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Towards a Chronotopical Analysis of Urban Squares
Full text linkThis research aims to develop semiotic tools for analysing emergent and recently (re)designed urban everyday spaces, an emergent, changing and internally heterogeneous sociocultural phenomenon. Interlinking environmental semiosis of material space, interpretations by users in (inter)actions and textualisation in culture, the framework of chronotopical analysis is proposed and explored, together with broadening it from literary studies to the domain of urban space. Its application is exemplified in the material of recently (re)designed town squares in Estonia, an outcome of a nationwide program to revitalise small towns and develop the appreciation of public space in Estonian culture. The study outlines the framework of chronotopical analysis and demonstrates its potential for the integrative semiotic analysis of the multi-layered and dynamic character of recently designed urban spaces
Understanding the city through its semiotic spatialities
Full text linkThe city is a complex sociocultural phenomenon where space and timeare simultaneously parts of itself and parts of its conceptualisation. In the paper I draw out three general perspectives where the city is characterised by different spatialities and temporalities. The urban space can thus be a space of rhythms and practices, an objectified dimension of the settlement, and a symbolic form in interpretations and creations of cities. The city can be understood as a semiotic whole by considering varying semiotic natures of the urban space
Textualities of the city – from the legibility of urban space towards social and natural others in planning
Full text link‘Text’ has been a frequent notion in analytical conceptualizations of landscape and the city. It is mostly found in analyses of textual representations or suggestions concerning a metaphor of “reading” an (urban) landscape. In the Tartu- Moscow School of Semiotics the idea of the text of St. Petersburg has also been applied in analysing particular cities as organizing topics in literature and in culture more widely, but it has not happened to an equal degree in studies of actual urban spaces. The understanding of text as a semiotic system and mechanism is, however, more promising than revealed by these conceptions. Some potential can be made apparent by relating this textual paradigm to a more pragmatic understanding of the city and its planning. My project in this paper is to uncover an analytical framework focusing on the concepts of ‘text’, ‘textualization’ and ‘texting’ in studying the planning of urban environment. The paper observes the case of the urban planning process of the Tartu city centre in Estonia during 2010–2016, and is particularly concerned with the roles that urban nature has acquired in the process of this “textualization” of the local environment, societal ideals, practices and possible others
Sotsiokultuuriline ruum: sotsiokultuuriline maailm ja ruumiline modelleerimine
Full text linkPüüeldes sotsiokultuurilise maailma selgitamisele, on sotsiaal- ja kultuuriteooriate alusülesandeks tunnetuse ning selle esituse korrastamine. See on mudelite ja metakeelte valdkond, milles võtmerolli mängib ka ruumilisus.
Sotsiaalne ruum, kultuuriruum, väli, sotsiaalne kaugus ja mobiilsus, piir – need ja teised ruumile vihjavad väljendid on vahendid sotsiaal- ja kultuuriteoreetilise tunnetuse korrastamiseks. Erinevad mõisted moodustavad sidusaid kimpe, mida aga laiema valdkonnana iseloomustab ruumilisuse mõistmise ja korrastusviiside paljusus.
Selles mitmekesisuses aitab selgust luua mõistete paigutamine ruumilise modelleerimise kui tunnetusprotsessi raamesse – on ju ruumilisus esmajoones nimelt teadmuse korrastus; see ei lähtu otseselt füüsikalisest, materiaalsest ega geograafilisest ruumist, vaid võimest märgata tunnetuse objektide või nende võimalikkuste koosolemist kui ruumilist suhet. Lihtsamatest sel moel äratuntud suhetest moodustavad omakorda erinevad keerukamad teoreetilised või käegakatsutavad korrastused ehk ruumid. Nii on väga erinevad ruumilised kirjeldusvahendid seotud ühe ja sama alusega ning põimuvad mitmekihilisel ruumilise tunnetuse väljal.
Semiootika eripärane positsioon võimaldab seostada metatasandi abstraktseid ruumilisi mudeleid objekttasandi ruumilisusega – nii kultuurilise maailmapildi sümboolse ruumi kui ka erinevate tegevuste ruumilisuse ja selle mõtestamisega. Oma uurimuses keskendun eelkõige kolme autori, Pierre Bourdieu, Juri Lotmani ja Pitirim Sorokini ruumilise metakeele analüüsile ning näitan, et varieeruva ruumimõistestiku rakendamise abil üldjoontes samale objektvaldkonnale on võimalik iseloomustada sotsiokultuurilise maailma eri külgi ja toimimisviise. Näiliselt süütudki ruumilised mõisted muudavad meie arusaama kirjeldatavast ruumiliseks – iseasi, millisel tasandil ning mis laadi korrastusega seoses.Social and cultural theories involve organising the knowledge and its representation as a basic task in their strive for explaining the sociocultural world. It is a domain of models and metalanguages where spatial models and metalanguage have a substantial role.
Social space, cultural space, field, social distance and mobility, boundary – these and other spatial expressions are tools for organising social and cultural theoretical knowledge. Selected notions form coherent clusters which together still remain characterised by multitude of ideas of spatiality and respective kinds of structures.
