulated not only by artists, but also by reviewers. As Hassan intimates, what is or is not “postmodernism”, for example, depends less on the art work itself – it is less a matter of an art work’s specific “quiddity” and its internal qualities – but is, rather, fundamentally dependent upon what one is trying to say about the piece. If one is trying to describe something novel in a work, something which relates it to a series of new or unusual forms which have become dominant within society since World War Two, then the term “postmodernism” most usefully applies. This, then, would entail breaking down the “the space that each work … creates around itself” in order to emphasise horizontal “continuities”. If, on the other hand, the critic wishes to describe the work from the perspective of historical developments, so as to trace the common features of various art works across a genealogical pattern running from Romanticism to the present day, one must de-emphasise the quiddity of the work in favour of vertical continuities. In both cases, however, the identification of common themes across various art works so as to aid in the description of wider historical or aesthetic conditions requires a certain “abstraction” of the qualities of the aesthetic works in question. The “postmodernism”, or any other quality, of a single art work thus remains in the eye of the beholder. No art work is definitively “postmodern” as such. It is only “postmodern” inasmuch as this description aids one in understanding a certain aspect of the piece and its relationship to other objects of analysis. In short, the more either an art work or its critical review elides full descriptive explication, the more useful reflections which might be voiced in its wake. What then is the instrumental purpose of the arts review as a genre of writing? For liberal humanist critics such as Matthew Arnold, F.R. Leavis and Harold Bloom, the role of the critic is straight forward and authoritative. Great art is said to be imbued with the spirit of humanity; with the very essence of our common subjectivity itself. Critics in this mode seek the truth of art and once it has been found, they generally construct it as unified, cohesive and of great value to all of humanity. The authors of the various avant-garde manifestoes which arose in Europe from the fin de siècle period onwards significantly complicated this ideal of universal value by arguing that such aesthetic values were necessarily abstract and so were not immediately visible within the content of the work per se. Such values were rather often present in the art work’s form and expression. Surrealism, Futurism, Supremacism, the Bauhaus and the other movements were founded upon the contention that these avant-garde art works revealed fundamental truths about the essence of human subjectivity: the imperious power of the dream at the heart of our emotional and psychic life, the geometric principles of colour and shape which provide the language for all experience of the sublime, and so on. The critic was still obliged to identify greatness and to isolate and disseminate those pieces of art which revealed the hidden truth of our shared human experience. Few influential art movements did not, in fact, have a chief theoretician to promote their ideals to the world, be it Ezra Pound and Leavis as the explicators of the works of T.S. Eliot, Martin Esslin for Beckett, or the artist her or himself, such as choreographers Martha Graham or Merce Cunningham, both of whom described in considerable detail their own methodologies to various scribes. The great challenge presented in the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Hassan and others, however, is to abandon such a sense of universal aesthetic and philosophical value. Like their fellow travellers within the New Left and soixante huit-ièmes (the agitators and cultural critics of 1968 Paris), these critics contend that the idea of a universal human subjectivity is problematic at best, if not a discursive fiction, which has been used to justify repression, colonialism, the unequal institutional hierarchies of bourgeois democratic systems, and so on. Art does not therefore speak of universal human truths. It is rather – like aesthetic criticism itself – a discursive product whose value should be considered instrumentally. The kind of a critical relationship which I am proposing here might provisionally be classified as discursive or archaeological criticism (in the Foucauldian sense of tracing discursive relationships and their distribution within any given cross-section or strata of cultural life). The role of the critic in such a situation is not one of acknowledging great art. Rather, the critic’s function becomes highly strategic, with interpretations and opinions regarding art works acting as invitations to engagement, consideration and, hence, also to rejection. From the point of view of the audience, too, the critic’s role is one of utility. If a critical description prompts useful, interesting or pleasurable reflections in the reader, then the review has been effective. If it has not, it has no role to play. The response to criticism thus becomes as subjective as the response to the art work itself. Similarly, just as Marcel Duchamp’s act of inverting a urinal and calling it art showed that anyone could be an artist provided they adopted a suitably creative vision of the objects which surrounded them, so anyone and everyone is a legitimate critic of any art work addressed to him or her as an audience. The institutional power accorded to critics by merit of the publications to which they are attached should not obfuscate the fact that anyone has the moral right to venture a critical judgement. It is not actually logically possible to be “right” or “wrong” in attributing qualities to an art work (although I have had artists assert the contrary to me). I like noise art, for example, and find much to stimulate my intellect and my affect in the chaotic feedback characteristic of the work of Merzbow and others. Many others however simply find such sounds to constitute unpleasant noise. Neither commentator is “right”. Both views co-exist. What is important is how these ideas are expressed, what propositions are marshalled to support either position, and how internally cohesive are the arguments supplied by supporters of either proposition. The merit of any particular critical intervention is therefore strictly formal or expressive, lying in its rhetorical construction, rather than in the subjective content of the criticism itself, per se. Clearly, such discursive criticism is of little value in describing works devised according to either an unequivocally liberal humanist or modernist avant-garde perspective. Aesthetic criticism authored in this spirit will not identify the universal, timeless truths of the work, nor will it act as an authoritative barometer of aesthetic value. By the same token though, a recognition of pluralism and instrumentality does not necessarily entail the rejection of categories of value altogether. Such a technique of aesthetic analysis functions primarily in the realm of superficial discursive qualities and formal features, rather than subterranean essences. It is in this sense both anti-Romantic and anti-Platonic. Discursive analysis has its own categories of truth and evaluation. Similarities between works, influences amongst artists and generic or affective precedents become the primary objects of analysis. Such a form of criticism is, in this sense, directly in accord with a similarly self-reflexive, historicised approach to art making itself. Where artists are consciously seeking to engage with their predecessors or peers, to find ways of situating their own work through the development of ideas visible in other cultural objects and historic aesthetic works, then the creation of art becomes itself a form of practical criticism or praxis. The distinction between criticism and its object is, therefore, one of formal expression, not one of nature or essence. Both practices engage with similar materials through a process of reflection (Marshall, “Vertigo”). Having described in philosophical and critical terms what constitutes an unfettered, democratic and strategic model of discursive criticism, it is perhaps useful to close with a more pragmatic description of how I myself attempt to proceed in authoring such criticism and, so, offer at least one possible (and, by definition, subjective) model for discursive criticism. Given that discursive analysis itself developed out of linguistic theory and Saussure’s discussion of the structural nature of signification, it is no surprise that the primary methodology underlying discursive analysis remains that of semiotics: namely how systems of representation and meaning mutually reinforce and support each other, and how they fail to do so. As a critic viewing an art work, it is, therefore, always my first goal to attempt to identify what it is that the artist appears to be trying to do in mounting a production. Is the art work intended as a cultural critique, a political protest, an avant-garde statement, a work of pure escapism, or some other kind of project – and hence one which can be judged according to the generic forms and values associated with such a style in comparison with those by other artists who work in this field? Having determined or intuited this, several related but nominally distinct critical reflections follow. Firstly, how effectively is this intent underpinning the art work achieved, how internally consistent are the tools, forms and themes utilised within the production, and do the affective and historic resonances evoked by the materials employed therein cohere into a logical (or a deliberately fragmented) whole? Secondly, how valid or aesthetically interesting is such a project in the first place, irrespective of whether it was successfully achieved or not? In short, how does the artist’s work compare with its own apparent generic rules, precedents and peers, and is the idea behind the work a contextually valid one or not? The questions of value which inevitably come into these judgements must be weighed according to explicit arguments regarding context, history and genre. It is the discursive transparency of the critique which enables readers to mentally contest the author. Implicitly transcendental models of universal emotional or aesthetic responses should not be invoked. Works of art should, therefore, be judged according to their own manifest terms, and, so, according to the values which appear to govern the relationships which organise materials within the art work. They should also, however, be viewed from a position definitively outside the work, placing the overall concept and its implicit, underlying theses within the context of other precedents, cultural values, political considerations and so on. In other words, one should attempt to heed Hassan’s caution that all art works may be seen both from the perspective of historico-genealogical continuities, as well as according to their own unique, self-defining characteristics and intentions. At the same time, the critical framework of the review itself – while remaining potentially dense and complex – should be as apparent to the reader as possible. The kind of criticism which I author is, therefore, based on a combination of art-historical, generic and socio-cultural comparisons. Critics are clearly able to elaborate more parallels between various artistic and cultural activities than many of their peers in the audience simply because it is the profession of the former to be as familiar with as wide a range of art-historical, cultural and political materials as is possible. This does not, however, make the opinions of the critic “correct”, it merely makes them more potentially dense. Other audiences nevertheless make their own connections, while spectators remain free to state that the particular parallels identified by the critic were not, to their minds, as significant as the critic would contend. The quantity of knowledge from which the critic can select does not verify the accuracy of his or her observations. It rather enables the potential richness of the description. In short, it is high time critics gave up all pretensions to closing off discourse by describing aesthetic works. On the contrary, arts reviewing, like arts production itself, should be seen as an invitation to further discourse, as a gift offered to those who might want it, rather than a Leavisite or Bloom-esque bludgeon to instruct the insensitive masses as to what is supposed to subjectively enlighten and uplift them. It is this sense of engagement – between critic, artist and audience – which provides the truly poetic quality to arts criticism, allowing readers to think creatively in their own right through their own interaction with a collaborative process of rumination on aesthetics and culture. In this way, artists, audiences and critics come to occupy the same terrain, exchanging views and constructing a community of shared ideas, debate and ever-multiplying discursive forms. Ideally, written criticism would come to occupy the same level of authority as an argument between an audience member and a critic at the bar following the staging of a production. I admit myself that even my best written compositions rarely achieve the level of playful interaction which such an environment often provokes. I nevertheless continue to strive for such a form of discursive exchange and bibulous poetry. References Apollonio, Umbro, ed. Futurist Manifestos. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973. Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1903-27, published as 2 series. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. by Annette Lavers. London: Vintage, 1993. Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead, 1998. Benjamin, Walter. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Trans. by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Harcourt, 1978. Breton, André. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Trans. by Richard Seaver and Helen Lane. Ann Arbor: Michigan UP, 1972. Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909-1962. London: Faber, 1963. Esslin, Martin. Theatre of the Absurd. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. by A.M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock, 1972. ———. The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. by Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1990. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin, 1992. Graham, Martha. Blood Memory. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Hassan, Ihab. “Joyce, Beckett and the Postmodern Imagination.” Triquarterly 32.4 (1975): 192ff. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Dominant of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-92. Leavis, F.R. F.R. Leavis: Essays and Documents. Eds. Ian MacKillop and Richard Storer. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. Malevich, Kazimir. In Penny Guggenheim, ed. Art of This Century – Drawings – Photographs – Sculpture – Collages. New York: Art Aid, 1942. Marshall, Jonathan. “Documents in Australian Postmodern Dance: Two Interviews with Lucy Guerin,” in Adrian Kiernander, ed. Dance and Physical Theatre, special edition of Australasian Drama Studies 41 (October 2002): 102-33. ———. “Operatic Tradition and Ambivalence in Chamber Made Opera’s Recital (Chesworth, Horton, Noonan),” in Keith Gallasch and Laura Ginters, eds. Music Theatre in Australia, special edition of Australasian Drama Studies 45 (October 2004): 72-96. ———. “Vertigo: Between the Word and the Act,” Independent Performance Forums, series of essays commissioned by Not Yet It’s Difficult theatre company and published in RealTime Australia 35 (2000): 10. Merzbow. Venereology. Audio recording. USA: Relapse, 1994. Richards, Alison, Geoffrey Milne, et al., eds. Pearls before Swine: Australian Theatre Criticism, special edition of Meajin 53.3 (Spring 1994). Tzara, Tristan. Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries. Trans. by Barbara Wright. London: Calder, 1992. Vaughan, David. Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. Ed. Melissa Harris. New York: Aperture, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Marshall, Jonathan. "Inciting Reflection: A Short Manifesto for and Introduction to the Discursive Reviewing of the Arts." M/C Journal 8.5 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/08-marshall.php>. APA Style Marshall, J. (Oct. 2005) "Inciting Reflection: A Short Manifesto for and Introduction to the Discursive Reviewing of the Arts," M/C Journal, 8(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/08-marshall.php>.

