Employing mapping research, this study mapped the populations of environment-focused social media, audiovisual media and art, in Sweden, over a one-year period. The study explored what is being communicated about the environment in Sweden in these fields, by whom, and how it circulates in diverse communicative spaces. The research identified 502 units across the three fields and a multitude of voices addressing environmental issues through these fields. These channels and voices give visibility to diverse topics and perspectives (...) about the environment and human-nature relations. Simultaneously, there is considerable homogeneity, as a majority of the identified social media, audiovisual media and art units clearly align with ecocentric positions that contest the hegemony of anthropocentrism. These ecocentric voices strongly oppose the dominance of human-centered apprehensions of nature that legitimate nature’s exploitation and the drainage of natural resources for economic profit. Instead, they argue for structural changes promoting environmental protection and the rebalancing of human-nature relations. (shrink)

Since its establishment in 1979, the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University has given rise to numerous studies on history, memory and trauma in the wake of the Holocaust. While acknowledging its audiovisual nature, previous accounts have nevertheless failed to consider the significance of this novel archival formation and how it shapes the production and reception of survivors’ testimonies. This article occasions an unlikely encounter between the trauma and testimony discourse as developed by Dori Laub, Shoshana Felman, (...) Lawrence Langer in the context of the Yale archive, and the theory of “technical media” as developed by German media theorist, Friedrich Kittler. It argues that the trauma and testimony discourse has a technological unconscious in the form of videotape technology, which crucially conditions the way trauma is conceived in this discourse. It is only with an audiovisual medium capable of capturing and reproducing evidence of the fleeting unconscious that a discourse concerned with the unarticulated past becomes intelligible. (shrink)

Much writing on, first, analogue and, later, digital archives has focused on related power-dynamics and the structuring effects of archives and their technologies on discursive freedom and cultural dynamics. In recent years, however, work within the media archaeology domain, especially by Wolfgang Ernst, has addressed how the specific materialities of digital archives, and the nature of their algorithms and particular functions, could be seen to facilitate dynamics in cultures. This article sets this work in dialogue with the cultural semiotics (...) of Juri Lotman, whose late work focused on how communicative processes between and within different subsystems of culture facilitate their dynamic change and the production of new forms and cultural systems. The article suggests further interdisciplinary dialogue between media archaeology and cultural semiotics in order to understand the role of archives in facilitating communicative processes and interlinking in culture and the emergence of novelties – that is, for understanding the ‘creativity’ of archives. (shrink)

Deep learning algorithms are rapidly changing the way in which audiovisual media can be produced. Synthetic audiovisual media generated with deep learning—often subsumed colloquially under the label “deepfakes”—have a number of impressive characteristics; they are increasingly trivial to produce, and can be indistinguishable from real sounds and images recorded with a sensor. Much attention has been dedicated to ethical concerns raised by this technological development. Here, I focus instead on a set of issues related to the (...) notion of synthetic audiovisual media, its place within a broader taxonomy of audiovisual media, and how deep learning techniques differ from more traditional approaches to media synthesis. After reviewing important etiological features of deep learning pipelines for media manipulation and generation, I argue that “deepfakes” and related synthetic media produced with such pipelines do not merely offer incremental improvements over previous methods, but challenge traditional taxonomical distinctions, and pave the way for genuinely novel kinds of audiovisual media. (shrink)

The critical discourse analysis is the tool used in this article, to study how audiovisual media have constructed mental representation about the historical facts occurred in Spain between the final stage of the Spanish Civil War and the late 1980s: the theft of newborn babies. The State has failed in an attempt to establish policies that support truth, justice and reparation as it has been recalled by United Nations experts to the Government of Spain, and the reports and (...) documentaries have become vehicles to capture and recover memories. Our objective is to analyze how this collective awareness has been realized and the contribution of reports and documentaries. Our results show that the Spanish television channels silence the Francoist context to depict the thefts as the product of economical mobs focused on child trafficking. The international channels, however, put the origin of the dictatorship at the center of the discourse. (shrink)

Considering the overwhelming amount of media products that we are subjected to in the 21stcentury and the way in which those inevitably influence our perception of reality, this research pays specific attention to the role of the media in the construction and enhancement of stereotypes in everyday life, via the language or, more specifically, specialized languages. In particular, this paper aims to investigate an American legal TV series in order to analyze the way in which legal English is (...) used in dialogues. The major research questions are: to what extent such a kind of specialized discourse may be really understood by the greater audience? How does legal drama participate in the shaping of stereotypes relating to the legal environment in the country where it is produced, and cross-culturally, bearing in mind the prominence of “made in the USA” products in the television programming across the world? Ultimately, in the light of the previous questions, should the growing field of research in audiovisual translation extend its investigation into the area of legal English? Taking into consideration the seminal work of Pedersen and Diaz Cintas in the field of Audiovisual Translation, the study will examine the subtitling techniques employed for this atypical genre. Through the analysis of a corpus comprising several dialogues from a collection of episodes of the legal show Reckless, the paper will mostly focus on gender representations and their most common linguistically enhanced stereotypes. (shrink)

Mass media campaigns are widely and successfully used to change health decisions and behaviors for better or for worse in society. In the United States, media campaigns have been launched at local offices of the states’ department of motor vehicles to promote citizens’ willingness to organ donation and donor registration. We analyze interventional studies of multimedia communication campaigns to encourage organ-donor registration at local offices of states’ department of motor vehicles. The media campaigns include the use of (...) multifaceted communication tools and provide training to desk clerks in the use of scripted messages for the purpose of optimizing enrollment in organ-donor registries. Scripted messages are communicated to customers through mass audiovisual entertainment media, print materials and interpersonal interaction at the offices of departments of motor vehicles. These campaigns give rise to three serious concerns: (1) bias in communicating information with scripted messages without verification of the scientific accuracy of information, (2) the provision of misinformation to future donors that may result in them suffering unintended consequences from consenting to medical procedures before death (e.g, organ preservation and suitability for transplantation), and (3) the unmanaged conflict of interests for organizations charged with implementing these campaigns, (i.e, dual advocacy for transplant recipients and donors). We conclude the following: (1) media campaigns about healthcare should communicate accurate information to the general public and disclose factual materials with the least amount of bias; (2) conflicting interests in media campaigns should be managed with full public transparency; (3) media campaigns should disclose the practical implications of procurement as well as acknowledge the medical, legal, and religious controversies of determining death in organ donation; (4) organ-donor registration must satisfy the criteria of informed consent; (5) media campaigns should serve as a means of public education about organ donation and should not be a form of propaganda. (shrink)

