No 3 (2025)

The term Russian geographical drawing (russkii geograficheskii chertiozh), which was proposed by Vladimir Kusov in 1993, has no exact equivalent in English. The term closest in meaning would probably be English estate maps, or French plans terriers, or German Flurpläne. The term describes large-scale, usually manuscript, maps resulting from surveying and measuring rural lands and usually used as an evidence relating to disputes about ownership. They usually cover two to five rural settlements. Some of them are painted, but most of them are uncolored ink drawings. The material for the study was the content of publicly-accessible web-GIS Drawings of the Russian State from the 16th to 17th Centuries developed by the Historical Geoinformatics Laboratory (at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in 2017. Unlike their European counterparts, Russian geographical drawings were a superstructure over a more archaic Russian geographical system known as The Book of the Great Chart (Kniga Bol'shomu chertezhu). This gives grounds to assume that there was a certain interaction between the signs of the Russian geographical drawings and the signs of The Book of the Great Chart. The article provides a semiological analysis of Russian geographical drawings using methods outlined by Roland Barthes in his work Elements of Semiology. In accordance with Barthes' methodological recommendations, I selected a corpus of graphic materials – a set of drawings covering an area ranging from 10 to 30 kilometers in length and/or in width. Then I extended the terms language and speech upon the case of cartography and established a dialectical connection between them. In cartography, the cartographer's speech (to the extent that his individual choice of signs is arbitrary) creates the language of maps, which is subsequently individually read by their users. I then described the features of the graphic symbols used in Russian geographical drawings. In particular, I identified and explained their high level of motivation. Then I distributed the facts discovered in the system of Russian geographical drawings along two axes (or planes) of language – paradigmatic (metaphorical) and syntagmatic (metonymic), in accordance with Roman Jakobson's concept. As examples, I considered such cartographic syntagmas as route and border. In the course of this, I identified a transformational model of the sign tree, the signified of which could enter into various relationships with other graphic elements of the drawing, changing the form of the content depending on the type of these relationships: whether the sign tree was considered as a boundary sign, or as an element of the forest. It is the existence of such a model that probably explains both the abundant presence of trees in the drawings and the unusualness of their graphic forms. In addition, I discovered a semantic link between the system of Russian geographical drawings and The Book of the Great Chart. One of the main conclusions of the work is that it is impossible to formulate an essentially correct characterization of the Russian geographical drawing without taking into account the The Book of the Great Chart. Together they formed a more complex system in which The Book of the Great Chart, which was part of the basic educational qualifications of the government officials, played the role of a coordinate grid, and the Russian geographical drawing revealed the details of the displayed natural and economic situation.

Media identity in the context of society's digital transformation represents a complex, dynamically changing phenomenon where traditional boundaries between content creators and consumers are becoming increasingly blurred. This article examines the crucial role of uncertainty as a constructive factor in the process of media identity formation. The authors propose an innovative theoretical and methodological approach combining the principles of Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (ANT), concepts of flat ontologies (Latour, Harman, DeLanda), and the original non-substantive methodology developed by the authors. The central thesis of the study is that uncertainty should not be perceived as a problem or limitation in researching media identity. On the contrary, it serves as a vital resource for uncovering latent connections, new types of actors, and non-obvious mechanisms of identity construction in the digital environment. The article provides a detailed analysis of how the state of uncertainty creates conditions for new forms of subjectivity to emerge, redefines boundaries between the human and the non-human (algorithms, interfaces, digital artifacts), and facilitates the constant reassembly of identities. The empirical part of the work includes a series of case studies demonstrating the productivity of the proposed approach: from analyzing the practices of video bloggers (Ksenia Prikhodko, Dmitry Sverlov) to examining interactions with artificial intelligence and virtual museums. Special attention is paid to the Virtual Hermitage project as an example of how digital technologies create new formats for experiencing cultural heritage and, consequently, new patterns of media identity. The theoretical significance of the research lies in the development of an original concept of productive uncertainty and a non-substantive methodology offering fundamentally new ways to analyze media identity. The practical value of the work is manifested in the potential application of the proposed approaches to studying contemporary digital practices, designing user interfaces, and developing identity management strategies in social media.

The study of Kazakh traditional embroidered wall rug tuskiiz in the aspect of visualism of the sacred is relevant not only from the position of developing new methodological tasks of visual research, but also from the point of view of clarifying the ornamental nature of embroidery as a graphic element of the semiosphere of this ancient product. Since the peculiarity of this traditional carpet is its functionality as a direct attribute and sign of sacredness of the elements of the Kazakh socio-cultural space, the task of studying the ways and means of their coding was actualised. In the process of the analysis, it was revealed that tuskiiz as a wall carpet in the yurt of Kazakhs, being located on the sacredly marked place assigned to it, was and remains an echo and trace of the most ancient cult spaces of almost all peoples of Central Asia. The tuskiiz discovered by the authors in private collections, produced by the Kazakhs of Mongolia, who have preserved traditional forms of craftsmanship, opened new opportunities to consider the ornamental and motif series of the embroidered carpet. As a result of this analysis, the symbolically signified meanings of tuskiiz pictorial motifs – tabaksha (dish), zhuldyz (star), koz (eye), which have their mytho-ritual origins, were revealed. The analysis of the composition of the ornamental pattern of Kazakh tuskiiz revealed unique ways of coding the space of Kazakh traditional society and their informative content. Certain types of tuskiiz in their ornamental solutions represent a plan of arrangement of settlements or seating of those present at this or that khan's forum. The symbolism of tuskiiz colouristics and its visual semantics connected with the understanding of its traditional symbolic meaning are considered. The colouristics of the carpet, at times, conveys its performing a certain socially significant function. The search for an answer to the question of embroidery on the carpet and its origins has shown that in its ornamentation the common Turkic, Turkic-Mongolian, as well as Persian motifs in its compositional, colouristic, ornamental solutions goes back to the traditional world picture of the Kazakhs. This study of tuskiiz opens the prospect of further visual research in the aspect of cross-cultural studies of carpet ornament traditions, techniques of execution and other aspects of the language of textile products in general.