INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Natalya SOKOLOVA

Russia, Samara.
Samara State University, Sociology Department.
PhD, Associated Professor.

Digital Culture or Culture in the Digital Age?

In the article, the author argues that digital technologies have become an integral part of contemporary life, so that today researchers cannot ignore their obvious cultural value. The article considers the main stages employed in thestudy of digital media and the Internet, with an emphasis on the basic concepts that have determined a particular framework for understanding this new phenomenon: "digital (new) media", "cyberspace", "cyberculture" and "digital culture". The article shows that usage of the concept "digital culture" is connected to the researchers' desire to refuse the prefix "cyber", with all its technocratic connotations. Nowadays, there is an idea that to research digital culture means to investigate the broad transformations of culture in connection with recent distribution of digital technologies, rather than studying its phenomena and artifacts in itself.

Key words: digital culture, digital (new) media, the Internet, cyberspace, cyberculture, post cyberspace, de-westernization of media studies

References

Dmitry GALKIN

Russia, Tomsk.
Tomsk State University, Department of Philosophy.
Associate Professor at the Institute of Art and Culture.

Digital Culture: Methodological Issues of Cultural Dynamic Research: From Digital Automatic Machines to Technical-bio-creatures

In this article, the author focuses on the conceptual and methodological issues of digital culture studies. Principles and structure of the author's originalresearch program is suggested. The importance of technological and cultural determinism as well as poststructuralism as research approaches is stressed. The technological imperative, power of automata, technological anthropodeficit and "Preobrazhensky syndrome" are discussed as key principals for understanding digital culture. In addition, the author presents his thesis on cultural dynamics from digital culture to the culture of artificial life.

Key words: digital culture, technological determinism, cultural determinism, techno-art hybrids, technological imperative

References

Daria KUZMINA

Ukraine, Kiev.
Post-graduate student, Cultural Studies department, National Pedagogical Dragomanov University.
Master of Cultural Studies.

Ianina PRUDENKO

Ukraine, Kiev.
Assistant professor of Cultural Studies department, National Pedagogical Dragomanov University. Ph.D.

Humanities in the Digital Age, or the Inevitability of Disciplinary Hybridization

The current article provides an overview of the new science of Digital Humanities, in Britain and the U.S. in the mid-twentieth century. Its main feature is the consolidation of scientific and digital culture, in order to optimize the research process in the field of Humanities. New technologies are used, in this case, to store and analyze the cultural database. A quick call to the history of cultural studies ascertains the naturalness of the process, since the (new) media is used in each era to describe the present, and assess the past. However, despite its venerable age, and the fact that it has become widespread over all the continents, Digital Humanities to this day, defends its right to autonomy. The article's authors raise questions about the scientific and disciplinary status of Digital Humanities, about scientists' limits of competence / professors of a new type, who use digital technology to analyze cultural phenomena. Of course, there are no simple answers, due to the formation of the science. The authors focus their attention on the history and development of the Digital Humanities, its scientific and educational institutionalization, and the evolution of its subject of analysis.

Key words: cultural analytics, database, digital age, digital culture, digital humanities, digital technologies, humanities, humanities computing, hybridization, linguistic computing, new media, transdisciplinarity, visual culture

References

Elena SAVENKOVA

Russia, Samara.
Samarskaja gumanitarnaja akademija.
Kafedra filosofii.

Elena IVANENKO

Russia, Samara.
Administrator sajta «Filosofskaja Samara».

Marina KORETSKAYA

Russia, Samara.
PhD in Philosophy, associate professor, Chair of Philosophy Department of Samara Academy of Humanities.

The Other Side of Speech and Writing: The Communicative Practices of Internet Communities

The article deals with characteristic features of the communicative practices of Internet communities. Transgressive movement to the other side of speech, writing, and meaning can be interpreted not as a symptom of degradation, but rather as a derivation of the Koine effect which, from the authors' points of view, testifies to the great and powerful potential of Internet communication.