Kijkwijzer is the name of the new Dutch rating system in use since early 2001 to provide information about the possible harmful effects of movies, home videos and television programs on young people. The rating system is meant to provide audiovisual productions with both age-based and content-based ratings. It is designed to enable self-regulation by the audio-visual sector. The development of Kijkwijzer, which took place under the auspices of NICAM, the Netherlands Institute for the Classification of Audiovisual (...) class='Hi'>Media, is based on consumer research among Dutch parents, as well as theories and research on children and the media. The consumer survey that preceded the development of Kijkwijzer revealed that 70% of Dutch parents indicated that they would use a rating system. The majority of parents liked to receive information on the content of media productions, particularly about violence, frightening content, sexual depictions, discrimination, drug abuse, and coarse language. Parents also wanted age categories. Kijkwijzer distinguishes four age categories: All Ages, 6, 12 and 16. This article gives an overview and account of the various principles underlying Kijkwijzer version 1.1. It also offers suggestions for improvement of future versions of Kijkwijzer. (shrink)

This article explores the way Levinas communicates his ethical message through the media at work in his work: speech, writing, and rare references to modern media. Levinas's ethical message concerns the import of the relation with the other, a relation that interrupts any attempt at its thematization, including Levinas's own philosophy. Levinas's text serves as an exemplary medium for this ethical message in conveying the teaching of ethics along with the interruption it advocates. The article then extends the (...) logic of the ethical message beyond the two key media present in Levinas's work—speech and writing—to speculate on whether the interruption it effects can be carried over to audiovisual media. Running throughout is the question of mediation, which takes the discussion outside the context of the face to face, where Levinas's thought is typically situated, to the context of the third and of justice. Levinas's thought may thus lead toward a radical ethics of media—radical in the sense that it posits the act of mediation itself as the root of such ethics. (shrink)

Introduction. The development of legal culture and a culture of human rights in the modern world through media technologies, is acquiring special significance in connection with the processes of globalization and the spread of media in recent decades. The purpose of the article is to study the prospects for the use of media education in the formation of the legal social culture and a culture of human rights. Materials and methods. Based on a study of domestic and (...) foreign sources, issues of media education, media literacy, spiritual and moral education, the legal culture of society, the phenomenon of post-truth and ways of forming critical, creative thinking are considered. The use of general scientific, philosophical, and socio-pedagogical methods has made it possible to study media education as a dialogue of learning, stimulating the development of rational, critical thinking, focused on the search for the value foundations of intellectual and social activity. Results. The development of the field of information and communication technologies determines the principles for the formation of the content and orientation of modern education. Media education is interlinked with the development of democracy and human rights. It influences the formation of a culture of citizen participation, their active social position, civic and political culture. Media education plays a significant role in shaping the legal culture of society since critical media research and information research focuses on the analysis of power structures and structures of dominance in the media. A study of the interpretations of the concepts of "media education" and "media literacy" made it possible to show that media education focuses a person on a critical approach to media content. One of the main issues of media education is teaching a person the skills to critically study media and media technologies, which involves addressing the technological, cultural and historical specifics of specific media used at a specific time and place. Information and communication technologies have changed the way of life, work, communication, and ways of selfpresentation, the formation of values, participation in socially significant events. Therefore, a critical approach to mass media should be based on knowledge of socio-philosophical theories, ethics and research in the field of mass media. Discussion. Mass media are constructing a history of human rights, which updates the topic of the media policy of human rights, combining socio-legal, cultural and media theories. Education in the field of acquiring information perception skills, the ability to correctly understand the importance of audiovisual images, to competently handle and navigate information flows are necessary for the life of a modern person in society. (shrink)

This collective book analyzes seriality as a major phenomenon increasingly connecting audiovisual narratives (cinematic films and television series) in the 20th and 21st centuries. The book historicizes and contextualizes the notion of seriality, combining narratological, aesthetic, industrial, philosophical, and political perspectives, showing how seriality as a paradigm informs media convergence and resides at the core of cinema and television history. By associating theoretical considerations and close readings of specific works, as well as diachronic and synchronic approaches, this volume (...) offers a complex panorama of issues related to seriality including audience engagement, intertextuality and transmediality, cultural legitimacy, authorship, and medium specificity in remakes, adaptations, sequels, and reboots. Written by a team of international scholars, this book highlights a diversity of methodologies that will be of interest to scholars and doctoral students across disciplinary areas such as media studies, film studies, literature, aesthetics, and cultural studies. It will also interest students attending classes on serial audiovisual narratives and will appeal to fans of the series it addresses, such as Fargo, Twin Peaks, The Hunger Games, Bates Motel, and Sherlock. (shrink)