Introduction The construction of meaning is specifically denoted by texts that are created and published by the mass media. To highlight how that meaning is constructed, we might take a communication research approach which then enables us to understand how mass media texts impact society. To undertake such an approach it is useful to reflect on two methods outlined by Adoni and Mane who suggest there are two communication research methodologies. “The first focuses on the social construction of reality as an important aspect of the relationship between culture and society. The second approach concentrates on the social construction of reality as one type of media effect.” (Adoni and Mane 323). Relying on Adoni and Mane’s second communication research approach and combining this with the practice of remix, we can begin to understand how practitioners construct a reality from the mass audience perspective and not the mass media’s construction. This aligns with the approach taken by the ABC Pool remix practitioners in that they are informed by the mass media’s construction of meaning, yet oppose their understanding of the text as the basis for their altered construction of meaning. The oppositional reading of the media text also aligns with Hall’s encoding/decoding theory, specifically the oppositional reading where audiences resist the dominant or preferred reading of the text (Long & Wall). If we align Deuze’s (Media Work) thinking to mass media that suggests we live in media as opposed to with media, the effects of the construction of reality have a major impact on how we construct our own lives. Until recently, that media and consequent meaning has been constructed by the mass media and broadcast into our living rooms, headphones, billboards and other public spaces where media resides. The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and the affordances these information and communication technologies provide for the audience to talk back in new and innovative ways has challenged that traditional model of meaning construction. Now, instead of the mass media designing and disseminating meaning through our media consumption channels, the audience also has an opportunity to participate in this consumption and production process (Bruns; Jenkins; Shirky). “Remix means to take cultural artifacts and combine and manipulate them into new kinds of creative blends,” according to (Knobel & Lankshear 22) where Lessig argues that digital remix is writing on a mass cultural practice scale (Remix). Remix within this paper is considered a practice that takes the affordances of the technology and couples that with the creative ability of the artists to create socially constructed meanings through new and inventive methods. In considering socially constructed meaning, it is useful to reflect on media dependency theory, which suggests the amount of subjective reality depends on direct experience with various phenomena and the exposure to the media in relation to those phenomena (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur). “According to the media dependency hypothesis, the degree of media contribution to the individual's construction of subjective reality is a function of one's direct experience with various phenomena and consequent dependence on the media for information about these phenomena” (Adoni and Mane 324). Remix requires a parent piece of media (the original meaning) to create a remixed child (the re-constructed meaning). There is a clear dependency relationship between the parent and child pieces of media in this arrangement, which realistically shapes how the child will be created. If this material is published in a non-institutional environment, the artist is more or less free to demonstrate what ever meaning they wish to express. However when this practice emerges from within an institutional environment, this raises concerns of the media production, namely is the media institution challenging the original meaning they placed on certain texts and are they endorsing the new socially constructed meaning provided by remix artists? Constructing new forms of meaning and challenging the preferred meaning of institutionally generated texts intrinsically connects remix to the act of online activism. Activism can be defined as “people and organisations that work to promote social or political changes” for the benefit of society (Jones 1). Scholars have noted the significance of online technologies to aid in the mobilisation of mass groups of individuals in protest. In light of the recent Arab Spring uprisings, González-Bailón et al. note “the number of events connecting social media with social unrest has multiplied, not only in the context of authoritarian regimes exemplified by the recent wave of upsurges across the Arab world but also in western liberal democracies, particularly in the aftermath of the financial crisis and changes to welfare policies” (para 1). Although the majority of work that is remixed on ABC Pool is not related to an authoritarian regime, it is representative of the frustrations many citizens have towards the inequality of distribution of wealth and power to a few privileged individuals. Remix as an online activism activity also explicitly demonstrates Hall’s oppositional reading of encoded texts. This paper will use media dependency theory as a lens to investigate how remix occurs outside of the institution to challenge the meanings created by authorities within the institutional setting, while challenging the mass media approach towards social discourse construction. To do this, the paper will focus on the case study of one remix artist, Main$treaM, who was an active participant within the institutional online community, ABC Pool. ABC Pool was a user created content space that ceased to operate during May 2013 from within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The Pool project enabled users to publish their audio, video, photography and writing on a platform that was developed and resourced by the ABC. ABC Pool was open to everyone and was governed by the same editorial policies that regulated all media and activities across the ABC in relation to the ABC Charter (ABC Act 1983). ABC Pool also operated under a Creative Commons licensing regime which enabled media to flow across platforms, for example the Internet, radio and television, while providing attribution to the original author (generally under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license). Main$treaM was one active user that engaged in remix to pursue his creative direction but to also challenge the meanings of texts that had been created by the mass media. Max Prophet$ equals Ca$h for Comments Main$treaM had been active in Pool for several months when he began publishing his remixed works. His approach towards media and its production is especially important as his technique involved challenging the societal discourse that is accepted from traditional forms of media production and reappropriating them to reflect how an audience would reconstruct them, from their Deuzian lived in experience. Main$treaM can also be classified as an oppositional reader of text in regards to how he decodes the meaning within the message (Hall). His online activist approach is obvious in his self-described profile. Main$treaM’s profile on ABC Pool says: Making animations, music & loads of max prophet$ However, his profile on Discogs (Discogs is one of the largest online music databases, where users can contribute music information and data while locating collectables within the global marketplace) reveals the artist’s creative and political perspectives: Main$treaM started off wanting to piss people off. He loathed the studio recording industry professionals & Sound Production Mass Media Culture in general. How could it be that a TV Camera can record what you say in the street, then edit it into something YOU DID NOT SAY but take a little news sample off the TV & bam: "WE WILL SUE YOU" These days it makes me sick that hard breaks & media cut ups are trendy. Not sick enough to actually stop. Main$treaM’s approach is one that challenges the stereotypical rhetoric tropes of the mass media and is concerned with choosing a remix style that aligns with the media dependency theory. That is, he draws on the one perspective which is garnered by the traditional media figureheads and applies his lived in experience with those same societal discourses to provide a significantly different meaning (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur). The tool he uses to operationalise this is the art of remix by taking multiple cultural artefacts to create new creative blends (Knobel & Lankshear). John Laws is a radio celebrity who has dominated the Australian media landscape for decades with his at times controversial ‘shock jock’ talk back radio program. He is right wing in his political alignment and has at times been the centre of controversial programming efforts that has riled Australian audiences, which also involved input from Australian media authorities. His political alignment coupled with his disregard for audience sensitivities makes Laws an ideal character for an activist remix artist such as Main$treaM to target. Main$treaM had taken comments that Laws had made, placed them out of context and remixed them to deliberately misrepresent Laws’s opinion. One track in particular, Max Prophet$, is a reaction to the controversial Cash for Comments scandal (Johnson). In this case, John Laws was accused of receiving remuneration from Toyota to endorse their products on his radio program without acknowledging this activity as advertising. Main$treaM, through one of his ABC Pool contributions Max Prophet$, selected various comments that Laws had made during his radio broadcasts, and remixed them in a format that had John Laws say he was indeed receiving large amounts of money from Toyota. His remix, in the tradition of Pauline Pantsdown, took Laws’s comments and connected them to say “That really is a terrific vehicle that Hilux Workmate, great name too isn’t it”, highlighting a clear endorsement of the Toyota product by the radio presenter. However, Main$treaM did not stop at proving his point with this one remix contribution. He also provided in addition to the Max Prophet$ contribution, many other controversial social commentary works, including Cock Cheek parts One and Two, Prickseye Picture of You and I, and Ca$h for Comment$. Each contribution focussed on a particular character trait that Laws had become known for, such as inviting input from his listeners and then hanging up on them when they provided commentary that was contrary to his opinion. “Did I call you or did you call me” was Main$treaM’s method of whimsically suggesting that Laws is a rude, right wing conservative. The public opinion within Australia of John Laws is split between support from the conservatives and disdain from the liberals. Main$treaM was attempting to provide a voice from within the liberal perspective that illuminates the public opinion of Laws. The public opinion of Laws is one cultural discourse that is difficult to define, and almost impossible to publish to the broader public. Remix, as Lessig suggests, provides the most suitable genre of mass cultural practice to interrogate both perspectives of someone as controversial as Laws, where ABC Pool provides the most suitable platform to publish remixed societal perspectives on contemporary controversial issues. However, as outlined earlier, ABC Pool is contained within the same regulatory framework as any other publication space of the ABC. Essentially by publishing this controversial work on an ABC platform is blurring the boundaries between the ABC providing a place to publish the material and the ABC endorsing the material. ABC Pool operated under a reactive mode of moderation which suggests that content can be published without any form of moderation but if it were flagged as inappropriate by another user or audience member it had to be investigated by the ABC Pool team. Main$treaM’s contemporary material contained confronting concepts, language and techniques and was flagged as inappropriate by an anonymous Pool user during 2011. In this instance, it becomes clear that remix within an institutional setting is a complicated activity to facilitate. By providing a Creative Commons licensing regime, the ABC Pool project is endorsing remix as an institutional activity, and given the ethos of ABC Pool to experiment with new and innovative ways of engaging the audience, remix is crucial to its operation. However given the complaints of the other users that Main$treaM’s material was inappropriate, the problem arose of how to manage contentious remix activity. Aligning with Jenkins’s convergent cultures and Bruns’s produsage theories which incorporates the audience into the production process, the ABC Pool project was required to promote remix as a suitable activity for its users. Remix as an online activist activity in turn attracted the societal dissent approach from remix artists, providing a problem of adhering to the rules and regulations of the ABC more broadly. In the immediacy of the complaint, a large proportion of Main$treaM’s material was temporarily unpublished from ABC Pool until the team could provide a suitable solution on how to solve the tensions. The Legal Consultation Process In an instance such as this, an ABC employee is required to consult the editorial policy people to seek their advice on the most appropriate approach on the problematic material. The ABC Editorial Policies representatives referenced the material in the then Section 9 of the Editorial Policies, which relates to user-generated content. After the consultation process, they could see no breach of the guidelines; however, given the obscene constitution of the material, they suggested the Pool team refer the material to ABC Legal, a process in the ABC known as ‘referring up’. ABC Legal had a team of media lawyers interrogate the material from a criminal law perspective. It is worth noting, in both departments, Legal and Editorial Policies, there was support for Main$treaM’s creative expression (Fieldnotes, 2011). However, both parties were approaching the material and acting in a risk management capacity to protect the integrity of the ABC brand. After receiving the approval of the editorial policy people, the ABC Pool team had to seek the advice from ABC Legal. After two weeks of investigation, ABC Legal returned the following recommendations for the Pool team: Ultimately, risk management is the deciding factor to determine if the material should be published or not, supported by a solid defense should the case go to court.There are three areas to be considered with Main$treaM’s content:CopyrightDefamatoryObscenityIn regards to copyright, it is OK to publish in this case because the works are covered by parody or satire as the pieces have a focussed angle, or subject (John Laws).Defamation is more complicated. Firstly, we have to establish if the usual person could identify the defamed person. If yes, we need to establish what imputations there are, i.e. homophobic tendencies, pedophilia, etc. For each imputation, we need to establish if there is a defense. Typical defenses are honest opinion, expressed as one’s view, or truth. Honest Opinion needs to have a base to relate it to and not just a rant – i.e. John Laws was caught in the Cash for Comments scandal but there is no evidence to suggest he is a pedophile (unless the artists knows a truth – which becomes complicated again).Obscenity comes under classification, and since Pool does not have a rating system in place, we cannot offer this as a way to avoid publishing. A standard example of this relates to a younger audience member having the same access to an obscene piece of content (as guided by Pool’s Guidelines Section 4.1 a and b).These rules are premised by how do I read it/hear it. This is how a jury of citizens will approach the same piece of content. Risk management is also present when we ask how will John Laws hear about it, and what will the community think about it.