Key words: virtual communities, communication, speech, author, internet, ortho-art, Koine effect

References

Ekaterina SAKOVICH

Belarus, Minsk.
European Humanities University (EHU) in Vilnius.
Cultural Studies: Visual and Cultural Studies, Master.

Dialectics of Privacy and Publicity in the Virtual Space

The article is devoted to the relationships between the practice of privacy and the practice of publicity in the virtual space. The author's aim was to detect changes in the interaction of public and private spheres, which appear, due to the influence of social and technological factors. The article analyzes the terms "private" and "public" in different scientific discourses: works dedicated to the analysis of virtuality, digital culture, cyberspace, and the publicity of such authors as P. Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, M. Poster, M. Castells, V. Miller, and S. Zizek. Analyzing these practices, the author proves that the lack of a public sphere in cyberspace leads to its inversion with the private sphere. Privacy takes the status of publicity and absorbs it. This type of virtual publicity exists as a total consumption of private data.

Key words: publicity, privacy, intimacy, digital culture, virtuality, capitalism, media, surveillance, hyperreality, information technologies, social networks, liberalization, illusor

References

Viktoriya KONSTANTSIUK

Belarus.
European Humanities University (Lithuania), lecturer

YouTube: Desire in Media and Seriality

The main objective of the article is to consider YouTube as a new form of media(tiza)tion (Zizek S.) and as a new visual form. How doindividual desires and cultural forms relate to one another? In this article, we try to understand cultural schizophrenia (serialization, repetition in YouTube) through the clinical notion of schizophrenia, via the prism of a parallax vision (Hegel, Zizek). Youtube, as a media form, is a new field of production reflecting current (visual) desire. In my opinion, media is a form of simultaneous mediation between the social and the subject.
My main point of view is that that the discourse of psychoanalysis becomes especially relevant in the case of YouTube, with such concepts as media(tiza)tion, hysterization of discourse, desire, pleasure, perversion and schizophrenia.

Key words: YouTube, psychoanalysis, media, media(tiza)tion, social mediation, desire, fetishization, pleasure, perversion, schizophrenia, seriality

References

Lev YAKOVLEV

Russia, Saratov.
P. A. Stolypin Volga Region Academy of Public Administration.
The Department of sociology, social policy and regional history. PhD in sociological sciences, professor.

Digital Technologies within the Context of an Anthropological Revolution

Digital technologies have an impact on culture, primarily through changes in the mechanisms of social interactions. Digitalization creates the need for change of ownership. We need standards that are relevant to the nature of property relations as regards objects in the virtual space. However, thisis actually an inevitable revision of already-existing notions about property, in general. Radically changing the nature and cultural consumption in the information society is primarily for production purposes. This creates the preconditions for a change in social status, the creator of cultural values. The dialogue of "man-computer" changes the nature of the fundamental "I-other" relationship. Virtual space acquires an independent meaning; it carries with it an increasing set of previously-formed interactions, the fabric of social reality. A linear narrative is replaced by the hypertext organization, blurring the boundaries that separate hypertext from context. This results in the destruction of hierarchies, the elimination of the gap between public and private spheres of communication. Taken together, creating the world of culture, digital technology changes are interpreted as an anthropological revolution.

Key words: digitization, intellectual property, cultural consumption, the evolution of the cultural environment, the social status of the artist, hypertext, epistemological uncertainty

References

Irina GOLOVACHEVA

Russia, St. Petersburg.
Philological Faculty of St. Petersburg State University.
PhD, DSc, Associate professor

Most Alive! The Werewolf as the Triumph of Corporeality in the New Monstrology

Contemporary "monster discourse" concludes the long process of blending with the Other: the monster has so closely approached Man that they have nearly united. The radically different — as the monster was perceived not so long ago — is still perceived as the Other, but the radicalism of the juxtaposition has all but vanished. The fantastic is precisely the field where the hierarchical structure, including humans, supernatural entities as well artificial creatures, is tested. Exploring composite creatures, hybrids and centaur-like monsters — werewolves in the present study — we hope to illuminate a modern vision of anthropology, i. e. the self-perception of Man within the framework of post-modern thinking, to define the sources of our present fears, and the central challenges of the epoch. Two recent novels — Glen Duncun's The Last Werewolf and Stephanie Meyer's The Twilight Saga — employ werewolf imagery, including the corporeality of lycanthropes, in a revolutionary way.

