Signs, Codes, Spaces, and Arts

Signs, Codes, Spaces, and Arts
Author: Leonid Tchertov
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 539
Release: 2019-12-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1527544613

This book delves into the concepts of general and spatial semiotics, discussing the differences and interactions between semiotic means of diverse types and levels. It introduces an integrative model (“the sign prism”) which unites many famous schemes of sign connection. It considers the human as a being included in a self-created semiosphere of signs and interacting with a sphere of natural signals and indexes available also to animals. The majority of the text is devoted to spatial semiotics, and its distinctions from temporal ways of sign connection. Its specific categories and particular visual-spatial codes are considered here as the peculiar means of communication and thinking. An essential feature of the book is the application of the author’s concepts of spatial semiotics to research of structures and the historical changes of visual arts.

The Notion of Space within Diverse Fields of Cognizance

The Notion of Space within Diverse Fields of Cognizance
Author: Driss Bouyahya
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2021-07-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1527573184

This volume provides a multifaceted approach to how meanings of space are created and how they impact individuals’ perceptions, sense of belonging, identity, actions and ideologies. It brings together various contributions that shed light on the multiplicity of voices and narratives on space, on their co-existence and forms of interactions, and on the ways in which they emerged from, and reshaped, relations of power.

The Meanings of the Built Environment

The Meanings of the Built Environment
Author: Federico Bellentani
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2021-01-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110617277

This volume analyses the interpretation of the built environment by connecting analytical frames developed in the fields of semiotics and geography. It focuses on specific components of the built environment: monuments and memorials, as it is easily recognisable that they are erected to promote specific meanings in the public space. The volume concentrates on monuments and memorials in post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe, with a focus on Estonia. Elites in post-Soviet countries have often used monuments to shape meanings reflecting the needs of post-Soviet culture and society. However, individuals can interpret monuments in ways that are different from those envisioned by their designers. In Estonia, the relocation and removal of Soviet monuments and the erection of new ones has often created political divisions and resulted in civil disorder. This book examines the potential gap between the designers’ expectations and the users’ interpretations of monuments and memorials. The main argument is that connecting semiotics and geography can provide an innovative framework to understand how monuments convey meanings and how these are variously interpreted at societal levels.

Art Maps and Cities

Art Maps and Cities
Author: Gloria Lanci
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2022-11-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3031133064

This book presents an original study on how contemporary artists are exploring urban spaces through mapping. Despite a long history of representations of cities in maps, and the relationships that can be envisaged between art maps and cities in the contemporary world, little research is dedicated to investigating how artists intervene in the realm of urban cartography. The research examines a century-old history of art maps and draws on academic debates challenging traditional notions of maps as scientific artefacts produced through accurate measurement and surveying. The potential of art maps to construct personal narratives, through contestation, embodiment and play, is analysed in the city context, where spaces are shaped by urban planning and design, political ideologies and socio-economic forces. Adopting an exploratory and interpretative research approach that investigates the confluence of theories originated in different domains, this book conducts the reader to discover what artistic practices can bring into a more creative, while inquisitive, understanding of cities. A series of semi-structured interviews with visual artists, enquiring how they apprehend, process and re-create urban spaces in artworks, explores cartographic process and methods in visual art practices in the twenty first century, which incorporates digital technologies and critical thinking.

Cold War Europe

Cold War Europe
Author: Tobias Nanz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2024-10-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110733242

The Cold War is often stereotypically depicted as a period of complete separation between Eastern and Western Europe, a time of little communication and exchange between what is often called the "Eastern bloc" and the capitalist West . European integration, it is thought, was a Western project based on exclusively Western ideas. This edited volume aims to debunk this stereotype. It provides evidence for the numerous media and individuals that contributed to the circulation and exchange of ideas across the ideological divide of the Iron Curtain. The essays in this volume discuss the official and unofficial channels of communication between the Eastern bloc and the West as well as the complex networks of transmission and reception that enabled the exchange of ideas between the two. The first part of the volume examines the communication infrastructure of the Cold War and the role of then available communication technologies. The second hones in on how different media channels, and the radio in particular, were used to form and transmit ideas between East and West, whereas the third and final part looks at how individual artists and literary authors made their voices heard across the Iron Curtain.

2017 Department of Art Faculty & Alumni Exhibition

2017 Department of Art Faculty & Alumni Exhibition
Author: Jason Shaiman
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2017-08-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 138716886X

2017 Department of Art Faculty & Alumni Exhibition catalog published by the Miami University Art Museum, Miami University, Oxford, OH.

Trans-Colonial Urban Space in Palestine

Trans-Colonial Urban Space in Palestine
Author: Maha Samman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2013-06-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1136668853

Taking a multidisciplinary approach to examine the dynamics of ethno-national contestation and colonialism in Israel/Palestine, this book investigates the approaches for dealing with the colonial and post-colonial urban space, resituating them within the various theoretical frameworks in colonial urban studies. The book uses Henry Lefebvre’s three constituents of space – perceived, conceived and lived – to analyse past and present colonial cases interactively with time. It mixes the non-temporal conceptual framework of analysis of colonialism using literature of previous colonial cases with the inter-temporal abstract Lefebvrian concepts of space to produce an inter-temporal re-reading of them. Israeli colonialism in the occupied areas of 1967, its contractions from Sinai and Gaza, and the implications on the West Bank are analysed in detail. By illustrating the transformations in colonial urban space at different temporal stages, a new phase is proposed - the trans-colonial. This provides a conceptual means to avoid the pitfalls of neo-colonial and post-colonial influences experienced in previous cases, and the book goes on to highlight the implications of such a phase on the Palestinians. It is an important contribution to studies on Middle East Politics and Urban Geography.