(Fieldnotes, 2011) The suggestions the legal team returned are significant in highlighting the position of a media institution that facilitates remix. What is relevant here is a public service media organisation is a specific type of media organisation that is responsible for facilitating increased citizenry through its activities (Cunningham). Martin builds on the work of Jacka and Hartley to highlight how the ABC should be encouraging ‘DIY citizenry’. She says the combination of the core Reithian values of educate, inform and entertain can be combined with new media technologies that enable a “semiotic self determination model” to construct a “national semiosis model” (Hartley 161). However, there is a clear misalignment between the values of the PSM and the remix artist. What was required was the presence of a cultural intermediary to assist in calibrating those values and engaging in a negotiation phase between the two stakeholders. A cultural intermediary is a human or non-human actor that is located between the production and consumption of cultural artifacts and aids in facilitating the negotiation space between different expertise disciplines. In this case, it was the role of the community manager to attempt to connect the two approaches and enable remix practice to continue under the auspices of the ABC. The ABC had shifted its approach towards some of the Main$treaM material, but given its regulatory framework was unable to facilitate all of his contributions. Unfortunately in this case, Main$treaM did not align with the requirements of the ABC, left the Pool community and did not continue his practice of remix within the ABC any further. Conclusion Remixed texts that are published on PSM platforms demonstrate high levels of dependency on existing mass media texts, aligning them with the approach of the media dependency theory (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur). Remixed texts are also cultural products of artists that live in media and not with media, as noted by Deuze (Media Industries, Work and Life) and are the result of mass cultural practice that manipulates the meaning of multiple cultural artefacts (Lessig). Remix as a form of online activism is also representative of Hall’s oppositional reading of texts which enable the practitioner to deepen their involvement within the social construction of reality (Adoni & Mane). Convergence cultures represent the audience’s ever-increasing desire to participate in the production of media and not merely consume it (Jenkins). The theoretical alignment of remix with these theories suggests remixed texts have a deeper and richer cultural representation than that of its institutionally produced parent text. However, collaboratively produced cultural artefacts via remix are problematised by the digital divide debate, specifically through the access of tools and knowledge for this practice. Lin terms this problem as ‘techno-elite’ where only certain individuals have access and knowledge and tools to engage in these types of cultural activities facilitated by PSM. Further, Carpentier challenges this type of participation by asking if we have access and can interact, are we really participating in a democratising activity, given the promises of online activism? Given that PSM is pursuing the concept of the audience as user, which positions the audience as a producer of content across online environments, facilitating the practice of remix should align with its core values to inform, educate and entertain (Martin). However as we have seen with the Main$treaM case, this is problematic when attempting to align the focus of a remix artist with that of PSM. In these instances the work of the cultural intermediary as the disciplinary expertise negotiator becomes critical to increase the societal representation within the production and consumption of cultural artefacts produced through the activity of remix. A public service broadcaster that is supportive of both institutionally produced texts, along with socially informed text production through remix, will be a rigorous media organisation that supports a better informed citizenry, or as Hartley suggests a self determined national semiosis model. References Adoni, Hanna, and Sherrill Mane. "Media and the Social Construction of Reality: Toward and Integration of Theory and Research." Communication Research 11.3 (1984): 323-40. Ball-Rokeach, Sandra, and DeFluer, Melvin. "A Dependency Model of Mass Media Effects." Communication Research 3 (1976): 3-21. Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Carpentier, Nico. "The Concept of Participation. If They Have Access and Interact, Do They Really Participate?" Communication Management Quarterly 21 (2011): 13-36. Cunningham, Stuart. Hidden Innovation: Policy, Industry and the Creative Sector. Creative Economy and Innovation Culture. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2013. Deuze, Mark. Media Work. London: Polity Press, 2007. Deuze, Mark. "Media Industries, Work and Life." European Journal of Communication 24 (2009): 467. Enli, Gunn Sara. "Redefining Public Service Broadcasting." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14.1 (2008): 105 - 20. González-Bailón, Sandra, et al. "The Dynamics of Protest Recruitment through an Online Network." Scientific Reports 1.197 (2011). Hall, Stuart. Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Council of Europe Colloquy on "Training In The Critical Reading of Television Language". 1973. Hartley, John. "Communicative Democracy in a Redactional Society: The Future of Journalism Studies." Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 1.1 (2001): 39-48. Jacka, Liz. "'Good Democracy': The Role of Public Service Broadcasting." The Centre for Culture and History (2001). 2 Feb. 2013 < http://www.cmchnyu.org/pdfs/jacka.pdf >. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture - Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Johnson, Rob. Cash for Comment: The Seduction of Journo Culture. Media.Culture Series. Sydney: Pluto Press, 2000. Jones, Christopher. "Activism or Slacktivism? The Role of Social Media in Effecting Social Change." Research Paper. School of Engineering and Applied Science: University of Virginia, 2013. Knobel, Michele, and Colin Lankshear. "Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52.1 (2008): 22-33. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin, 2008. Lin, Yu-Wei. "The Emergence of the Techno-Elite Audience and Free/Open Source Content: A Case Study on Bbc Backstage." Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 9.2 (2012): 597-613. Long, Paul, and Tim Wall. "Investigating Audiences: What Do People Do with Media?" Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. Eds. P. Long et al. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2009. 240-72. Martin, Fiona. "Beyond Public Service Broadcasting? ABC Online and the User/Citizen." Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture 35.1 (2002): 42-62. Rosen, Jay. "The People Formerly Known as the Audience." Pressthink: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine (2006). 2 Feb. 2013 < http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/apr/25/bbc.broadcasting >. Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organising without Organisations. New York: Allen Lane, 2008.

Complex systems are an invention of the universe. It is not at all clear that science has an a priori primacy claim to the study of complex systems. (Galanter 5) Introduction In popular dialogues, describing a system as “complex” is often the point of resignation, inferring that the system cannot be sufficiently described, predicted nor managed. Transport networks, management infrastructure and supply chain logistics are all often described in this way. In socio-cultural terms “complex” is used to describe those humanistic systems that are “intricate, involved, complicated, dynamic, multi-dimensional, interconnected systems [such as] transnational citizenship, communities, identities, multiple belongings, overlapping geographies and competing histories” (Cahir & James). Academic dialogues have begun to explore the collective behaviors of complex systems to define a complex system specifically as an adaptive one; i.e. a system that demonstrates ‘self organising’ principles and ‘emergent’ properties. Based upon the key principles of interaction and emergence in relation to adaptive and self organising systems in cultural artifacts and processes, this paper will argue that complex systems are cultural systems. By introducing generic principles of complex systems, and looking at the exploration of such principles in art, design and media research, this paper argues that a science of cultural systems as part of complex systems theory is the post modern science for the digital age. Furthermore, that such a science was predicated by post structuralism and has been manifest in art, design and media practice since the late 1960s. Complex Systems Theory Complexity theory grew out of systems theory, an holistic approach to analysis that views whole systems based upon the links and interactions between the component parts and their relationship to each other and the environment within they exists. This stands in stark contrast to conventional science which is based upon Descartes’s reductionism, where the aim is to analyse systems by reducing something to its component parts (Wilson 3). As systems thinking is concerned with relationships more than elements, it proposes that in complex systems, small catalysts can cause large changes and that a change in one area of a system can adversely affect another area of the system. As is apparent, systems theory is a way of thinking rather than a specific set of rules, and similarly there is no single unified Theory of Complexity, but several different theories have arisen from the natural sciences, mathematics and computing. As such, the study of complex systems is very interdisciplinary and encompasses more than one theoretical framework. Whilst key ideas of complexity theory developed through artificial intelligence and robotics research, other important contributions came from thermodynamics, biology, sociology, physics, economics and law. In her volume for the Elsevier Advanced Management Series, “Complex Systems and Evolutionary Perspectives on Organisations”, Eve Mitleton-Kelly describes a comprehensive overview of this evolution as five main areas of research: complex adaptive systems dissipative structures autopoiesis (non-equilibrium) social systems chaos theory path dependence Here, Mitleton-Kelly points out that relatively little work has been done on developing a specific theory of complex social systems, despite much interest in complexity and its application to management (Mitleton-Kelly 4). To this end, she goes on to define the term “complex evolving system” as more appropriate to the field than ‘complex adaptive system’ and suggests that the term “complex behaviour” is thus more useful in social contexts (Mitleton-Kelly). For our purpose here, “complex systems” will be the general term used to describe those systems that are diverse and made up of multiple interdependent elements, that are often ‘adaptive’, in that they have the capacity to change and learn from events. This is in itself both ‘evolutionary’ and ‘behavioural’ and can be understood as emerging from the interaction of autonomous agents – especially people. Some generic principles of complex systems defined by Mitleton Kelly that are of concern here are: self-organisation emergence interdependence feedback space of possibilities co-evolving creation of new order Whilst the behaviours of complex systems clearly do not fall into our conventional top down perception of management and production, anticipating such behaviours is becoming more and more essential for products, processes and policies. For example, compare the traditional top down model of news generation, distribution and consumption to the “emerging media eco-system” (Bowman and Willis 14). Figure 1 (Bowman & Willis 10) Figure 2 (Bowman & Willis 12) To the traditional news organisations, such a “democratization of production” (McLuhan 230) has been a huge cause for concern. The agencies once solely responsible for the representation of reality are now lost in a global miasma of competing perspectives. Can we anticipate and account for complex behaviours? Eve Mitleton Kelly states that “if organisations are understood as complex evolving systems co-evolving as part of a social ‘ecosystem’, then that changed perspective changes ways of acting and relating which lead to a different way of working. Thus, management strategy changes, and our organizational design paradigms evolve as new types of relationships and ways of working provide the conditions for the emergence of new organisational forms” (Mitleton-Kelly 6). Complexity in Design It is thus through design practice and processes that discovering methods for anticipating complex systems behaviours seem most possible. The Embracing Complexity in Design (ECiD) research programme, is a contemporary interdisciplinary research cluster consisting of academics and designers from architectural engineering, robotics, geography, digital media, sustainable design, and computing aiming to explore the possibility of trans disciplinary principles of complexity in design. Over arching this work is the conviction that design can be seen as model for complex systems researchers motivated by applying complexity science in particular domains. Key areas in which design and complexity interact have been established by this research cluster. Most immediately, many designed products and systems are inherently complex