Media art can be conceived as laboratory, at the edges of art. These technological experiments give priority to innovation and exploration by means of new media. In metaphorical terms, we could say that the emphasis is on creating new languages that allow us, in a later phase, to write prose or poetry with it.In my paper, I discuss why the common view on media art falls short. Media art is not just about mixing media but (...) rather about mixing art. Several different challenges are at stake that beget a hybrid post-medium condition. (1) The artistic practice of media art often concerns exercises in remediation (i.e. resonating visual narratives of old media in new media). Here, we encounter a repetition of historical themes and re-makes or re-enactments of classical art pieces. These experiments thus mix the history of art. (2) Media art is often also about immersion (i.e. interactively enclosing the spectactor in a audiovisual or virtual realm). In experiments with CAVE-installations or 3D-cinema using digital goggles, for instance, we notice a combination of an artistic interest with a phenomenologicaland a scientific one (cf. so-called postfenomenology, robotics, experimental psychology). Hence, these experiments mix art with science. (3) Media art is not just a friction between art an technoscience. It takes place at a junction between art, creative industry, design, sociology and politics. Concerning the latter, I willdiscuss the culture-critical potential of i.e. hacktivism, marx 2.0 and bio-performances like Stelarc and Orlan. (4) Media art is not simply a genre that aims for recognition as a part of or a completion of fine art. While democratizing new media technology, it actually blurs the idea of genre, altering and opening up the very canon of fine art, music art, live art, performance art, video art and cinema. (shrink)

The proposal of the research is to review and analyse the role of the media as constructors of social imaginaries, and to do so, we will analyse the power of the audiovisual industry to create and re-create stereotypes about lesbians, and as generators of a social imaginary, we will also analyse lesbian plots and characters, through which direct messages are sent to society in general, but also to lesbians.Finally, after conducting discussion groups and focus groups with lesbians who (...) have participated in the research, we present some conclusions. (shrink)

This article refutes the apparently innocent, common sense idea that the audiovisual screen is just a window to the world that displays an extra set of sensual data alongside and independent of our personal, unmediated experience of reality. On the contrary, the screen as an in-between is both a mediator and generator of reality that eventually compromises the distinction between us and our environment. Part 1 discusses three examples of mediation: eclipsing, interpassivity and audiovisual media as a (...) truth-procedure. Part 2 discusses three examples of generation: the production of simulacra, hyperreality and the emergence of a mixed reality. (shrink)

In this reply to Robrecht Vanderbeeken’s essay ‘The Screen as an In-Between’ questions are raised concerning the three distinctive effects the authors attributes to contemporary audiovisual media—eclipsing, interpassivity and truth procedure—and argued that they fail to highlight the specificity of the new media referred to.

How might experimental media art help theorise what falls by the wayside in the digital public sphere? Working in the years immediately following the launch of YouTube in 2005, some media artists centred their creative praxis towards the end of that decade upon rescuing, revalorising, and placing back into digital circulation audiovisual media formats and technologies that appeared aged or obsolete. Although there may be a degree of nostalgia behind such practices, these artworks articulate a cogent (...) critique of the drive towards constant innovation that was responsible for the invention and global expansion of cinema, but in recent decades has been responsible for its decay—or, perhaps more accurately, for its perpetual transformation. The article explores this 'media-archaeology' sensibility as a way of thinking about AI more widely: an approach that sees histories of media not as a linear, chronological search for origins, but as a critical recovery of artefacts lodged discontinuously in multiple layers of the past. Although digital technologies form a central part of the creative process of the artists considered in this article, their works also act as a critical conscience about digital change, asking what the so-called digital revolution is leaving out, and leaving behind. In so doing, it illuminates some potential positive and negative impacts of digital technologies' mediation of new forms of public engagement, whether in art, archives, or on social media. (shrink)

Interfaces have partially replaced editors. They now administer and have industrialized the processes of content circulation. Web platforms mediatize cultural memory and one example of this is that of online audiovisual archives which are a paradigmatic case involving interfaces mediating our image of the past. Therefore, their role as an enunciative framework is clearly worthy of thought and study. We will thus use a semiotic approach based on the starting hypothesis that digital interfaces shape our belief systems through a (...) discursive framing of content to which they give access. By analyzing two case studies, we will argue that the transparency of interfaces appears to recall the notion of “mechanical objectivity” and thus refashion the reliability of the archives. However, a final counter-analysis of a document read in the framework of an on-site consultation invites us to reshape our considerations and enlarge the perspective from semiotic visual analysis to include the social processes linked to the publication of digital heritage. (shrink)

How might experimental media art help theorise what falls by the wayside in the digital public sphere? Working in the years immediately following the launch of YouTube in 2005, some media artists centred their creative praxis towards the end of that decade upon rescuing, revalorising, and placing back into digital circulation audiovisual media formats and technologies that appeared aged or obsolete. Although there may be a degree of nostalgia behind such practices, these artworks articulate a cogent (...) critique of the drive towards constant innovation that was responsible for the invention and global expansion of cinema, but in recent decades has been responsible for its decay—or, perhaps more accurately, for its perpetual transformation. The article explores this 'media-archaeology' sensibility as a way of thinking about AI more widely: an approach that sees histories of media not as a linear, chronological search for origins, but as a critical recovery of artefacts lodged discontinuously in multiple layers of the past. Although digital technologies form a central part of the creative process of the artists considered in this article, their works also act as a critical conscience about digital change, asking what the so-called digital revolution is leaving out, and leaving behind. In so doing, it illuminates some potential positive and negative impacts of digital technologies' mediation of new forms of public engagement, whether in art, archives, or on social media. (shrink)