Contextualising notions in the framework of spatial modelling as a cognitive process enables further clarification of this variety. It is essential that spatiality is first of all an organisation of knowledge. It is not directly derived from physical, material or geographical space but from the ability to recognise the co-existence of objects of cognition or their potentialities as the spatial relation. From this kind of simple recognised relations various spatial complexes or spaces are formed – as abstract ideas or tangible articulations. Rather different spatial descriptive means are thus related to the same basis and are interlinked at the multi-layered field of spatial cognition.
Through the particular perspective of semiotics it is possible to uncover the relations between metaleval abstract spatial models and object-level spatiality from the aspect of both the symbolic space of the cultural world-view and the spatiality of practices. In my analysis I focus on spatial terminology in works by three authors, Pierre Bourdieu, Juri Lotman and Pitirim Sorokin. I show that due to the variety implied in spatial terminology different applications of spatial metalanguage to a common object domain enable modelling the variety of sociocultural world and its functioning. It is also outlined how at first sight unbiased spatial notions can turn the understanding of the object to be spatial. The exact organisation and level of this spatiality can again be different.
relations between metaleval abstract spatial models and object-level spatiality from the aspect of both the symbolic space of the cultural world-view and the spatiality of practice
Sociocultural space and time as semiotic modelling systems
Full text link[Abstract] In the paper I discuss how time as a sociocultural category is modelled by space and spatial concepts. I explain the mixed use of different object- and metalevels of descriptions of space at the construction of concepts of time and temporality at the interpretation of the sociocultural world. The "cognitive turn" in studies of culture and society has been accompanied with the risen focus on metaphor — descriptions of metaphoric processes as a main mechanism of culture on the object level of studies, metaphor as metalingual concept, metaphor in the metalanguage and the discussion on the concept of metaphor itself. Starting from the biosemiotic basis of cognition, through the interpretations of social practices (activities, events and their relations as social basis for 'time'), 'time' and 'space' become abstract notions. Space and time are semiotic modelling systems involving several (intermingled) relative object- and metalevels and are thus widely applicable modelling tools. The use of space to model temporal concepts and the mixed use of different modelling levels of one and the other, and the (over)use of the concept of metaphor, rises doubts about the 'temporality' and 'spatiality' of sociocultural phenomena (e.g. the city and its history) as well as about the ability to share the knowledge among different studies on time in the sociocultural field
Urban ecosemiotics of trees: Why the ecological alien species paradigm has not gained ground in cities?
Full text linkThe transportation and translocation of species beyond their natural habitats is considered to be one of the major causes of biodiversity loss these days. Concerns are growing also about urbanization and the resulting destruction of natural habitats. At the same time, the integration of urban environments into nature protection efforts has brought along the intent to apply the ecological alien species paradigm in cities. Yet, as the practices of urban landscaping demonstrate, this objective has not been achieved. In this article, we propose that the reasons behind it are largely related to the specifics of the city as a semiotic system. Multiplicity of codes and subjects of various origins is contested by the ecological alien species paradigm, yet characteristic of the urban semiotic environment. The city often serves the function of a cultural model, embodying the principles of setting the borders between Self and the Other. Also in this case, the ecological alien species paradigm has to face a different complex of meanings attributed to the Other. We demonstrate how two different models of the city are expressed in the interpretations of alien trees by using pyramid oaks and poplars in Estonia as an example
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
⚘ Marginal spaces of the city: structures and images ☀ Olga Lavrenova
No full textAllow yourself to wonder... and traverse shapes and shades at the rims of urban settings.
This event, commented by Tiit Remm (International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time) and chaired by Yulia Nikitenko (Institute for Philosophical Studies), is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.
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Olga Lavrenova (1969), Russian geographer, philosopher, historian. DSc (Philosophy), PhD (Geography). She is a leading researcher of the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INION RAN, in Russian), professor at the National University of Science and Technology (MISiS) and at the GITR Film and Television School. She is also Deputy Director for Science at the Nicholas Roerich Museum of the International Centre of the Roerichs, President of the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time (IASSp+T, Switzerland), and Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts. Fulbright grantee (2021) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Texas at Austin. Author of over 180 publications, including the monograph: Spaces and Meanings: Semantics of the Cultural Landscape (Springer, 2019). She is the author of the long-term interdisciplinary scientific project “The Geography of Art” (since 1992, 10 collections were published and 7 conferences were held). The project considers the territorial problems of culture and art, reflected in the art of the geographical space, the role of regional factors in the formation of art schools and artworks. Particular attention is given to topics such as artistic perception of the cultural landscape, the place of art in shaping the cultural landscape and the image of the territory, as well as the concepts of space in works of art. She is also the author of the long-term interdisciplinary scientific project “Russia and the East: the interaction in art” (since 2018, 2 conferences were held and 1 collection was published).
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Tiit Remm is a researcher of semiotics and director of curricula in semiotics in the University of Tartu. His research is focused on sociosemiotics and semiotics of space, particularly on urban semiotics and the use of spatial environment and spatial concepts for societal management as well as semiotic aspects of spatial modelling in humanities and social sciences in more general. He defended his dissertation "Sociocultural Space: Spatial Modelling and the Sociocultural World" in 2015.
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Homepage: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s
Auditorium: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s/auditorium
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Technical support assured by Robert Junqueira.
The cover image for the video was designed by Zahra Soltani
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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