to design in the ordinary sense. For example, when designing vehicles, architecture, microchips designers need to understand complex dynamic processes used to fabricate and manufacture products and systems. The social and economic context of design is also complex, from market economics and legal regulation to social trends and mass culture. The process of designing can also involve complex social dynamics, with many people processing and exchanging complex heterogeneous information over complex human and communication networks, in the context of many changing constraints. Current key research questions are: how can the methods of complex systems science inform designers? how can design inform research into complex systems? Whilst ECiD acknowledges that to answer such questions effectively the theoretical and methodological relations between complexity science and design need further exploration and enquiry, there are no reliable precedents for such an activity across the sciences and the arts in general. Indeed, even in areas where a convergence of humanities methodology with scientific practice might seem to be most pertinent, most examples are few and far between. In his paper “Post Structuralism, Hypertext & the World Wide Web”, Luke Tredennick states that “despite the concentration of post-structuralism on text and texts, the study of information has largely failed to exploit post-structuralist theory” (Tredennick 5). Yet it is surely in the convergence of art and design with computation and the media that a search for practical trans-metadisciplinary methodologies might be most fruitful. It is in design for interactive media, where algorithms meet graphics, where the user can interact, adapt and amend, that self-organisation, emergence, interdependence, feedback, the space of possibilities, co-evolution and the creation of new order are embraced on a day to day basis by designers. A digitally interactive environment such as the World Wide Web, clearly demonstrates all the key aspects of a complex system. Indeed, it has already been described as a ‘complexity machine’ (Qvortup 9). It is important to remember that this ‘complexity machine’ has been designed. It is an intentional facility. It may display all the characteristics of complexity but, whilst some of its attributes are most demonstrative of self organisation and emergence, the Internet itself has not emerged spontaneously. For example, Tredinnick details the evolution of the World Wide Web through the Memex machine of Vannevar Bush, through Ted Nelsons hypertext system Xanadu to Tim Berners-Lee’s Enquire (Tredennick 3). The Internet was engineered. So, whilst we may not be able to entirely predict complex behavior, we can, and do, quite clearly design for it. When designing digitally interactive artifacts we design parameters or co ordinates to define the space within which a conceptual process will take place. We can never begin to predict precisely what those processes might become through interaction, emergence and self organisation, but we can establish conceptual parameters that guide and delineate the space of possibilities. Indeed this fact is so transparently obvious that many commentators in the humanities have been pushed to remark that interaction is merely interpretation, and so called new media is not new at all; that one interacts with a book in much the same way as a digital artifact. After all, post-structuralist theory had established the “death of the author” in the 1970s – the a priori that all cultural artifacts are open to interpretation, where all meanings must be completed by the reader. The concept of the “open work” (Eco 6) has been an established post modern concept for over 30 years and is commonly recognised as a feature of surrealist montage, poetry, the writings of James Joyce, even advertising design, where a purposive space for engagement and interpretation of a message is designated, without which the communication does not “work”. However, this concept is also most successfully employed in relation to installation art and, more recently, interactive art as a reflection of the artist’s conscious decision to leave part of a work open to interpretation and/or interaction. Art & Complex Systems One of the key projects of Embracing Complexity in Design has been to look at the relationship between art and complex systems. There is a relatively well established history of exploring art objects as complex systems in themselves that finds its origins in the systems art movement of the 1970s. In his paper “Observing ‘Systems Art’ from a Systems-Theroretical Perspective”, Francis Halsall defines systems art as “emerging in the 1960s and 1970s as a new paradigm in artistic practice … displaying an interest in the aesthetics of networks, the exploitation of new technology and New Media, unstable or de-materialised physicality, the prioritising of non-visual aspects, and an engagement (often politicised) with the institutional systems of support (such as the gallery, discourse, or the market) within which it occurs” (Halsall 7). More contemporarily, “Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970”, at Tate Modern, London, focuses upon systems artists “rejection of art’s traditional focus on the object, to wide-ranging experiments al focus on the object, to wide-ranging experiments with media that included dance, performance and…film & video” (De Salvo 3). Artists include Andy Warhol, Richard Long, Gilbert & George, Sol Lewitt, Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman. In 2002, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New York, held an international exhibition entitled “Complexity; Art & Complex Systems”, that was concerned with “art as a distinct discipline offer[ing] its own unique approache[s] and epistemic standards in the consideration of complexity” (Galanter and Levy 5), and the organisers go on to describe four ways in which artists engage the realm of complexity: presentations of natural complex phenomena that transcend conventional scientific visualisation descriptive systems which describe complex systems in an innovative and often idiosyncratic way commentary on complexity science itself technical applications of genetic algorithms, neural networks and a-life ECiD artist Julian Burton makes work that visualises how companies operate in specific relation to their approach to change and innovation. He is a strategic artist and facilitator who makes “pictures of problems to help people talk about them” (Burton). Clients include public and private sector organisations such as Barclays, Shell, Prudential, KPMG and the NHS. He is quoted as saying “Pictures are a powerful way to engage and focus a group’s attention on crucial issues and challenges, and enable them to grasp complex situations quickly. I try and create visual catalysts that capture the major themes of a workshop, meeting or strategy and re-present them in an engaging way to provoke lively conversations” (Burton). This is a simple and direct method of using art as a knowledge elicitation tool that falls into the first and second categories above. The third category is demonstrated by the ground breaking TechnoSphere, that was specifically inspired by complexity theory, landscape and artificial life. Launched in 1995 as an Arts Council funded online digital environment it was created by Jane Prophet and Gordon Selley. TechnoSphere is a virtual world, populated by artificial life forms created by users of the World Wide Web. The digital ecology of the 3D world, housed on a server, depends on the participation of an on-line public who accesses the world via the Internet. At the time of writing it has attracted over a 100,000 users who have created over a million creatures. The artistic exploration of technical applications is by default a key field for researching the convergence of trans-metadisciplinary methodologies. Troy Innocent’s lifeSigns evolves multiple digital media languages “expressed as a virtual world – through form, structure, colour, sound, motion, surface and behaviour” (Innocent). The work explores the idea of “emergent language through play – the idea that new meanings may be generated through interaction between human and digital agents”. Thus this artwork combines three areas of converging research – artificial life; computational semiotics and digital games. In his paper “What Is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory”, Philip Galanter describes all art as generative on the basis that it is created from the application of rules. Yet, as demonstrated above, what is significantly different and important about digital interactivity, as opposed to its predecessor, interpretation, is its provision of a graphical user interface (GUI) to component parts of a text such as symbol, metaphor, narrative, etc for the multiple “authors” and the multiple “readers” in a digitally interactive space of possibility. This offers us tangible, instantaneous reproduction and dissemination of interpretations of an artwork. Conclusion: Digital Interactivity – A Complex Medium Digital interaction of any sort is thus a graphic model of the complex process of communication. Here, complexity does not need deconstructing, representing nor modelling, as the aesthetics (as in apprehended by the senses) of the graphical user interface conveniently come first. Design for digital interactive media is thus design for complex adaptive systems. The theoretical and methodological relations between complexity science and design can clearly be expounded especially well through post-structuralism. The work of Barthes, Derrida & Foucault offers us the notion of all cultural artefacts as texts or systems of signs, whose meanings are not fixed but rather sustained by networks of relationships. Implemented in a digital environment post-structuralist theory is tangible complexity. Strangely, whilst Philip Galanter states that science has no necessary over reaching claim to the study of complexity, he then argues conversely that “contemporary art theory rooted in skeptical continental philosophy [reduces] art to social construction [as] postmodernism, deconstruction and critical theory [are] notoriously elusive, slippery, and overlapping terms and ideas…that in fact [are] in the business of destabilising apparently clear and universal propositions” (4). This seems to imply that for Galanter, post modern rejections of grand narratives necessarily will exclude the “new scientific paradigm” of complexity, a paradigm that he himself is looking to be universal. Whilst he cites Lyotard (6) describing both political and linguistic reasons why postmodern art celebrates plurality, denying any progress towards singular totalising views, he fails to appreciate what happens if that singular totalising view incorporates interactivity? Surely complexity is pluralistic by its very nature? In the same vein, if language for Derrida is “an unfixed system of traces and differences … regardless of the intent of the authored texts … with multiple equally legitimate meanings” (Galanter 7) then I have heard no better description of the signifiers, signifieds, connotations and denotations of digital culture. Complexity in its entirety can also be conversely understood as the impact of digital interactivity upon culture per se which has a complex causal relation in itself; Qvortups notion of a “communications event” (9) such as the Danish publication of the Mohammed cartoons falls into this category. Yet a complex causality could be traced further into cultural processes enlightening media theory; from the relationship between advertising campaigns and brand development; to the exposure and trajectory of the celebrity; describing the evolution of visual language in media cultures and informing the relationship between exposure to representation and behaviour. In digital interaction the terms art, design and media converge into a process driven, performative event that demonstrates emergence through autopoietic processes within a designated space of possibility. By insisting that all artwork is generative Galanter, like many other writers, negates the medium entirely which allows him to insist that generative art is “ideologically neutral” (Galanter 10). Generative art, like all digitally interactive artifacts are not neutral but rather ideologically plural. Thus, if one integrates Qvortups (8) delineation of medium theory and complexity theory we may have what we need; a first theory of a complex medium. Through interactive media complexity theory is the first post modern science; the first science of culture. References Bowman, Shane, and Chris Willis. We Media. 21 Sep. 2003. 9 March 2007 http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php>. Burton, Julian. “Hedron People.” 9 March 2007 http://www.hedron.com/network/assoc.php4?associate_id=14>. Cahir, Jayde, and Sarah James. “Complex: Call for Papers.” M/C Journal 9 Sep. 2006. 7 March 2007 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/journal/upcoming.php>. De Salvo, Donna, ed. Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970. London: Tate Gallery Press, 2005. Eco, Umberto. The Open Work. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1989. Galanter, Phillip, and Ellen K. Levy. Complexity: Art & Complex Systems. SDMA Gallery Guide, 2002. Galanter, Phillip. “Against Reductionism: Science, Complexity, Art & Complexity Studies.” 2003. 9 March 2007 http://isce.edu/ISCE_Group_Site/web-content/ISCE_Events/ Norwood_2002/Norwood_2002_Papers/Galanter.pdf>. Halsall, Francis. “Observing ‘Systems-Art’ from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective”. CHArt 2005. 9 March 2007 http://www.chart.ac.uk/chart2005/abstracts/halsall.htm>. Innocent, Troy. “Life Signs.” 9 March 2007 http://www.iconica.org/main.htm>. Johnson, Jeffrey. “Embracing Complexity in Design (ECiD).” 2007. 9 March 2007 http://www.complexityanddesign.net/>. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984. McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1962. Mitleton-Kelly, Eve, ed. Complex Systems and Evolutionary Perspectives on Organisations. Elsevier Advanced Management Series, 2003. Prophet, Jane. “Jane Prophet.” 9 March 2007 http://www.janeprophet.co.uk/>. Qvortup, Lars. “Understanding New Digital Media.” European Journal of Communication 21.3 (2006): 345-356. Tedinnick, Luke. “Post Structuralism, Hypertext & the World Wide Web.” Aslib 59.2 (2007): 169-186. Wilson, Edward Osborne. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: A.A. Knoff, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Cham, Karen, and Jeffrey Johnson. "Complexity Theory: A Science of Cultural Systems?." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/08-cham-johnson.php>. APA Style Cham, K., and J. Johnson. (Jun. 2007) "Complexity Theory: A Science of Cultural Systems?," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/08-cham-johnson.php>.