This handbook offers new ways to read the audiovisual. In the media landscapes of today, conglomerates jockey for primacy and the internet increasingly places media in the hands of individuals-producing the range of phenomena from movie blockbuster to YouTube aesthetics. Media forms and genres are proliferating and interpenetrating, from movies, music and other entertainments streaming on computers and iPods to video games and wireless phones. The audiovisual environment of everyday life, too-from street to stadium to (...) classroom-would at times be hardly recognizable to the mid-twentieth-century subject. The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics provides powerful ways to understand these changes.Earlier approaches tended to consider sound and music as secondary to image and narrative. These remained popular even as practices from theater, cinema and television migrated across media. However, the traversal, or "remediation," from one medium to another has also provided practitioners and audiences the chance to rewrite the rules of the audiovisual contract. Whether viewed from the vantage of televised mainstream culture, the Hollywood film industry, the cinematic avant-garde, or the participatory discourses of "cyberspace," audiovisual expression has changed dramatically. The book provides a definitive cross-section of current ways of thinking about sound and image. Its authors-leading scholars and promising younger ones, audiovisual practitioners and non-academic writers - open the discussion on audiovisual aesthetics in new directions. Our contributors come from fields including film, visual arts, new media, cultural theory, and sound and music studies, and they draw variously from economic, political, institutional, psychoanalytic, genre-based, auteurist, internationalist, reception-focused, technological, and cultural approaches to questions concerning today's sound and image. All consider the aural dimension, and what Michel Chion calls "audio-vision:" the sensory and semiotic result of sound placed with vision, an encounter greater than their sum. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 22-25. The Author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior), Brazil. From the multifarious subdivisions of semiotics, be they naturalistic or culturalistic, the realm of semiotics of value is a ?eld that is getting more and more attention these days. Our entire political and economic systems are based upon structures of symbolic representation that many times seem not only to embody monetary value but also to determine it. The connection between monetary (...) and linguistic exchanges is self-evident: the former requires the latter and develops in direct relation to it. Creative experimentation and design of digital systems of value exchange are blossoming on the web. Dr. Gilson Schwartz, an economist turned media theorist and professor at the University of São Paulo, adopted the concept of Iconomics, originally created by Michael Kaplan, an author concerned with the linguistics of economic value. Empowering local communities and unlocking new levels of value creation and representation via digital technologies are the main goals of Dr. Schwartz’s projects, aiming at the re-designing of our relationship to the economic value of imagination and the social control of property. Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Michael. “Iconomics: The Rhetoric of Speculation.” Public Culture . 15.3 (2003): 477-493. Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings? Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform which unfolds as an action research agenda connected both to the production of audiovisual content and the development of social currency software. The initiative dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. At that time, we issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda, calling for more debate at the I Financial Inclusion Forum. This year, the monetary authorities organized a second forum that also opened the room to discussions on mobile payment systems and new perspectives on poverty alleviation via State subsidies. The Ministry of Culture funded the “Creative Currencies” project in 2009-2010 and our next stage in this discovery process is to be supported by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). In short, there is genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil. However, after all these years we are still at a very early stage of research and practice. Some of the most successful initiatives (such as Banco Palmas) actually evolved out of local monetary creation to become correspondent banking operations for commercial banks and other financial groups. After eight years of price stability and social inclusion, Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation, even the Grameen Bank is now entering the Brazilian market and many NGOs are geared towards different forms of entrepreneurialism in the base of the pyramid, riding solidarity economic models, microfinance and microcredit for local development. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor. In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues, such as the limits of central banking, the prospects for local financial development and the possibility of creating and managing financial icons as cultural assets. The purpose of this project is to produce short documentaries that will bear testimony to this evolving regulatory framework while inducing more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation. RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation? GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions, not on supposedly natural or material foundations but out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and Kaplan´s paper, the first to use the expression “iconomics”, insists on the rhetoric and semiotic effects associated to a supposedly scientific model of money creation and management. This is a fundamental change that was perceived and discussed much before the digitalization of the world by unorthodox economists such as John Maynard Keynes since the early 20th century. The digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies. The banking establishment, however, is keen on the idea that scientific formulae hold the key to sound money creation. Keynesianism has been repeatedly associated to “inflationism” while the supposedly sound monetary policies of the Orthodoxy serve well the political and financial interests of a technocratic elite. Corporate media also serve this fictitious depiction of the monetary process despite the cyclical bust of monetary rules and financial regulations. The internet, however, has created numerous opportunities for the disintermediation in industries such as film, music and commodities. There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can also be transformed by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Money is media as well. Credit is but confidence. Once people realize that the distributed computing power of networks can also be the platform to weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions. So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet. Digital assets, however, clearly have an inherent potential to escape central control and proprietary regulatory frameworks. RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency? GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system. However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory and even the “human.” Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States (Chinese-like intervention is the exception, not the rule). Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Especially in the Third World, mobile communications fast became conveyors of money transfers and other appropriation strategies. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and, as a matter of fact, have so far contributed to the containment of these processes. Governments serve these moguls and have usually adopted a wait-and-see attitude. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital and thus form the ground on which to design and implement social currencies. The global financial crisis, as well as the dollar demise, are an event of such a proportion that social networks may open the path for emancipator subjects to seize the opportunity. RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged? GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on use and exchange value, supply and demand. This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. The plasticity of digital platforms is relevant insofar as intellectual property becomes the central source of value creation. But when you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. RLM: Are gaming and online storytelling digital practices that might have an impact on the way new currencies are created and developed? GS: “Play money” has been one of the early and most intriguing phenomena associated to the diffusion of virtual worlds. These virtual currencies have also been prone to “boom and bust” dynamics, speculation and pure theft (Second Life scams were common and led to “intervention” by the owners of the game). Storytelling is a major source of value, that is, the value of attention and the markets for audience. There are plenty of private monies created and managed by corporate entertainment groups, telecom operators (via mobile virtual network operators) and marketing frameworks. The casino economy, as already depicted by Keynes and other unorthodox economists, is always storytelling about future states of the world, confidence building and leverage of animal spirits. The novelty of current events is not the fictitious nature of any form of capital, but the potential for digital democratization of controls over the imaginary nature of value creation. But this is just a potential, a possibility, a figment that more often than not is appropriated by centralized and opaque private powers. The game industry is a testbed for new connections between storytelling and money creation. RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Our entire monetary system seems therefore to function according to a logic of scarcity. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance? GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the “scarcity” is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever. Central banks are at the service of private banks in the creation and management of scarcity. RLM: The promise that nanotechnology holds for our future is one of radical abundance (or so say transhumanists). The possibility of creating any kind of material substance through nanoengineering seems each day more feasible. What would this possibility entail in terms of systems of value exchange? GS: Nanotechnology, environmental concerns and grassroots appropriation of distributed knowledge are the frontiers of a new horizon of energy creation and management. Social groups in charge of managing scarcity for the sake of wealth and power concentration must be held accountable for the destruction of our future. Once this key political conundrum is accounted for, new systems of value exchange and even a non-mercantile society will come into existence. Revolutionary theorists such as Marx envisaged transformation via the extreme clash of contradictions between capital and labour. This approach has never led to a change in the systemic logic of scarcity for the sake of social control. We are once again facing the threshold of large scale societal change, but the outcome of the current crisis should come from our imagination, not from yet another paradox of abundance and scarcity. As long as we remain attached to the materiality of value, the illusion of freedom will but reinforce the massive manipulation of necessity. RLM: What do you think is the role of crowdfunding in this context? GS: Crowdsourcing as well as crowdfunding are examples of the peer to peer opportunities that come along with distributed computer power. However, the power structure behind wealth and scarcity creation may or may not be changed by crowd management. But it should not be taken at face value, so to speak. The stock market of course is an early form of crowdfunding without calling into question the proprietary framework of the companies offering their investment projects to the market. Any market is a form of crowdsourcing, that is to say, of distributed forms of supply and demand matchmaking. The wealth of networks, however, depends on the contractual ecosystem, the institutional framework, the channeling of social imagination, not on the purely quantitative distribution of bids and offers. I see economics as supply, demand and code. Once you have access to the code, once openness becomes part of the game, then there is a chance of crowd behavior becoming collective intelligence and sustainable imagination. RLM: Is the development of digital currencies headed towards a pluralistic ecology in which many micro currency systems co-exist, or is it penetrating the mainstream monetary system? If it is affecting the mainstream financial system, what would be its effect in the long-term? GS: The same issue is at stake both at local and global levels. The global system is, as a matter of fact, an unstable ecosystem of “micro currencies” whereas the dollar has so far exerted an overwhelming influence. Local currencies and private monies coexist with national currencies only to the extent that the Central Bank admits, for instance, that grassroots monetary emissions remain territorial and strictly connected to poverty. However, the question of how new developments in digital technologies and nanotechnologies might alter not only our current monetary systems but also our understanding of value in itself, is still an open question. (shrink)