Key words: monstrology, werewolf, corporeality, post-modern sensitivity, hybrids, neo-hominids, hopeful monster, Glen Duncun, Stephanie Meyer

References

Victoria SUKOVATAYA

Kharkov, Ukraine.
Professor of Kharkiv National Karazin University.
PhD. in Philosophy, Doctor of Habilitation.

Cyborg: "Animated dead" or "Dead animation"? The body and its transgression in the digital culture space

The relevance of the paper lies in the necessity to study cyber culture, virtual identity, and the sources and representations that have currently developed and which, up till now, have received little attention in the former Soviet Union. The purpose of the article is to examine ways in which the virtual consciousness penetrates into modern society, and how the cyber-identity changes the current understanding of the physical body and human consciousness. The paper's conclusion is that cyborgs are a cultural phenomenon, developed after modernism, and that cyber-subjectivity "blurs" the anthropo-centrism of traditional culture (just as a homosexual identity deconstructs the heteronormativity of traditional culture). Cyborgs can be seen as creatures of the "new race", who combine organic and innorganic elements, and so deconstruct such traditional cultural oppositions as life-death, nature-culture, male-female, etc.

Key words: cyborg, body, mind, virtual space, cyber identity, marginality, anthroponormativity

References

Natalia MASLENKOVA

Russia, Samara.
Samara State University.
Chair of Theory and History of Culture.
Associate Professor, PhD in Philology.

"Reader + Viewer =?" — On the new Text Comprehension Practice

The article discusses how modern forms of the text and digital media generate new art practices. The subjects of the study are various art products, such as comics and the visual novel. The author argues that most contemporary readers feel much more comfortable if, when reading, they can rely on visual impressions. "Read and Look" is the contemporary reader's principle of perception of. New media types and new ways of coding information form a new type of recipient.

Key words: artistic text, the recipient, methods of information decoding, verbal, visual, comics, visual novel

References

Alexandr SARNA

Belarus, Minsk.
Associate Professor in the Department of Social Communication
of the Belorussian State University.

Killing bin Laden — The Image of War and War of Images in the Mediasphere

The article reveals the important role of information policy, which reflects the connection between war, computer simulation and videogames. An example of this may be seen in the case about the special military operation in Pakistan, which took place on May 2, 2011, when American Commandos killed the № 1 terrorist, Osama bin Laden. Many interpretations of this media event include various versions virtual images of bin Laden's death.

Key words: information policy, mass media, TV news, war, computer simulation, and videogames

References

Evgeny KOZLOV

Russia, Volgograd.
Volgograd branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Phd, Professor.

The Problem of Fiction's Borders

"Narrated" and "shown" in its various manifestations, competing, opposing or constructively interacting, throughout human history, the space is filled with the sign of every culture. We assume that the individual, specific cultural situation can be particularly reflected in the contextual relationship that is narrated and depicted. Interest and attempts to consider the dependence of physiognomy crops up in the demand and priority method narratio / monstratio. One of the common features of both verbal and visual art texts in the age of digital culture is that they function in a communicative space, characterized by the following features:

1. Emancipated recipients who feel entitled to intervene in the artistic activity, being (in effect) the customer;
2. A dense array of metatext by which a digital culture discusses, interprets and predicts the public perceived in the text;
3. Serials practices, consistent with the fragmentary way of presenting their material allows viewers / readers to intervene in the sphere of art;
4. Interpellation, developed in the comics, has spread to video games, contributing to the permeability of borders' fictional message;
5. Effect of the presence, identification with a character in a role-play, minimize the gap between the fictional and the recipient of the message, often providing total immersion into the space of artistic action.
6. Effect restart practiced video games, allowing replay at any moment, allow the recipient to fully serve the author, administer space fiction.