IntroductionOn a sunny afternoon in early spring 2014, five researchers were strolling through the streets of Old Aberdeen. They had known each other for only a few days since an event had brought them together. The event was Performance Reflexivity, Intentionality and Collaboration: A Sourcing Within Worksession, convened by anthropologist Caroline Gatt and performer Gey Pin Ang, as part of the ERC Advanced Grant project “Knowing from the Inside,” at the department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen. This workshop aimed to explore aspects of creative decision-making in performance to assess their relevance to anthropological practice. For three days, participants had engaged in intensive physical and vocal training, seeking to act in ways that felt intuitive and not forced. Five of those participants—Brian Schultis, Peter Loovers, Ragnhild Freng Dale, Valeria Lembo, and myself—unintentionally continued those explorations after the workshop.Our wanderings around the old town took us to the St Machar’s Cathedral. As we were lingering by the graveyard, Valeria took out of her bag a yarn of golden thread. This, she said, was an object of “personal relevance” that she had brought along to the workshop as a prop to work with, following Gey Pin’s instructions. Now she was unravelling it, offering one point to each of us. As we untangled the yarn, we resumed walking. Held from different points, the yarn became a web. Its threads shifted, vibrations reaching our fingertips as we moved. As we entered Seaton Park, which is adjacent to the Cathedral, the threads registered our encounters with the bumpy path, trees, wind, and passers-by as visible, tactile, and kinetic qualities. Pulls, resistances, flows, and gaps triggered a sense of “enmeshment” (Ingold, Lines 11) in a living, breathing world, something greater than ourselves.Walking Threads (henceforth WT), as we retrospectively named the experience, has since developed into a publication (Ang et al.) and a series of invitations extended to larger groups, at conferences and symposia, to walk with the golden thread (walkingthreads.wordpress.com). In our basic WT practice, the yarn is passed around. The thread unravels and we begin to move. No instruction is given to participants, in order to avoid their over-conceptualising the walk. We begin in silence in order to encourage an attitude of “listening,” that is, of opening one’s perceptual awareness to what is happening in the moment. This has not prevented participants from spontaneously using their voice at later stages of the walk, through song, recitation or the exploring of vocal sound.While WT outings are sporadic, the golden thread has continued to be part of my life in subtle ways. Since the last walk in September 2015 at the Beyond Perception symposium in Aberdeen, the thread has repeatedly come to mind. I began to pay attention to these appearances of the thread not as a material object but as a so-called “mental image.” By focusing on the image of the thread, I intentionally recalled some of its properties as a thing that connects, tangles, ties, and is untied, properties that the WT had made salient. By allowing those properties to inform my relationship with my body, the thread turned into a somatic image, a process that I describe in this paper. Thus, this paper continues the WT project’s creative explorations of bodies with threads. This time, however, the thread is not conceived of as a material object but as an image.A few words on my understanding of images are in order. Since 2006 I have been dancing and researching butoh, a dance style that originated in Japan in the post-World War II years. Butoh is a formless dance: it resists codification into a conclusive system of movement, relying on intensified proprioception—the perception of one’s own body—to sustain movement work instead. The use of verbal imagery is widespread among butoh dancers: words act as devices to evoke sensory experiences and “scaffold” (Downey) perceptual attention in order to achieve nuanced qualities of movement. The practice of butoh has informed my understanding of mental images not as merely visual but also as kinaesthetic, that is, engaging the sense of movement. This connection is hardly new; Csordas, for instance, talks of “physical” or “sensory” imagery, rather than merely visual (146–47).While I never intentionally used butoh to relate to the thread, my training and sensitivities as a butoh dancer are likely to have played a role in my relations with this object, as filtered through the WT experiences. Based on my background as a butoh dancer and “thread-walker,” the approach of this paper may be understood as one of anthropology with art: one in which the modes of observation supporting artistic and anthropological inquiries coincide (Ingold, Making 8). An artist’s engagement with materials, tools and things—including the body—is speculative, experimental and open-ended, rather than descriptive or documentary. This type of engagement can question established ways of seeing. For instance, we generally think of objects and bodies as belonging to different domains—the inanimate and the animate, the lifeless and the living. This paper questions this assumption and hypothesises that, through a particular kind of perceptual engagement, which mobilises the somatic and the imaginary simultaneously, objects and bodies can merge. An object can be embodied and, vice versa, a body can become a thing.The paper draws on autoethnographic occurrences of relating to the image of the thread, in the form of short somatic narratives, or narratives “from the body” (Farnell). Each narrative aligns the image of the thread to a particular aspect of somatic awareness: thinking, breathing, and muscle-bones. Far from claiming universal validity, these personal accounts engage a “somatic mode of attention” (Csordas 139) to venture in the potentialities of image-based thinking (Sousanis; Jackson). The exploration finds that, as the materiality of the thread retreats into the background, its image unlocks aspects of self-perception that normally escape conscious awareness (Leder). The image of the thread becomes a perceptual device that, by facilitating access to somatic awareness, reshapes relations with the world and, internally, with the body. It is in this sense that I embody the thread. Beginning with a Loose End: Spinning Thought into Thread-FormAs I begin to write this paper, I witness my thinking taking the form of a thread. It first appears as a loose end. I see it in my mind’s eye, and from a short distance. The loose end of a golden thread floating in a dark space. I cannot see how far it extends. Instead, the gaze of my imagination glides towards its surface as though attempting to grab it. Even so close, I cannot touch it. Still I can contemplate few of its qualities. I meet its reassuring continuity. A glimmer catches my attention: it is a few silver filaments inside the thread, glittering. The thought-form of the thread is a sensation of thin electric current between the temples. I sense the space between my eyes and forehead, their muscles and bones, subtly engaging. The same space begins to narrow down into a corridor. It is narrower and narrower. My thought spins itself into thread-form.In the 1980s, movement therapist Thomas Hanna defined a perspective from inside as “somatic,” that is, pertaining to soma, the ancient Greek word for “living body” (20). The somatic involves the perception of the corporeal from the inside rather than the outside: “to yourself, you are a soma. To others, you are a body. Only you can perceive yourself as a soma—no one else can do so” (20). As a first-person perspective on the body, the somatic involves attention to perceptual processes (Csordas). Yet, in daily life, self-perception is the exception rather than the norm. Being in the world is active rather than reflective (Leder). Otherwise put, being alive requires a mode of engagement that goes “forwards” rather than “in reverse” (Ingold, Making 8).Were we constantly aware of our own presence and actions, this would obstruct their unfolding (Leder 19–20). In order not to inhibit its capacity for being, the body must remain to a great extent “absent” to itself (Leder 19). Some reflective possibilities nonetheless exist. In meditation, for instance, one can attend directly to bodily processes, with aesthetic and contemplative benefits (18–19). The opening somatic narrative presented my visualising of the golden thread as such a kind of reflexive engagement. There, the activity of visualising ceased to be an orientation towards an externally conceived “object” (the thread), becoming itself the end, or object, of perception.One may ask: What kind of sensory perception is mobilised in positing the “visualising” of the thread as “object” rather than as background process? I suggest it is proprioceptively-oriented kinaesthesia or, the perception of self-movement. In this mode of perception, the activity of visualising the thread yields kinetic and spatial impressions. Visualising, that is, is perceived as a movement of attention (Sheets-Johnstone 420–22).The image of the thread, meanwhile, has suggestively merged with the activity of visualisation, in two stages. First, it has guided my attention towards an otherwise-recessive bodily process. Secondly, it has lent its form to an otherwise-indeterminate bundle of sensations. I elaborate on this latter aspect in the following section, where the next somatic narrative posits thinking as a perceptual object, in the form of the image of a web of threads.Seeing through the Veil Walking home one day I noticed some thoughts unpleasantly affecting my mood. In recognising their negative impact, I decided that I should try and detach myself from them. I imagined that the thoughts were like threads woven together. This image of interwoven thoughts developed into another image: a coherent system of thoughts, or worldview, was like a “veil” spread between my eyes and the world. I could, quite literally, “remove” the veil through an act simultaneously of proprioceptive awareness and imagination, leaving my mind uncluttered. As new thoughts rushed in to form a new veil, I could also remove these and so on. As a reminder of this experience, I jotted down these words:If the veil is made of ideasThen thinking is weaving.Sometimes I can see the veilMade of the substance ofMy thoughts.When I see it,When I see the fabricOf thought that forms it,Then it disappears.When I see itWhen I can really see the veil,It’s by a certain way of seeingWhich is in my forehead.To see that way,Really look, with yourEyes as well asWith your mindFor the mind itselfCan attune,Can look, can see through the veil.Leder writes, “insofar as I perceive through an organ, it necessarily recedes from the perceptual field it discloses. I do not smell my tissue, hear my ear, or taste my taste buds but perceive with and through such organs” (14). Similarly, in ordinary conditions, I cannot think about my own mind. To see through the veil of thoughts requires a reflexive effort. It is to attend to the act, not the content, of thinking.This form of awareness can be seen as gestural, as it calls into play the body—a certain way of seeing/which is in my forehead. It is both a stepping back from thoughts, which allows me to see them as objects (a veil), and a removing of them, as though they were tangible things.Weaving the Body into the Night: Breath and Physical Forces as KnotsThe definition of somatic in the previous section anchors it to the point of view of the perceiver. The next somatic narrative describes how, through the image of thread, the perceiving I dissipates into contiguity with the world. Following my experience of perceiving my own thoughts as a veil, I further practised “moving my thoughts” through that image. One night the image of the veil “moved me,” that is, my entire body, in turn.As I cycle back home in the light rain I sense my own presence weaving in the fabric of the night. The fresh air flowing into and out of my nostrils and lungs, my feet pressing against the pedals, pushing my body up from the saddle, my legs looping. Dynamic energy mingles with currents of air passing through my body, and shining asphalt flowing under the wheels. Rhythm, like sowing my presence onto the air. And though the road is steep, tonight cycling up the hill feels effortless. My mind is empty and alert, engaging with the fabric of reality I can see. Is this “reality” or just my imagination? It would not make much difference to me. This somatic narrative reintroduces the image of the veil on a different scale. Now I see the veil as though through a microscope: myriad intertwining threads, and I am part of it. Threads run out of my limbs and lungs: gathering and propelling, pushes and pulls, in- and out-breaths. They weave with the night’s very limbs and lungs: streets, trees, the hill, the breeze, the deep embrace of the sky.For Ingold “every living being is a line or, better, a bundle of lines” (Lines 3). Lines are the movements that living beings perform as they relate—“corresponding,” “clinging,” “tying,” and “untying” (3–7)—to other living beings and the world. Breathing also is a line: “as we breathe in and out, the air mingles with our bodily tissues, filling the lungs and oxygenating the blood” (70). Or rather, breathing is a knot: it ties the inside with the outside. “Breathing is the way in which beings can have unmediated access to one another, on the inside, while yet spilling out into the cosmos in which they are equally immersed” (67).Cycling up-hill, breathing in and out, pushing and propelling, is a weaving of my body, a bundle of lines, with the ebb and flow of the weather-world (Ingold, Lines). This image evokes an outer spatial dimension to the body, an opening. It recalls my being one of multiple people holding and walking with the thread in the WT project. As with WT, feelings of resistance, flux, and being part of something bigger emerge.The image of threads feeds into the somatic perception of body-in-action, and vice versa. Here, engaging in action and imagination are not in contradiction but imply one another. They “correspond” (Ingold, Making): it is because my actions unfold through the imaginary framework of the night as veil that they can flow as they do, sinking in perceptual tracks of extended being.Muscle-Bones as ThreadsFor anthropologist Michael Jackson, metaphors reveal the identity of domains of being that the intellect strives to keep separate, such as the cultural and the natural. “Metaphor reveals unities; it is not a figurative way of denying dualities. Metaphor reveals, not the ‘thisness of a that’ but rather that ‘this is that’” (142, emphasis in the original). Whenever a crisis occurs, which undermines the unity of being-in-the-world, metaphors can be called upon to resolve the impasse and to make people “whole” (149).The final somatic narrative is an example of how an image can restore the unity of the physical and the mental. By imbuing the visceral body with the tangible qualities of a thing, the image of the thread turns the absent body into a sentient, responsive body. This, in turn, helps to overcome the impasse created by physical pain.Lying on the floor, sinking into it. The pain has been with me for years now. When stressed or tired, it spreads through the left side of my body. I have begun imagining the pain’s epicenter as a knot inside the pelvis, between left hip and tailbone. Looking inwards, I try and see the muscular fibres enveloping my limbs, connecting top to bottom. I summon the image of the thread. I make its fibres overlap with my muscle fibres. I want the thread to be the muscles, and the muscles to be the thread. This way I can disentangle the knots and find relief. My body is a deep, dark well. Breath is the rope that takes me down. Breathing in and out creates ripples of movement. They gently undo the knot, ease the pain. In this somatic narrative, my body is, once again, a bundle of threads. This time, however, this image has an anatomical inflection. Instead of generic movements, it is my very muscles that are threads. Early modern Dutch anatomist Ruysch also described muscles as made “of many parallel threads of different lengths,” which fitted with his overall view of the human body as divine “embroidery” (van de Roemer 180–82).In the previous section, a knot was a device for binding and securing life relations to survive a world that is, by its very nature, adrift (Ingold, Lines 67). Breathing enacted one such kind of knot “tying” the inside with the outside. In contrast, now a knot is a place of stagnation, of tension, where movement does not flow as it should. Breathing triggers minute movements throughout the body, which allow me to gradually undo the knot, releasing tensions and bringing relief.ConclusionDrawing on personal experiences, this article has sought to show that corporeal relations with an object can transcend its materiality. By engaging imagination and somatic attention, the thread lived a second life within and through my body.Based on the object’s characteristics and properties, the image of the thread refashioned, albeit momentarily, my relation with my body and the world. It allowed me to fill a perceived gap between body and world, between imagining and being.Finally, in relating to “unthinkable” aspects of being—mental and physical pain—the image of the thread was beneficial and even healing. It yielded sustainable notions of the corporeal.ReferencesAng, Gey Pin, Paola Esposito, Valeria Lembo, Ragnhild Freng Dale, Caroline Gatt, Peter Loovers, and Brian Schultis. “Walking Threads.” Humans and the Environment/Walking Threads [Special Issue]. The Unfamiliar: An Anthropological Journal 5.1–2 (forthcoming, 2016). Csordas, Thomas. “Somatic Modes of Attention.” Cultural Anthropology 8.2 (1993): 135-56.Downey, Greg. “Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira Training: Physical Education and Enculturation in an Afro-Brazilian Art.” American Anthropologist 110 (2008): 204–13.Farnell, Brenda. “Moving Bodies, Acting Selves.” Annual Review of Anthropology 28 (1999): 341–73.Hanna, Thomas. Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Books, 1988.Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2013.———. The Life of Lines. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015.Jackson, Michael. Paths toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989.Leder, Drew. The Absent Body. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990.Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. The Primacy of Movement. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2011.Sousanis, Nick. Unflattening. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 2015.Van de Roemer, Gijsbert M. “From Vanitas to Veneration: The Embellishments in the Anatomical Cabinet of Frederik Ruysch.” Journal of the History of Collections 22.2 (2010): 169–86.

