1,347 research outputs found
The Mirror, the Self(ie) and the New Sacred: Bodies, Objects and Figures of the Contemporary "Cult of the Self"
No full textThis paper investigates the "cult of the Self" pervading contemporary mediatised cultures, adopting a semiotic approach. More specifically, it draws on the analysis of the fictional case of Ionismo, ironically represented by director Alessandro Aronadio in the movie Just Believe (orig. IO C'È, 2018), to shed new light on the figure of the "influencer", which has become fundamental in contemporary mediascapes. Thus it problematises the bodies, as well as the sacred objects, and more generally the figures, of today's cult of the Self, with specific reference to the "generative model" suggested by Just Believe, as well as to the understanding of the sacred in the "postsecular" era
La semiotica può migliorare l’apprendimento supervisionato delle reti neurali? Il caso di studio del tweet di Papa Francesco
No full textThe paper focuses on a case–study: a corpus of 1234 Italian tweets in reply to Pope Francis’ ecological tweets related to the encyclical letter Laudato si’ has been collected and labelled by the research team of the Semiotic and big data lab at the University of Turin using semiotic categories to substitute the vague notion of “subjectivity” in use in sentiment analysis. A simple neural network has been trained on the corpus to classify messages into “history” and “discourse” with a final accuracy score of 97%. The paper explores the practical and social implications of the feasibility study as well as its limitations and suggests further transdisciplinary research using semiotics as a standard vocabulary to increase cooperation between social and computer sciences. The analysis is accompanied by a historical premise and a brief analysis of the concordance between Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures and Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato si’
Nostalgia, prefigurazione, riscoperta: percorsi semiotici tra pre- e post-gastromania
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has had evident effects on the gastrosphere, as the lively debate on the perceptions of edibility in different cultures, as well as the development and spreading of new food practices and discourses (see in particular Marrone 2020; Niola 2020; Stano 2020), prove. As people went (back) to their kitchens and (re)discovered the magic of “grandma’s recipes”, also experimenting new forms of conviviality and commensality, comfort food has become the undisputed protagonist of most desks and screens. This has highlighted a new conception of temporality as related to the food realm. On the one hand, in fact, comfort food directly calls on nostalgia (as evidenced by its very definition: “Food prepared in a traditional style having a usually nostalgic or sentimental appeal”). On the other hand, such a “nostalgic appeal”, and the “obsessive regret” (Greimas 1986) that it presupposes, seem to extend far beyond a “lost past” to be retrieved à la Proust, extending to the more recent, and partly still present, gastromaniac pornography (see Marrone 2014; Stano 2018), as well as to the prefiguration of a “post-gastromaniac” future (see Marrone 2019). This paper deals with this crucial issue, reflecting on the effects of meaning generated by our experience of the pandemic, with particular reference to the temporal dimension.https://mimesisjournals.com/ojs/index.php/ec/article/view/1511/121
“Better Than Us”. L’icona androide nella serialità televisiva contemporanea
No full textThe aim of this essay is to explore the cultural function of the android icon. The hypothesis is that the android icon plays a fundamental narrative role in highlighting culturally dissonant issues. The reference definition of icon used here will be that of a cultural icon as a narrative core. Such a definition of a cultural icon is historically defined as a narrative intertextual corpus, or a set of narrative models, that can be drawn upon, both to create new narratives and to interpret and understand them. The intention is to conduct an exploration of a small portion of the vast field of the android cultural icon (literature, cinema, comics, video games), through a very limited reference corpus, in order to identify its function in a popular form of narrative communication like television series.
But why can a single cultural icon like the android one assume a broader significance than just that of a single narrative device? And why is it in a popular narrative form like television series that we can find effective answers regarding the relevance of this cultural icon?
There are commercial products tied to popular narrative genres that hide or mask complex or controversial themes from an ideological and cultural perspective. We can call this mechanism "narrative camouflage," borrowing the sense of this expression from the context of evolutionary biology. Just as some animals hide their presence by assuming an appearance that allows them to blend into their environment or context, similarly, some culturally dissonant themes can be conveyed through the narrative structures of a popular narrative genre in a more or less concealed manner.
This mechanism can be traced back to a more general aesthetic-narrative principle, namely that a specific aesthetic form represents an indirect response to a dissonance or contradiction present in the real world. A problem in the real socio-cultural context finds an indirect response in an aesthetic work through the use of a specific linguistic, discursive, or narrative form. The hypothesis here is that one of these aesthetic forms is the android icon and that the function of its repeated use in many contemporary television series is linked to the issue of using it as a "response" to particular cultural dissonances.