During recent years, the audiovisual landscape in Belgium has been going through a number of drastic changes.The monopoly of the public broadcasting system, standing for over 40 years, was breached. Several hundreds of private radio stations, two new commercial television stations and a number of private local television stations saw the light. The advent of all these newcomers has created a competitive media system. Therivalry between the public broadcasting companies and the commercial stations is very severe and unfortunately (...) the PBS are imitating the commercial model: they sacrifice more time for fiction and entertainment. Moreover, the Belgian media policy is very permissive and favours commercialisation. (shrink)

The article connects the forms of contemporary TV series with the narrative and participatory logics of contemporary media. In particular, the author proposes to consider the wide diffusion and popularity of TV series as a form of response and adaptation to the contemporary media condition. The article proposes an analysis of the ways in which the human instinct for storytelling finds form in contemporary participatory media practices. This reflection is situated within the broader debate on post-cinema and (...) the ways in which new technologies have transformed cinema and audiovisual products. This theoretical perspective is related to the well-known twentieth-century philosophical reflection on the status of narration. TV series, therefore, are a response to the “call for concordance” (Ricœur) that is nowadays more evident than ever. Yet there seems to be a sort of paradox here, that characterises the TV series aesthetic experience: in the process of accomplishing this concordance, by creating solid and unitary world, TV series adapt that transmedia aesthetic (Jenkins) of fragmentation that is typical of contemporary media logic. At the end the author discusses some examples. (shrink)

It has become a commonplace that "images" were central to the twentieth century and that their role will be even more powerful in the twenty-first. But what is an image and what can an image be? _Releasing the Image_ understands images as something beyond mere representations of things. Releasing images from that function, it shows them to be self-referential and self-generative, and in this way capable of producing forms of engagement beyond spectatorship and subjectivity. This understanding of images owes much (...) to phenomenology—the work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty—and to Gilles Deleuze's post-phenomenological work. The essays included here cover historical periods from the Romantic era to the present and address a range of topics, from Cézanne's painting, to images in poetry, to contemporary audiovisual art. They reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and political stakes of the project of releasing images and provoke new ways of engaging with embodiment, agency, history, and technology. (shrink)

Since both responses interrogate different aspects of my article “The screen as an in-between” (Vanderbeeken 2011 ), I will address them separately. Vanhoutte rightly questions the affinities of my theses with Luddism, Orwell and Baudrillard’s theoretical terrorism. My reply discusses why these reactionary positions are currently out of joint. Hoens rightly questions my interpretation of the notion ‘passion for the real’ and whether the examples discussed delineate the specificity of new media. My reply discusses how I take this notion (...) as a starting point for an analysis that complements rather then criticises Badiou and Žižek and how the apparent resemblance between old and new media in fact entails significant differences. (shrink)

This study reflects on the ways in which children, during pandemic times, expressed themselves and came into contact with their teachers and classmates through Image-Letters, ways of saying and saying themselves to the world through audiovisual media. Sensible sharing of their daily lives were revealed by these media and made us think about the diverse childhood of this time. The theoretical framework that supported this work had the contribution of De Certeau regarding studies on everyday life, Walter (...) Benjamin with his writings on childhood experience, Sandra Corazza and Walter Kohan with their contributions to studies on contemporary childhoods and Virgínia Kastrup who supported us on to the cartography method, a methodological approach that allowed us to follow the research process. The objective of this work was to observe the ways in which children communicate through verbal-visual media and what type of content and everyday fragments they choose to share their experiences during the pandemic period.with the school institution. It is important to highlight that the dissemination of the images was authorized by the children and their guardians through a free and informed consent term, in compliance with the ethical principles of research with images of children. Furthermore, the images are available through QRcode and can be accessed through a smartphone camera. (shrink)