Introduction Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this sentiment, arguing that, "despite widespread speculation about the impact of documentaries, the topic has received relatively little systematic attention" ("Evolving"). And earlier this year, the introduction to a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on documentary film stated, "documentary film, despite its growing influence and many impacts, has mostly been overlooked by social scientists studying the media and communication" (Nisbet and Aufderheide 451). Film has been studied extensively as entertainment, as narrative, and as cultural event, but the study of film as an agent of social change is still in its infancy. This paper introduces a systematic approach to measuring the social impact of documentary film aiming to: (1) discuss the context of documentary film and its potential impact; and (2) argue for a social science approach, discussing key issues about conducting such research. Changes in Documentary Practice Documentary film has been used as a tool for promoting social change throughout its history. John Grierson, who coined the term "documentary" in 1926, believed it could be used to influence the ideas and actions of people in ways once reserved for church and school. He presented his thoughts on this emerging genre in his 1932 essay, First Principles of Documentary, saying, "We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form" (97). Richard Barsam further specified the definition of documentary, distinguishing it from non-fiction film, such that all documentaries are non-fiction films but not all non-fiction films are documentaries. He distinguishes documentary from other forms of non-fiction film (i.e. travel films, educational films, newsreels) by its purpose; it is a film with an opinion and a specific message that aims to persuade or influence the audience. And Bill Nichols writes that the definition of documentary may even expand beyond the film itself, defining it as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" (12). Documentary film has undergone many significant changes since its inception, from the heavily staged romanticism movement of the 1920s to the propagandist tradition of governments using film to persuade individuals to support national agendas to the introduction of cinéma vérité in the 1960s and historical documentary in the 1980s (cf. Barnouw). However, the recent upsurge in popularity of documentary media, combined with technological advances of internet and computers have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for film to serve as both art and agent for social change. One such opportunity is in the creation of film-based social action campaigns. Over the past decade, filmmakers have taken a more active role in promoting social change by coordinating film releases with action campaigns. Companies such as Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc., etc.) now create "specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films" (Participant Media). In addition, a new sector of "social media" consultants are now offering services, including "consultation, strategic planning for alternative distribution, website and social media development, and complete campaign management services to filmmakers to ensure the content of nonfiction media truly meets the intention for change" (Working Films). The emergence of new forms of media and technology are changing our conceptions of both documentary film and social action. Technologies such as podcasts, video blogs, internet radio, social media and network applications, and collaborative web editing "both unsettle and extend concepts and assumptions at the heart of 'documentary' as a practice and as an idea" (Ellsworth). In the past decade, we have seen new forms of documentary creation, distribution, marketing, and engagement. Likewise, film campaigns are utilizing a broad array of strategies to engage audience members, including "action kits, screening programs, educational curriculums and classes, house parties, seminars, panels" that often turn into "ongoing 'legacy' programs that are updated and revised to continue beyond the film's domestic and international theatrical, DVD and television windows" (Participant Media). This move towards multi-media documentary film is becoming not only commonplace, but expected as a part of filmmaking. NYU film professor and documentary film pioneer George Stoney recently noted, "50 percent of the documentary filmmaker's job is making the movie, and 50 percent is figuring out what its impact can be and how it can move audiences to action" (qtd. in Nisbet, "Gasland"). In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, coined the term "transmedia storytelling", which he later defined as "a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience" ("Transmedia"). When applied to documentary film, it is the elements of the "issue" raised by the film that get dispersed across these channels, coordinating, not just an entertainment experience, but a social action campaign. Dimensions of Evaluation It is not unreasonable to assume that such film campaigns, just like any policy or program, have the possibility to influence viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Measuring this impact has become increasingly important, as funders of documentary and issue-based films want look to understand the "return on investment" of films in terms of social impact so that they can compare them with other projects, including non-media, direct service projects. Although we "feel" like films make a difference to the individuals who also see them in the broader cultures in which they are embedded, measurement and empirical analysis of this impact are vitally important for both providing feedback to filmmakers and funders as well as informing future efforts attempting to leverage film for social change. This type of systematic assessment, or program evaluation, is often discussed in terms of two primary goals—formative (or process) and summative (or impact) evaluation (cf. Muraskin; Trochim and Donnelly). Formative evaluation studies program materials and activities to strengthen a program, and summative evaluation examines program outcomes. In terms of documentary film, these two goals can be described as follows: Formative Evaluation: Informing the Process As programs (broadly defined as an intentional set of activities with the aim of having some specific impact), the people who interact with them, and the cultures they are situated in are constantly changing, program development and evaluation is an ongoing learning cycle. Film campaigns, which are an intentional set of activities with the aim of impacting individual viewers and broader cultures, fit squarely within this purview. Without formulating hypotheses about the relationships between program activities and goals and then collecting and analyzing data during implementation to test them, it is difficult to learn ways to improve programs (or continue doing what works best in the most efficient manner). Attention to this process enables those involved to learn more about, not only what works, but how and why it works and even gain insights about how program outcomes may be affected by changes to resource availability, potential audiences, or infrastructure. Filmmakers are constantly learning and honing their craft and realizing the impact of their practice can help the artistic process. Often faced with tight budgets and timelines, they are forced to confront tradeoffs all the time, in the writing, production and post-production process. Understanding where they are having impact can improve their decision-making, which can help both the individual project and the overall field. Summative Evaluation: Quantifying Impacts Evaluation is used in many different fields to determine whether programs are achieving their intended goals and objectives. It became popular in the 1960s as a way of understanding the impact of the Great Society programs and has continued to grow since that time (Madaus and Stufflebeam). A recent White House memo stated that "rigorous, independent program evaluations can be a key resource in determining whether government programs are achieving their intended outcomes as well as possible and at the lowest possible cost" and the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched an initiative to increase the practice of "impact evaluations, or evaluations aimed at determining the causal effects of programs" (Orszag 1). Documentary films, like government programs, generally target a national audience, aim to serve a social purpose, and often do not provide a return on their investment. Participant Media, the most visible and arguably most successful documentary production company in the film industry, made recent headlines for its difficulty in making a profit during its seven-year history (Cieply). Owner and founder Jeff Skoll reported investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company and CEO James Berk added that the company sometimes measures success, not by profit, but by "whether Mr. Skoll could have exerted more impact simply by spending his money philanthropically" (Cieply). Because of this, documentary projects often rely on grant funding, and are starting to approach funders beyond traditional arts and media sources. "Filmmakers are finding new fiscal and non-fiscal partners, in constituencies that would not traditionally be considered—or consider themselves—media funders or partners" (BRITDOC 6). And funders increasingly expect tangible data about their return on investment. Says Luis Ubiñas, president of Ford Foundation, which recently launched the Just Films Initiative: In these times of global economic uncertainty, with increasing demand for limited philanthropic dollars, assessing our effectiveness is more important than ever. Today, staying on the frontlines of social change means gauging, with thoughtfulness and rigor, the immediate and distant outcomes of our funding. Establishing the need for evaluation is not enough—attention to methodology is also critical. Valid research methodology is a critical component of understanding around the role entertainment can play in impacting social and environmental issues. The following issues are vital to measuring impact. Defining the Project Though this may seem like an obvious step, it is essential to determine the nature of the project so one can create research questions and hypotheses based on a complete understanding of the "treatment". One organization that provides a great example of the integration of documentary film imbedded into a larger campaign or movement is Invisible Children. Founded in 2005, Invisible Children is both a media-based organization as well as an economic development NGO with the goal of raising awareness and meeting the needs of child soldiers and other youth suffering as a result of the ongoing war in northern Uganda. Although Invisible Children began as a documentary film, it has grown into a large non-profit organization with an operating budget of over $8 million and a staff of over a hundred employees and interns throughout the year as well as volunteers in all 50 states and several countries. Invisible Children programming includes films, events, fundraising campaigns, contests, social media platforms, blogs, videos, two national "tours" per year, merchandise, and even a 650-person three-day youth summit in August 2011 called The Fourth Estate. Individually, each of these components might lead to specific outcomes; collectively, they might lead to others. In order to properly assess impacts of the film "project", it is important to take all of these components into consideration and think about who they may impact and how. This informs the research questions, hypotheses, and methods used in evaluation. Film campaigns may even include partnerships with existing social movements and non-profit organizations targeting social change. The American University Center for Social Media concluded in a case study of three issue-based documentary film campaigns: Digital technologies do not replace, but are closely entwined with, longstanding on-the-ground activities of stakeholders and citizens working for social change. Projects like these forge new tools, pipelines, and circuits of circulation in a multiplatform media environment. They help to create sustainable network infrastructures for participatory public media that extend from local communities to transnational circuits and from grassroots communities to policy makers. (Abrash) Expanding the Focus of Impact beyond the Individual A recent focus has shifted the dialogue on film impact. Whiteman ("Theaters") argues that traditional metrics of film "success" tend to focus on studio economic indicators that are far more relevant to large budget films. Current efforts focused on box office receipts and audience size, the author claims, are really measures of successful film marketing or promotion, missing the mark when it comes to understanding social impact. He instead stresses the importance of developing a more comprehensive model. His "coalition model" broadens the range and types of impact of film beyond traditional metrics to include the entire filmmaking process, from production to distribution. Whiteman (“Theaters”) argues that a narrow focus on the size of the audience for a film, its box office receipts, and viewers' attitudes does not incorporate the potential reach of a documentary film. Impacts within the coalition model include both individual and policy levels. Individual impacts (with an emphasis on activist groups) include educating members, mobilizing for action, and raising group status; policy includes altering both agenda for and the substance of policy deliberations. The Fledgling Fund (Barrett and Leddy) expanded on this concept and identified five distinct impacts of documentary film campaigns. These potential impacts expand from individual viewers to groups, movements, and eventually to what they call the "ultimate goal" of social change. Each is introduced briefly below. Quality Film. The film itself can be presented as a quality film or media project, creating enjoyment or evoking emotion in the part of audiences. "By this we mean a film that has a compelling narrative that draws viewers in and can engage them in the issue and illustrate complex problems in ways that statistics cannot" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Awareness. Film can increase public awareness by bringing light to issues and stories that may have otherwise been unknown or not often thought about. This is the level of impact that has received the most attention, as films are often discussed in terms of their "educational" value. "A project's ability to raise awareness around a particular issue, since awareness is a critical building block for both individual change and broader social change" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Engagement. Impact, however, need not stop at simply raising public awareness. Engagement "indicates a shift from simply being aware of an issue to acting on this awareness. Were a film and its outreach campaign able to provide an answer to the question 'What can I do?' and more importantly mobilize that individual to act?" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This is where an associated film campaign becomes increasingly important, as transmedia outlets such as Facebook, websites, blogs, etc. can build off the interest and awareness developed through watching a film and provide outlets for viewers channel their constructive efforts. Social Movement. In addition to impacts on individuals, films can also serve to mobilize groups focused on a particular problem. The filmmaker can create a campaign around the film to promote its goals and/or work with existing groups focused on a particular issue, so that the film can be used as a tool for mobilization and collaboration. "Moving beyond measures of impact as they relate to individual awareness and engagement, we look at the project's impact as it relates to the broader social movement … if a project can strengthen the work of key advocacy organizations that have strong commitment to the issues raised in the film" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). Social Change. The final level of impact and "ultimate goal" of an issue-based film is long-term and systemic social change. "While we understand that realizing social change is often a long and complex process, we do believe it is possible and that for some projects and issues there are key indicators of success" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This can take the form of policy or legislative change, passed through film-based lobbying efforts, or shifts in public dialogue and behavior. Legislative change typically takes place beyond the social movement stage, when there is enough support to pressure legislators to change or create policy. Film-inspired activism has been seen in issues ranging from environmental causes such as agriculture (Food Inc.) and toxic products (Blue Vinyl) to social causes such as foreign conflict (Invisible Children) and education (Waiting for Superman). Documentary films can also have a strong influence as media agenda-setters, as films provide dramatic "news pegs" for journalists seeking to either sustain or generation new coverage of an issue (Nisbet "Introduction" 5), such as the media coverage of climate change in conjunction with An Inconvenient Truth. Barrett and Leddy, however, note that not all films target all five impacts and that different films may lead to different impacts. "In some cases we could look to key legislative or policy changes that were driven by, or at least supported by the project... In other cases, we can point to shifts in public dialogue and how issues are framed and discussed" (7). It is possible that specific film and/or campaign characteristics may lead to different impacts; this is a nascent area for research and one with great promise for both practical and theoretical utility. Innovations in Tools and Methods Finally, the selection of tools is a vital component for assessing impact and the new media landscape is enabling innovations in the methods and strategies for program evaluation. Whereas the traditional domain of film impact measurement included box office statistics, focus groups, and exit surveys, innovations in data collection and analysis have expanded the reach of what questions we can ask and how we are able to answer them. For example, press coverage can assist in understanding and measuring the increase in awareness about an issue post-release. Looking directly at web-traffic changes "enables the creation of an information-seeking curve that can define the parameters of a teachable moment" (Hart and Leiserowitz 360). Audience reception can be measured, not only via interviews and focus groups, but also through content and sentiment analysis of web content and online analytics. "Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights that would otherwise remain hidden" (Manyika et al. 5). These new tools are significantly changing evaluation, expanding what we can learn about the social impacts of film through triangulation of self-report data with measurement of actual behavior in virtual environments. Conclusion The changing media landscape both allows and impels evaluation of film impacts on individual viewers and the broader culture in which they are imbedded. Although such analysis may have previously been limited to box office numbers, critics' reviews, and theater exit surveys, the rise of new media provides both the ability to connect filmmakers, activists, and viewers in new ways and the data in which to study the process. This capability, combined with significant growth in the documentary landscape, suggests a great potential for documentary film to contribute to some of our most pressing social and environmental needs. A social scientific approach, that combines empirical analysis with theory applied from basic science, ensures that impact can be measured and leveraged in a way that is useful for both filmmakers as well as funders. In the end, this attention to impact ensures a continued thriving marketplace for issue-based documentary films in our social landscape. References Abrash, Barbara. "Social Issue Documentary: The Evolution of Public Engagement." American University Center for Social Media 21 Apr. 2010. 26 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/›. Aufderheide, Patricia. "The Changing Documentary Marketplace." Cineaste 30.3 (2005): 24-28. Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Barrett, Diana and Sheila Leddy. "Assessing Creative Media's Social Impact." The Fledgling Fund, Dec. 2008. 15 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.thefledglingfund.org/media/research.html›. Barsam, Richard M. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1992. BRITDOC Foundation. The End of the Line: A Social Impact Evaluation. London: Channel 4, 2011. 12 Oct. 2011 ‹http://britdoc.org/news_details/the_social_impact_of_the_end_of_the_line/›. Cieply, Michael. "Uneven Growth for Film Studio with a Message." New York Times 5 Jun. 2011: B1. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. "Emerging Media and Documentary Practice." The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs. Aug. 2008. 22 Sep. 2011. ‹http://www.gpia.info/node/911›. Grierson, John. "First Principles of Documentary (1932)." Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. Eds. Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 97-102. Hart, Philip Solomon and Anthony Leiserowitz. "Finding the Teachable Moment: An Analysis of Information-Seeking Behavior on Global Warming Related Websites during the Release of The Day After Tomorrow." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 3.3 (2009): 355-66. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. ———. "Transmedia Storytelling 101." Confessions of an Aca-Fan. The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. 22 Mar. 2007. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html›. Madaus, George, and Daniel Stufflebeam. "Program Evaluation: A Historical Overview." Evaluation in Education and Human Services 49.1 (2002): 3-18. Manyika, James, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Brad Brown, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, and Angela Hung Byers. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity. McKinsey Global Institute. May 2011 ‹http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/big_data/›. Muraskin, Lana. Understanding Evaluation: The Way to Better Prevention Programs. Washington: U.S. Department of Education, 1993. 8 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www2.ed.gov/PDFDocs/handbook.pdf›. Nichols, Bill. "Foreword." Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Eds. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997. 11-13. Nisbet, Matthew. "Gasland and Dirty Business: Documentary Films Shape Debate on Energy Policy." Big Think, 9 May 2011. 1 Oct. 2011 ‹http://bigthink.com/ideas/38345›. ———. "Introduction: Understanding the Social Impact of a Documentary Film." Documentaries on a Mission: How Nonprofits Are Making Movies for Public Engagement. Ed. Karen Hirsch, Center for Social Media. Mar. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://aladinrc.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/4634/1/docs_on_a_mission.pdf›. Nisbet, Matthew, and Patricia Aufderheide. "Documentary Film: Towards a Research Agenda on Forms, Functions, and Impacts." Mass Communication and Society 12.4 (2011): 450-56. Orszag, Peter. Increased Emphasis on Program Evaluation. Washington: Office of Management and Budget. 7 Oct. 2009. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/memoranda_2010/m10-01.pdf›. Participant Media. "Our Mission." 2011. 2 Apr. 2011 ‹http://www.participantmedia.com/company/about_us.php.›. Plantinga, Carl. Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Trochim, William, and James Donnelly. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 3rd ed. Mason: Atomic Dogs, 2007. Ubiñas, Luis. "President's Message." 2009 Annual Report. Ford Foundation, Sep. 2010. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.fordfoundation.org/about-us/2009-annual-report/presidents-message›. Vladica, Florin, and Charles Davis. "Business Innovation and New Media Practices in Documentary Film Production and Distribution: Conceptual Framework and Review of Evidence." The Media as a Driver of the Information Society. Eds. Ed Albarran, Paulo Faustino, and R. Santos. Lisbon, Portugal: Media XXI / Formal, 2009. 299-319. Whiteman, David. "Out of the Theaters and into the Streets: A Coalition Model of the Political Impact of Documentary Film and Video." Political Communication 21.1 (2004): 51-69. ———. "The Evolving Impact of Documentary Film: Sacrifice and the Rise of Issue-Centered Outreach." Post Script 22 Jun. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.allbusiness.com/media-telecommunications/movies-sound-recording/5517496-1.html›. Winston, Brian. Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited. London: British Film Institute, 1995. Working Films. "Nonprofits: Working Films." Foundation Source Access 31 May 2011. 5 Oct. 2011 ‹http://access.foundationsource.com/nonprofit/working-films/›.

This article is a comparison of two remarkably different takes on a single subject, namely the shifting meaning of the word ‘publishing’ brought about by the changes in literacy habits related to Web 2.0. One the one hand, we have Andrew Keen’s much lambasted 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur, which is essentially an attempt to defend traditional gatekeeper models of cultural production by denigrating online, user-generated content. The second is Spin journalist Andy Greenwald’s Nothing Feels Good, focusing on the Emo subculture of the early 2000s and its reliance on Web 2.0 as an integral medium for communication and the accumulation of subcultural capital. What I want to suggest in this article is that these two books, with their contrasting readings of Web 2.0, both tell us something specific about what the word “publishing” means and how it is currently undergoing a significant change brought about by a radical adaptation of literacy practices. What I think both books also do is give us an insight into how those changes are being interpreted, to be rejected on the one hand and applauded on the other. Both books have their faults. Keen’s work can fairly easily be passed off as a sort of cantankerous reminiscence for the legitimacy of an earlier era of publishing, and Greenwald’s Emos have, like all teen subcultures, changed somewhat. Yet what both books portray is an attempt to digest how Web 2.0 has altered perceptions of what constitutes legitimate speaking positions and how that is reflected in the literacy practices that shape the relationships among authors, readers, and the channels through which they interact. Their primary difference is a disparity in the value they place on Web 2.0’s amplification of the Internet’s use as a social and communicative medium. Greenwald embraces it as the facilitator of an open-access dialogue, whereas Keen sees it as a direct threat to other, more traditional, gatekeeper genres. Accordingly, Keen begins his book with a lament that Web 2.0’s “democratization” of media is “undermining truth, souring civic discourse and belittling expertise, experience, and talent … it is threatening the very future of our cultural institutions” (15). He continues, Today’s editors, technicians, and cultural gatekeepers—the experts across an array of fields—are necessary to help us to sift through what’s important and what’s not, what is credible from what is unreliable, what is worth spending our time on as opposed to the white noise that can be safely ignored. (45) As examples of the “white noise,” he lists some of the core features of Web 2.0—blogs, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook. The notable similarity between all of these is that their content is user generated and, accordingly, comes from the position of the personal, rather than from a gatekeeper. In terms of their readership, this presents a fundamental shift in an understanding of authenticated speaking positions, one which Keen suggests underwrites reliability by removing the presence of certifiable expertise. He looks at Web 2.0 and sees a mass of low grade, personal content overwhelming traditional benchmarks of quality and accountability. His definition of “publishing” is essentially one in which a few, carefully groomed producers express work seen as relevant to the wider community. The relationship between reader and writer is primarily one sided, mediated by a gatekeeper and rests on the assumption by all involved that the producer has the legitimacy to speak to a large, and largely silent, readership. Greenwald, by contrast, looks at the same genres and comes to a remarkably different and far more positive conclusion. He focuses heavily on the lively message boards of the social networking site Makeoutclub, the shift to a long tail marketing style by key Emo record labels such as Vagrant and Drive-Thru Records and, in particular, the widespread use of LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com) by suburban, Emo fixated teenagers. Of this he writes: The language is inflated, coded as ‘adult’ and ‘poetic’, which often translates into affected, stilted and forced. But if one can accept that, there’s a sweet vulnerability to it. The world of LiveJournal is an enclosed circuit where everyone has agreed to check their cynicism at the sign on screen; it’s a pulsing, swoony realm of inflated emotions, expectations and dialogue. (287) He specifically notes that one cannot read mediums like LiveJournal in the same style as their more traditional counterparts. There is a necessity to adopt a reading style conducive to a dialogue devoid of conventional quality controls. It is also, he notes, a heavily interconnected, inherently social medium: LiveJournals represent the truest and easiest realization of the essential teenage (and artistic) tenet of the importance of a ‘room of one’s own’, and yet the framework of the website is enough to make each individual room interconnected into a mosaic of richly felt lives. (288) Where Keen sees Web 2.0 as a shift way from established cultural forums, Greenwald sees it as an interconnected conversation. His definition of publishing is more fluid, founded on a belief not in the authenticity of a single, validated voice but on the legitimacy of interaction and communication entirely devoid of any gatekeepers. Central to understanding the difference between Greenwald and Keen is the issue or whether or not we accept the legitimacy of personal voices and how we evaluate the kind of reading practices involved in interpreting them. In this respect, Greenwald’s reference to “a room of one’s own” is telling. When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own in 1929, Web 2.0 wasn’t even a consideration, but her work dealt with a similar subject matter, detailing the key role the novel genre played in legitimising women’s voices precisely because it was “young enough to be soft in [their] hands” (74). What would eventually emerge from Woolf’s work was the field of feminist literary criticism, which hit its stride in the mid-eighties. In terms of its understanding of the power relations inherent to cultural production, particularly as they relate to gatekeeping, it’s a rich academic tradition notably lacking in the writing on Web 2.0. For example, Celia Lury’s essay “Reading the Self,” written more than ten years before the popularisation of the internet, looks specifically at the way in which authoritative speaking positions gain their legitimacy not just through the words on the page but through the entire relationships among author, genre, channels of distribution, and readership. She argues that, “to write is to enter into a relationship with a community of readers, and various forms of writing are seen to involve and imply, at any particular time, various forms of relationship” (102). She continues, so far as text is clearly written/read within a particular genre, it can be seen to rest upon a more or less specific set of social relations. It also means that ‘textual relations’—that is, formal techniques, reading strategies and so on—are not held separate from ‘non-textual relations’—such as methods of cultural production and modes of distribution—and that the latter can be seen to help construct ‘literary value.’ (102) The implication is that an appropriation of legitimised speaking positions isn’t done purely by overthrowing or contesting an established system of ‘quality’ but by developing a unique relationship between author, genre, and readership. Textual and non-textual practices blur together to create literary environments and cultural space. The term “publishing” is at the heart of these relationships, describing the literacies required to interpret particular voices and forms of communication. Yet, as Lury writes, literacy habits can vary. Participation in dialogue-driven, user-generated mediums is utterly different from conventional, gatekeeper-driven ones, yet the two can easily co-exist. For instance, reading last year’s Man Booker prize-winner doesn’t stop one from reading, or even writing, blogs. One can enact numerous literacy practices, move between discourses and inhabit varied relationships between genre, reader, and writer. However, with the rise of Web 2.0 a whole range of literacies that used to be defined as “private sphere” or “everyday literacies,” everything from personal conversations and correspondence to book clubs and fanzines, have become far, far more public. In the past these dialogue-based channels of communication have never been in a position where they could be defined as “publishing.” Web 2.0 changes that, moving previously private sphere communication into online public space in a very obvious way. Keen dismisses this shift as a wall of white noise, but Greenwald does something equally interesting. To a large extent, his positive treatment of Web 2.0’s “affected, stilted and forced” user-generated content is validated by his focus on a “Youth” subculture, namely Emo. Indeed, he heavily links the impact of youthful subcultural practices with the internet, writing that Teenage life has always been about self-creation, and its inflated emotions and high stakes have always existed in a grossly accelerated bubble of hypertime. The internet is the most teenage of media because it too exists in this hypertime of limitless limited moments and constant reinvention. If emo is the soundtrack to hypertime, then the web is its greatest vehicle, the secret tunnel out of the locked bedroom and dead-eyed judgmental scenes of youth. (277) In this light, we accept the voices of his Emo subjects because, underneath their low-quality writing, they produce a “sweet vulnerability” and a “dialogue,” which provides them with a “secret tunnel” out of the loneliness of their bedrooms or unsupportive geographical communities. It’s a theme that hints at the degree to which discussions of Web 2.0 are often heavily connected to arguments about generationalism, framed by the field of youth studies and accordingly end up being mined for what Tara Brabazon calls “spectacular youth subcultures” (23). We see some core examples of this in some of the quasi-academic writing on the subject of “Youth.” For example, in his 2005 book XYZ: The New Rules of Generational Warfare, Michael Grose declares Generation Y as “post-literate”: Like their baby boomer parents and generation X before them, generation Ys get their information from a range of sources that include the written and spoken word. Magazines and books are in, but visual communication is more important for this cohort than their parents. They live in a globalised, visual world where images rather than words are universal communication media. The Internet has heightened the use of symbols as a direct communicator. (95) Given the Internet is overwhelmingly a textual medium, it’s hard to tell exactly what Grose’s point is other than to express his confusion over new literacy practices. In a similar vein and in a similar style, Rebecca Huntley writes in her book The World According to Y, In the Y world, a mobile phone is not merely a phone. It is, as described by demographer Bernard Salt, “a personal accessory, a personal communications device and a personal entertainment centre.” It’s a device for work and play, flirtation and sex, friendship and family. For Yers, their phone symbolizes freedom and flexibility. More than that, your mobile phone symbolizes you. (16) Like Keen, Grose and Huntley are trying to understand a shift in publishing and media that has produced new literacy practices. Unlike Keen, Grose and Huntley pin the change on young people and, like Greenwald, they turn a series of new literacy practices into something akin to what Dick Hebdige called “conspicuous consumption” (103). It’s a term he linked to his definition of bricolage as the production of “implicitly coherent, though explicitly bewildering, systems of connection between things which perfectly equip their users to ‘think’ their own world” (103). Thus, young people are differentiated from the rest of the population by their supposedly unique consumption of “symbols” and mobile phones, into which they read their own cryptic meanings and develop their own generational language. Greenwald shows this methodology in action, with the Emo use of things like LiveJournal, Makeoutclub and other bastions of Web 2.0 joining their record collections, ubiquitous sweeping fringes and penchant for accessorised outfits as part of the conspicuous consumption inherent to understandings of youth subculture. The same theme is reflected in Michel de Certeau’s term “tactics” or, more common amongst those studying Web 2.0, Henry Jenkins’s notion of “poaching”. The idea is that people, specifically young people, appropriate particular forms of cultural literacy to redefine themselves and add a sense of value to their voices. De Certeau’s definition of tactics, as a method of resistance “which cannot count on a ‘proper’ (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality” (489), is a prime example of how Web 2.0 is being understood. Young people, Emo or not, engage in a consumption of the Internet, poaching the tools of production to redefine the value of their voices in a style completely acceptable to the neo-Marxist, Birmingham school understanding of youth and subculture as a combination producing a sense of resistance. It’s a narrative highly compatible within the fields of cultural and media studies, which, despite major shifts brought about by people like Ken Gelder, Sarah Thornton, Keith Kahn-Harris and the aforementioned Tara Brabazon, still look heavily for patterns of politicised consumption. The problem, as I think Keen inadvertently suggests, is that the Internet isn’t just about young people and their habits as consumers. It’s about what the word “publishing” actually means and how we think about the interaction among writers, readers, and the avenues through which they interact. The idea that we can pass off the redefinition of literacy practices brought about by Web 2.0 as a subcultural youth phenomena is an easy way of bypassing wider cultural shifts onto a token demographic. It presents Web 2.0 as an issue of “Youth” resisting the hegemony of traditional gatekeepers, which is effectively what Greenwald does. Yet such an approach has a very short shelf life. It’s a little like claiming the telephone or the television set were “youth genres.” The uptake of new technologies will inadvertently impact differently on those who grew up with them as compared to those who grew up without them. Yet ultimately changes in literacy habits are much larger than a generationalist framework can really express, particularly given the first generation of “digital natives” are now in their thirties. There’s a lot of things wrong with Andrew Keen’s book but one thing he does do well is ground the debate about Web 2.0 back to issues of legitimate speaking positions and publishing. That said, he also significantly simplifies those issues when he claims the problem is purely about the decline of traditional gatekeeper models. Responding to Keen’s criticism of him, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig writes, I think it is a great thing when amateurs create, even if the thing they create is not as great as what the professional creates. I want my kids to write. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop reading Hemingway and read only what they write. What Keen misses is the value to a culture that comes from developing the capacity to create—independent of the quality created. That doesn’t mean we should not criticize works created badly (such as, for example, Keen’s book…). But it does mean you’re missing the point if you simply compare the average blog to the NY times (Lessig). What Lessig expresses here is the different, but not mutually exclusive, literacy practices involved in the word “publishing.” Publishing a blog is very different to publishing a newspaper and the way readers react to both will change as they move in and out the differing discursive spaces each occupies. In a recent collaborative paper by Sue Thomas, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger, they describe this capacity to move across different reading and writing styles as “transliteracy.” They define the term as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks” (Thomas et al.). It’s a term that perfectly describes the capacity to move fluidly across discursive environments. Here we return to Greenwald’s use of a framework of youth and subculture. While I have criticised the Birminghamesque fixation on a homogeneous “Youth” demographic enacting resistance through conspicuous consumption, there is good reason to use existing subculture studies methodology as a means of understanding how transliteracies play out in everyday life. David Chaney remarks, the idea of subculture is redundant because the type of investment that the notion of subculture labelled is becoming more general, and therefore the varieties of modes of symbolization and involvement are more common in everyday life. (37) I think the increasing commonality of subcultural practices in everyday life actually makes the idea more relevant, not less. It does, however, make it much harder to pin things on “spectacular youth subcultures.” Yet the focus on “everyday life” is important here, shifting our understanding of “subculture” to the types of literacies played out within localised, personal networks and experiences. As de Certeau has argued, the practice of everyday life is an issue of “a way of thinking invested in a way of acting, an art of combination which cannot be dissociated from an art of using” (Certeau 486). This is as true for our literacy practices as anything else. Whether we choose to label those practices subcultural or not, our ability to interpret, take part in and react to different communicative forums is clearly fundamental to our understanding of the world around us, regardless of our age. Sarah Thornton suggests a useful alternate definition of subculture when she talks about subcultural capital: Subcultural capital is the linchpin of an alternative hierarchy in which the aces of age, gender, sexuality and race are all employed in order to keep the determinations of class, income and occupation at bay (105). This is an understanding that avoids easy narratives of young people and their consumption of Web 2.0 by recognising the complexity with which people’s literacy habits, in the cultural sense, connect to their active participation in the production of meaning. Subcultural capital implies that the framework through which individuals read, interpret, and shift between discursive environments, personalising and building links across the strata of cultural production, is acted out at the local and personal level, rather than purely through the relationship between a producing gatekeeper and a passive, consuming readership. If we recognise the ability for readers to connect multiple mediums, to shift between reading and writing practices, and to seamlessly interpret and digest markedly different assumptions about legitimate speaking voices across genres, our understanding of what it means to “publish” ceases to be an issue of generationalism or conventional mediums being washed away by the digital era. The issue we see in both Keen and Greenwald is an attempt to digest the way Web 2.0 has forced the concept of “publishing” to take on a multiplicity of meanings, played out by individual readers, and imbued with their own unique and interwoven textual and cultural literacy habits. It’s not only Emos who publish livejournals, and it’s incredibly naive to assume gatekeepers have ever really held a monopoly on all aspects of cultural production. What the rise of Web 2.0 has done is simply to bring everyday, private sphere dialogue driven literacies into the public sphere in a very obvious way. The kind of discourses once passed off as resistant youth subcultures are now being shown as common place. Keen is right to suggest that this will continue to impact, sometimes negatively, on traditional gatekeepers. Yet the change is inevitable. As our reading and writing practices alter around new genres, our understandings of what constitutes legitimate fields of publishing will also change. References Brabazon, Tara. From Revolution to Revelation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. de Certeau, Michel. “Practice of Every Day Life.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Ed. John Story. London: Prentice Hall, 1998. 483–94. Chaney, David. “Fragmented Culture and Subcultures.” After Subculture. Ed. Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris. Houndsmill: Palgrave McMillian, 2004. 36–48. Greenwald, Andy. Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo. New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 2003. Grose, Michael. XYZ: The New Rules of Generational Warfare. Sydney: Random House, 2005. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1979. Huntley, Rebecca. The World According to Y. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2006. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007. Lessig, Lawrence. “Keen’s ‘The Cult of the Amateur’: BRILLIANT!” Lessig May 31, 2007. Aug. 19 2008 ‹http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html>. Lury, Celia. “Reading the Self: Autobiography, Gender and the Institution of the Literary.” Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. Ed. Sarah. Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey. Hammersmith: HarperCollinsAcademic, 1991. 97–108. Thomas, Sue, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger. “Transliteracy: Crossing Divides.” First Monday 12.12. (2007). Apr. 1 2008 ‹http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2060/1908>. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Oxford: Polity Press, 1995. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Frogmore: Triad/Panther Press, 1977.