The figure of the android is prevalent in contemporary science fiction television series. Three specific cases will be considered here, which are relevant because they belong to three different cultural contexts (UK/Sweden, USA, Russia) and three different production mechanisms (Channel 4, HBO, C1R). The three TV series in question are: Humans (UK, Channel 4, 2015-18), a remake of Real Humans (Sweden, SVT1, 2012-14); Westworld (USA, HBO, 2016-22); and Better than Us (Russia, C1R, 2018-present). In each of these series, the figure of the android receives its own particular characterization but exhibits constants. The analysis of these recurring features is important to understand the function of this figure in terms of aesthetic-narrative response to significant socio-cultural issues
First person – Simona Amodeo
No full textABSTRACT
First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Simona Amodeo is the first author on ‘Characterization of the novel mitochondrial genome replication factor MiRF172 in Trypanosoma brucei’, published in Journal of Cell Science. Simona is a PhD student in the lab of Torsten Ochsenreiter at the Institute of Cell Biology, University of Bern, Switzerland, investigating mitochondrial genome anchoring, replication and inheritance in Trypanosoma brucei.</jats:p
I “graffi” della protesta Street art, barriere artificiali e forme di espressione del dissenso
No full textStreet art is any art – specifically visual art – developed in public
spaces. It can include traditional graffiti artwork, stencil, sculpture,
sticker art, street poster art, video projection, guerrilla art, flash mobbing, wheatpasting, etc. Typically, the term is used to refer to unsanctioned
or “prohibited” art, as opposed to institutional artistic initiatives. So, is
it possible to speak about street art as a form of protest art? If so, what
are the signs, texts, codes and practices through which graffiti, stencils
and other forms of street art can serve as means to express opposition
and dissent? The present paper aims at answering these questions at first
through a general historic introduction that will try to contextualize and
describe the street art phenomenon and its evolution over time, then
focusing on two specific case studies whose purpose is to investigate,
from a semiotic point of view, its role in the expression of dissent and
protest acts. Especially, we will deal with the use of graffiti, stencils
and posters as means of protest against two very known and discussed
examples of separation barrier
Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici. Indici 1-60
No full textIl volume raccoglie e riassume tutti gli articoli apparsi nei volumi 1-60 della rivista «Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici» («MD»), nel periodo compreso tra il 1978 e il 2008. Esso è diviso in tre parti. Nella prima sono riportati in successione i singoli numeri della rivista, con il relativo sommario. Nella seconda compaiono gli articoli riuniti in sequenza cronologica, sotto il nome dell’Autore e ognuno con un proprio numero d’ordine: di ogni articolo è fornito il sunto, con i concetti, le argomentazioni salienti, i principali luoghi discussi. Nella terza parte sono elencati gli Autori antichi e i Nomi e parole notevoli, con il rinvio al numero d’ordine dell’articolo. Le schedature dei numeri 1-30 sono curate da Andrea Cucchiarelli, quelle dei numeri 31-60 da Simona Fortini.The volume collects and summarizes all the articles published in Volumes 1-60 of the journal "Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici” ("MD"), in the period between 1978 and 2008. It is divided into three parts. In the first part the individual issues of the journal are summarized with the table of contents. In the second part the articles appear in chronological order, under the name of the author and each with its own serial number: each item is provided with a summary including the main points of argumentation and the loci discussed. The third part contains the indexes of the ancient authors, of the names and of the most relevant things and words, with reference to the number of the item. The profiling of the numbers 1-30 is cared for by Andrea Cucchiarelli, those of the numbers 31-60 by Simona Fortini
Unusual Presentation of a Gangrenous Cholecystitis that Mimics a Bowel Perforation.
No full textWe report the case of a diabetic 49-year-old man affected by
phlegmonous cholecystitis with an unusual radiological presentation
mimicking a bowel perforation. Actually, abdomen X-ray showed free
intraperitoneal air spots (dark crescent beneath the diaphragm)
in the upright positions. We have not found any similar cases in
the published literature, except for a case report about an unusual
presentation of an emphysematous cholecystitis. The clinical
practitioner has to pay attention not to fall into a fixation error during
diagnosis
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