Au cours de cette recherche, nous réfléchissons à la question de la couverture médiatique du domaine sportif. Nous nous concentrons sur l’impact de la présence des médias sur la construction de l’information sportive elle-même. Nous discutons de la position de l’analyste du discours vis-à-vis de ce contexte de production de discours ; production fortement influencée par l’outil technologique. Par exemple, nous montrons que le placement de microphones sur les acteurs de la rencontre sportive pousse l’analyste à considérer ces participants comme (...) des objets et des producteurs de la couverture médiatique. Par l’analyse de ce type de corpus, nous proposons donc d’étudier ces questions de positionnement de l’analyste au sein de ce double contexte de production. (shrink)

bildwechsel is one of the most prolific and longstanding video collectives established in Europe within the framework of the women’s movement. Founded in 1979 by students of the Hamburg College of Fine Arts, in 1986 the group became an umbrella organization with activities and agents spread all over Europe and the world sharing a common infrastructure. The purpose of bildwechsel is to strengthen women’s presence in the audiovisual media and to advance feminist and queer art. The group has (...) been pursuing its mandate initially through local workshops and exhibitions, then through archival practices and programming activities promoted on the organization’s website. This article examines bildwechsel as an example of women’s ability to maintain a niche presence within the European and the world art scene since the late 1970s via grassroots globalized practices, from within a theoretical framework drawing on transnational feminism and new media theory. (shrink)

The cognitive value of film art. The implications of Stanisław Lem’s philosophy of literatureSince the mid-twentieth century, audiovisuality has taken over the means of communication. Progress in technology has contributed to the dynamic development of media such as film and television. Today we can safely admit that life is under the pressure of audiovisual media. The film is an element of common experience, part of everyday life. The question is whether it is also cognitively valuable? Can a (...) movie be a model that helps you to know yourself, your place in the world, relationships with others? And if so, how much can you trust such knowledge? The aim of this article is to reflect on the cognitive value of films, in the light of Stanislaw Lem’s theory of the reception of literature. The author compares a literary work to a model that represents a fragment or the whole of reality. Modeling is a design that lets us look at old problems from a new perspective or sheds light on the issues we did not realize before. An artwork becomes a model when, over time, it is recognized as outstanding by the public. Then the presented vision of the world begins to function as cognitively valuable. However, this is largely a random process. Similarly, it can be applied to a movie. The use of Lem’s theory for the analysis of literature and film aims to illustrate the importance of cognitive and culture-creating role of these arts. (shrink)

Social legitimacy is based on beliefs structured as narratives which derive their efficacy from their capacity to render themselves as homologies of the order they must satisfy. The distinctive feature of an incorrect divulgation of science in audiovisual media is its organization of the world withi..

Resumen: La obra videoescénica es un producto híbrido que presenta un mundo posible significado por medios teatrales y audiovisuales procedentes de dos modos de representación diferentes, el narrativo de enunciación audiovisual y el dramático. Esta investigación tiene como objetivo descubrir su funcionamiento. Para ello utiliza una metodología que pone en relación el campo interno de referencia del texto y el campo externo de referencia. Se señala a la pantalla de proyección, soporte material de la representación audiovisual, como interfaz (...) entre medios y modos de representación, permitiendo el acceso del personaje teatral al universo audiovisual y activando la participación del espectador en la construcción de sentido, porque comparte con el propio texto los niveles de producción y recepción de la cultura de la imagen en la que se encuentra inmerso. Abstract: The videoscenic play is a hybrid product that presents a fictional world meaned through theatrical and audiovisual media from two different modes of representation, the narrative of enunciation audiovisual and the dramatic one. This research aims to discover how it works. To do this, it uses a methodology that relates the Internal Reference Field of the text and the External Reference Field. It is pointed to the projection screen, material support of audiovisual representation, as an interface between media and modes of representation, allowing the access of the theatrical character to the audiovisual universe and activating the viewer's participation in the construction of meaning, since it shares with the own text the levels of production and reception of the culture of the image in which it is immersed. (shrink)

The text is looking for a political explanation of the turn in Western attitude to pornography which has taken place since the sixties and even more so since the seventies. More surprising than the liberalization of pornography itself appears the massive pornographic self-exposure even by minors since the turn of the millennium. In addition to the reasons for this extraordinary permissiveness, the paper questions the role of technical and audiovisual media in this social development.

The text is looking for a political explanation of the turn in Western attitude to pornography which has taken place since the sixties and even more so since the seventies. More surprising than the liberalization of pornography itself appears the massive pornographic self-exposure even by minors since the turn of the millennium. In addition to the reasons for this extraordinary permissiveness, the paper questions the role of technical and audiovisual media in this social development.

This study examined whether the stability of highly relevant animate and inanimate information predicted encoding. Participants viewed audiovisual media and completed a change detection task of screenshots taken from the viewing session. The screenshots were either left as originally viewed or a factor was altered. The factors were all motivationally and story relevant. Half were part of an animal and half were part of other environmental information. This was crossed with whether the information was stable or fleeting in (...) the scene. Changes to animals were more recognized than inanimate information. Changes to fleeting inanimate information were better recognized than changes to stable inanimate information. These findings indicate potential for relevant change in environmental threat and opportunity is adaptively significant and likely to increase attention and encoding across animate and inanimate categories of information. (shrink)

The Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics offers a comprehensive overview of Latin American aesthetic and conceptual production addressing the more-than-human environment at the intersection between art, activism, and critique. Fields include literature, performance, film, and other audiovisual media as well as their interactions with community activisms. Scholars who have helped establish environmental approaches in the field as well as emergent critical voices revisit key concepts such as ecocriticism, (post-)extractivism, and multinaturalism, while opening new avenues of dialogue with (...) areas including critical race theory and ethnicity, energy humanities, queer-*trans studies, and infrastructure studies, among others. This volume both traces these genealogies and maps out key positions in this increasingly central field of Latin Americanism, at the same time as they relate it to the environmental humanities at large. By showing how artistic and literary productions illuminate critical zones of environmental thought, articulating urgent social and material issues with cultural archives, historical approaches and conceptual interventions, this volume offers cutting-edge critical tools for approaching literature and the arts from new angles that call into question the nature/culture boundary. (shrink)