Key words: border fiction, comic, image, fictional space, presence, artistic practices, serial, emancipated recipient, interpellation, the observer, the migration of fictional content, metatext, interpretation, role play

References

Michel FOUCAULT

France

La Pensée du dehors

In this essay Michel Foucault researches one of the crucial moments in Maurice Blanchot's philosophy — the notion of "the outside". With special discourse, through the particular writing it is possible to obtain some kind of experience which may grant us with certain mentality, named "the thought from the outside". Foucault's topographical researches of this mentality in regard to the Blanchot's fiction mark principal points round about the further researches on this theme will be developed.

Key words: French philosophy of the XX century, Maurice Blanchot's ontology, the literature, writing, the outside, neutrality

Andrew PATKUL, Konstantin SHEVTSOV, Alexander ISACOV, Vyacheslav SUHACHEV, Alexey IVANENKO, Alexander LENKEVICH, Daria KOLESNIKOVA, Evgeny PAVLOVICH, Konstantin OCHERETYANY

BookReview: Valery V. Savchuk's "Topological Reflection" (a Retrospective on the Mode of Relevance)

The Media Research Center (Department of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University) presented Valery Savchiuk's book "The Topological Reflection" on May 1, 2012 at the Borey Art Gallery. Numerous responses and reviews of the book expressed on this day are presented here.

Key words: philosophy of space, topos, reflection, book, Valery Savchuk

Alexander LYUSY

Russia, Moscow.
Russian Institute for Cultural Research, Seniour Rearcher.
PhD in Cultural Science.

Thirst of the Dust.
On Transhuman (non) Existential Prospects, Digital and Poetic Netokratiya

In the article, poetic and philosophical forecasts of the development of digital culture, in regard to possible transhuman aspects according to principles of digital and analog devices, are compared. Concepts are considered in relation to broad definitions of life as the material system, capable of receiving, storing, and processing information and using it in the organization of activity. Digital culture confirms the life device as the constant conflict of multidirectional forces.

Key words: digital life, analog life, media, bit, byte, endoprosthesis, dispersion, netokratiya

References

Oxana GAVRISHINA

Russia, Moscow.
Russian State University for the Humanities.
History and Theory of Culture Department.
Associate Professor, PhD.

The Everyday between Reality and Phantasm: Julie Blackmon's Photographs

The article explores the changing criteria of reality in contemporary art photography using, as an example, the works of Julie Blackman, an American photographer who focuses on daily familylife. "Reality" is understood as a regime of visual perception, rather than a characteristic of the depicted object. In the 20th century, the everyday as a realm of routine and repetition was associated with documentary photography. Since the 1980s, however, photographers openly began using staged images to depict everyday experience. In the 2000s, digital processing is widely employed.

Key words: the everyday, photography, staged image, tableau, irony, Jeff Wall, Julie Blackmon

References

Andrzej PITRUS

Poland, Krakow. Jagiellonian University, Professor.

The video Image and its Dimensions: Bill Viola's 'The Reflecting Pool' and 'Migration'

In the 1970s, Viola created two pieces, which can undoubtedly be read as the artist's personal manifesto. In these works, he defined the parameters of video, dividing them into two main dimensions. 'The Reflecting Pool' is a contemplation on the relation between the electronically generated picture (then only analog video) and cinema. Viola expresses the belief that video is an autonomous medium, whose link with cinema is, to a certain degree, superficial. The new medium has its own set of rules. Although in 'Migration' he also touches upon the relationship between video and film, here he explores the inner structure of video and the possibilities resulting from linear projection, revealing both its similarity to film and its uniqueness.