As medical ethics and professionalism education continues to equip medical students and residents with long-lasting tools, educators should continue to supplement proven teaching strategies with engaging, relatable, and generationally appropriate didactic supplements. However, popular teaching aids have recently been criticized in the literature and summative information on alternatives is absent. The purpose of this review is to evaluate and assess the functional use and application of short form audiovisual didactic supplements or "icebreakers" in medical ethics and professionalism teaching. A (...) systematic review of both the medical and humanities literature (i.e., PubMed/medline, Cochrane Library, and JSTOR) was conducted from inception to August 1, 2019. Final articles were subjected to a qualitative appraisal and thematic analysis. Thirteen articles were included for final analysis. Sixty-nine percent (n = 9) of the studies were published after 2000. Two studies were qualitative, one study was quantitative, and the remaining articles were commentaries. Short form audiovisual media was most popular outside of the United States (n = 10). Sixty-nine percent (n = 9) of articles advocated for self-contained media in the form of trigger films or short films/videos, while the remaining articles (n = 4) discussed the use of TV/film clips. Producibility of media was exclusive to short/trigger films. Nine themes were identified in the content analysis: adaptability, conversation catalyst, effective, engaging, nuance, practice, producibility, real, and subject diversity. The three most common themes in descending order of frequency were: conversation catalyst, realness, and adaptability. Trigger films represent an effective and unique pedagogical strategy in supplementing current medical ethics and professionalism teaching at the medical school level. (shrink)

The documentary genre is one of the audiovisual mechanisms with the greatest media efficiency in the transmission of reality. However, depending on the nature of the story, the construction of the textual and audiovisual discourse is altered. In this article, we consider the following questions: Is the documentary a format that is faithful to reality? What modifications does the discourse undergo so that the story is enhanced? To go deeper into this aspect, we intend to analyse the (...) different elements that make up the documentary discourse in its transition from reality to fictionalised narrative. To this end, an inspection of the environmental dissemination documentary My Octopus Teacher (Netflix, 2020) will be carried out. An audiovisual proposal in which the coexistence between human and animal life turns environmental dissemination into a powerful instrument for transmitting scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta el enfoque docente de la asignatura ‘Estructura Global de los Medios’, perteneciente al plan de estudios del Grado en Comunicación Audiovisual de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. A partir de la descripción y el análisis de la experiencia docente implementada durante el curso 2021-2022, basada en la simulación y la participación de los estudiantes en el desarrollo curricular, se destacan las innovaciones docentes aplicadas y los resultados de aprendizaje identificados. Estos resultados, fundamentados en el fomento del (...) trabajo en equipo y la competencia analítico-crítica del alumnado, indican que la metodología docente propuesta favorece la adquisición de competencias y dinamiza el proceso de aprendizaje a pesar de la dificultad intrínseca de la asignatura. (shrink)

A narrative analysis of a sequence from a documentary on the withholding of treatment in persistent vegetative state allows the discernment of several characteristics of the approach of the media to medical ethical problems: (1) The arrangement of the story units in the film sequence corresponds to established patterns of movie dramaturgy. (2) The documentary ”hollywoodizes” morality; it interprets the arena of the problem in the realm of the movie theatre and not in the realm of ethical discourse. (3) (...) The moral decision occurs in the return to mythical narrative structures which show a tendency to confirm perceived established world interpretation. (4) Morality is reduced to black and white characterizations. (5) The ethical conflict is transmitted through the plane of personal action which tends to blot out complex interdependencies. (6) Private happiness forms the basis for an essential set of criteria for all actions and decisions. The rational weighing of criterion is not easily transmittable by television; instead, television, due to its audiovisual sensory nature, has a great potential to awaken insight into and understanding of specific situations and personal experience. Thus television can supplement the philosophical discipline of hermeneutical bioethics in generating sympathy and deeper understanding. (shrink)

Despite changes in the media landscape, film remains a vital force in contemporary culture, as do our ideas of what "a movie" or "the cinematic" are. Indeed, we might say that the category of film now only exists in theory. Whereas film-theoretical discussion at the turn of the 21st century was preoccupied, understandably, by digital technology's permeation of virtually all aspects of the film object, this volume moves the conversation away from a focus on film's materiality towards timely questions (...) concerning the ethics, politics, and even aesthetics of thinking about the medium of cinema. To put it another way, this collection narrows in on the subject of film, not with a nostalgic sensibility, but with the recognition that what constitutes a film is historically contingent, in dialogue with the vicissitudes of entertainment, art, and empire. The volume is divided into six sections: Meta-Theory; Film Theory's Project of Emancipation; Apparatus and Perception; Audiovisuality; How Close is Close Reading?; and The Turn to Experience. (shrink)

Este artículo detalla la labor realizada dentro del proyecto de innovación docente El Ágora que se desarrolla en la Facultad de Comunicación de la Universidad de Castilla-la Mancha con la colaboración del Ente Publico Radiotelevisión de Castilla-La Mancha. Semanalmente, los estudiantes elaboran un programa de radio de 30 minutos que se emite en la radio pública. Además, generan contenidos audiovisuales para otros canales y plataformas. A lo largo de tres años (2019-), 168 estudiantes han participado en el proyecto. Sus valoraciones (...) son positivas tanto sobre la adquisición de conocimientos como a nivel experiencial. (shrink)

Aesthetics and communications theories are often applied to art, media and popular culture but not within legal empirical (audiovisual) material—despite the fact that a judicial and legal process comprises a palpable utilisation of the visual as evidence of an historical reality. Based on four distinct Swedish cases, this study analyses the court’s reasoning, interpretation and use of (audio)visual evidence. Inspired by an embodied film theory, Benjamin’s thoughts on the technical-dramaturgical components of the camera and the later Barthes’ notion (...) of the ‘punctum’, the article discusses how (audio)visual evidence cannot be disconnected from affective and aesthetic significances that ultimately can be taken to affect the perception of truth and (the crime’s) reality. The gap between theory and practice is debated and argued as beginning to co-exist; instead of seeing (visual) theory and (judicial) practice as a dichotomy, an attempt should be made for a conversation between seemingly different but in practice related areas of knowledge. The author’s aim is to suggest that photographic and filmic evidence has a particular significance in itself, which means that the relation between (judicial) interpretation and outcome should be considered within an affective and aesthetic dimension, rather than being placed and/or theorized outside of it. (shrink)

The article advocates the importance of studying conceptual meaning and change in modern mass media and highlights the significance of conceptual intermediality. The article first analyzes anger in Hindi cinema as an audiovisual key concept within the framework of an Indian national ideology. It explores how anger and the Indian angry young man became popularized, politicized, and stereotyped by popular films and print media in India in the 1970s and 1980s. The article goes on to advocate for (...) extending conceptual history beyond language on theoretical grounds and identifies two major obstacles in political iconography: the methodological subordination of visuals to language in the negotiation of meaning, and the distinction of emotion and reason by assigning them functionally to different sign systems. (shrink)

In this important new book, the leading cultural theorist and philosopher Bernard Stiegler re-examines the relationship between politics and aesthetics in our contemporary hyperindustrial age. Stiegler argues that our epoch is characterized by the seizure of the symbolic by industrial technology, where aesthetics has become both theatre and weapon in an economic war. This has resulted in a ‘symbolic misery’ where conditioning substitutes for experience. In today’s control societies, aesthetic weapons play an essential role: audiovisual and digital technologies have (...) become a means of controlling the conscious and unconscious rhythms of bodies and souls, of modulating the rhythms of consciousness and life. The notion of an aesthetic engagement, capable of founding a new communal sensibility and a genuine aesthetic community, has largely collapsed today. This is because the overwhelming majority of the population is now totally subjected to the aesthetic conditioning of marketing and therefore estranged from any experience of aesthetic inquiry. That part of the population that continues to experiment aesthetically has turned its back on those who live in the misery of this conditioning. Stiegler appeals to the art world to develop a political understanding of its role. In this volume he pays particular attention to cinema which occupies a unique position in the temporal war that is the cause of symbolic misery: at once industrial technology and art, cinema is the aesthetic experience that can combat conditioning on its own territory. This highly original work - the first in Stiegler’s Symbolic Misery series - will be of particular interest to students in film studies, media and cultural studies, literature and philosophy and will consolidate Stiegler’s reputation as one of the most original cultural theorists of our time. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to analyse how first-year undergraduate audiovisual communication students assess the credibility and reliability of information on Wikipedia in Basque and analyse whether the experience of being a Wikipedia editor helps to improve students’ perceptions of Wikipedia’s trustworthiness. The purpose of this project was to help students to better understand the credibility mechanisms of Wikipedia in Basque regarding the work of editing and creating entries. Do students’ perceptions about how reliable Wikipedia is change if they receive (...) training as Wikipedia content editors and understand Wikipedia’s credibility mechanisms? What are their perceptions about the credibility of Wikipedia? Design/methodology/approach The authors observed and analysed students’ behaviour and perceptions when creating Wikipedia articles and learning about the process of evaluating Wikipedia. This research was carried out at [masked for review] over four consecutive years, where 188 students in the Degree Programme in Audiovisual Communication participated through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews. Findings After the experience of creating content on Wikipedia and learning about Wikipedia’s credibility mechanisms experientially, the majority of students reported that their perception of Wikipedia’s credibility had increased, and 70% of students believed Wikipedia to be reliable or more reliable than expected. A smaller number of students stated that understanding Wikipedia’s editing processes decreased their perception of Wikipedia’s credibility. Practical implications This project will lead to a better understanding of the performance of students in editing content on Wikipedia and of the impact that this editing experience has on students’ perceptions of credibility with respect to Wikipedia. It will make it possible to better incorporate Wikipedia content editing into the learning processes of students and citizens. This study provides interesting keys to improving the reliability and credibility of Wikipedia among students. Social implications As the study examined Basque Wikipedia, it has important social implications since Basque is a minority language and Wikipedia is the main sources of information for students who study in Basque. Originality/value The authors have been analysing the credibility of information in general and that of information on Wikipedia in particular since 2010. Based on this experience, the authors decided to design this study so that it was carried out while the students were creating and editing Wikipedia content as part of a project in their educational curriculum. Furthermore, the study expands the body of research carried out to date by incorporating the perspectives of media studies students. (shrink)

O artigo situa no contexto da cultura contemporânea os desafios dos meios de comunicação social, especialmente da mídia eletrônica. Identifica as dimensões do sagrado e do mistério na própria natureza das imagens, oferecendo subsídios para o exercício da leitura crítica das narrativas audiovisuais. Palavras-chave: Imagem; Cultura; Imaginação; Sagrado; Mídia; Linguagem. ABSTRACT This article considers the challenges of social communication media within the context of contemporary culture, mainly in what concerns electronic media. It identifies dimensions of the sacred and (...) of the mysterious in the nature of images, offering subsidies for the exercise of a critical reading of audiovisual narratives. Key words: Image; Culture; Imagination; The sacred; Media; Language. (shrink)

The professional profile of a performer does not only consist of mere music playing, but calls into question a number of variables of private and public, musical and extra-musical articulation. Performers have their own personality and inclinations; they are exposed to different forms of education and influences; they develop certain technical and stylistic abilities; they find certain repertoires more suitable than others; they confront themselves with composers and their requests/indications; they have to take into account social demands to given repertoires; (...) they also, intentionally or not, develop a public persona; finally, and particularly nowadays, they create a number of media interfaces that allow the public to access all the previously-listed features. The present article focuses on new media communication, particularly “official websites”, as one of such media interfaces (and one of the most important ones, in present-day society): the various semiotic strategies of visual, linguistic and audiovisual representation of this medium will be applied to the case of the Lithuanian pianist Andrius Žlabys. (shrink)