Key words: video image, Bill Viola, medium, film

References

Andrzej PITRUS, Alicja HELMAN

Poland, Krakow.
Jagiellonian University

Cinema – the Non-represented World. Impossible Spaces in Science Fiction Film

The introduction of computer-based techniques has changed the ontological status of the cinema. Many contemporary films simulate reality, rather than represent it. Non-existing objects with no real prototype appear on the screen. Films reflect semi-real worlds, but the ontological foundation of film representation changes. Hence, the question: Can we still use the traditional concepts of film theory? Cultural Studies can support future studies providing the background for speculations based on the assumption that any kind of truth (also about the future) is relative. From this perspective, the goal is not to predict things to come, but to provide insight into the human condition. Another goal is to explain the way in which we perceive the future now, and how we will see it tomorrow. Traditional film theory needs to be redefined to describe the changing nature of film and media apparatuses. However, it can still be useful because the "future strategies of representation" are often related to the old ones.

Key words: cultural studies, science fiction film

References

Andrey FOMENKO

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Institute of Cultural Research.
PhD, seniour rearcher.

Jean-Pierre Melville — Aesthete and Moralist

The subject matter of the article is Jean-Pierre Melville's style, the epitome of which is represented by his late films — Le Samouraï and Le Cercle Rouge. This style is compared with radical trends of avant-garde art from the 60s and early 70s — minimalism and "le nouveau roman".

Key words: Jean-Pierre Melville, French cinema, Le Samouraï, Le Cercle Rouge, mob film, minimalism, le nouveau roman

References

Michael STEPANOV

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Institute of Cultural Research.
Researcher, PhD.

Orders of Visuality. Review on "Imagery in the 21st Century"

Declaration invasion image, total and aggressive technogenic new imagery, the requirements of visual ecology hearing the last 30 years. The transformation of social life, the historical development and the emergence of new technological images clearly require reorganization methods of analysis, methods of working with the new forms of visualization. Scientific and practical work with a visual material is really only just beginning. An example is the voluminous book "Imagery in the 21st Century", edited by Oliver Grau and Thomas Veigl, released by the publishing house at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, a leading research institute of technology in the world. Collection raises actual questions of the existence of visual and provides a systematic and interdisciplinary understanding of the origin, production conditions and the effects of new forms of imaging and visualization.

Key words: culture, visualization, new media, social media, code

Irina SOKOLOVA

Russia, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Institute for Cultural Research.
Seniour Rearcher. PhD

Photography and its Reflections.
Book Review: Oksana Gavrishina's Book "Empire of Light: Photography as a Visual Practice of Modernity"

The review of Oksana Gavrishina's book "Empire of Light: Photography as a Visual Practice of Modernity" presents the main conception of the author's articles and analyses of creative approaches, which are diffused among 20th-21st century photographers. In addition, the review also discusses specificities and conditions of contemporary photographic vision in its relation to the theory and history of culture.

Key words: Visual culture, photography, Oksana Gavrishina, view, sight, canon, light, color, myth, happening, everyday life

Boris KOLYMAGIN

Russia, Moskow.
Russian Institute for Cultural Research.
Post-Graduate Student.

The Birth of Postdigital Book Culture:
Reflections on the Monograph of Alexander Ljusiy's "Poetics of Anticipation"

The article presents reflections on the monograph of Alexander Ljusiy's "Poetics of Anticipation", published by the Academic Council of the ICS (the Institute of Cultural Studies Theory and History of Culture): Russia through the Prism of Cultural Studies: Theoretical Comedy" (Moscow: KMK Scientific Press Ltd., 2011). The author discusses the importance of the mediologic aspect of Ljusiy's monograph , and presents it as a phenomenon of the postdigital book culture.

Key words: cultural studies, culture, literature, mediology, book publishing

References