Models and projections of artistic communication

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

In memory of Meir Shalev

Introduction

Communication theory is quite well developed in the sense that it builds a number of communication models, usually based on several approaches (the main ones are semiotic, informational, socio‒psychological, engineering), but with an emphasis on one particular one. Communication theory is interesting not only for its variety of models and approaches, but also for its controversy and discussion of methodological and theoretical differences. The approaches set the appropriate projections of communication. For example, the authors of semiotic communication models (R.O. Jacobson, Y.M. Lotman, U. Eco) highlight semiotic reality, while the rest of the projections can be identified by analyzing the content of the introduced schemes and distinctions. The elements of the Jacobson model are: addressee, message, context, contact, code and addressee. In this communication model, a message is sent from the addressee and the addressee, which is written using a code. The context is related to the content of the message and relates to the regulatory aspect of communication...Y.M. Lotman identifies two communication models: "I am He" and "I am I." The first model, of the "I am He" type, corresponds to the model proposed by R.O. Jacobson. The second is an autocommunication…The semiotic "line" of communication models is continued by Umberto Eco, who, like Lotman, proposed two communication models. However, while Lotman's two models of communication placed humans at the center and represented different ways of organizing “human” communications, Lotman's Eco One model is a communication process between two mechanisms, and the other is a communication process between people. The first model (communication between mechanisms) includes: source, sender, signal, channel, receiver, message, addressee, noise and code. The second model (communication between people) includes the same elements as the process of communication between mechanisms, however, in addition, it is burdened with lexicodes. Lexicodes are secondary codes: various kinds of connotative meanings that are not known to everyone, but only to a part of the audience, so lexicodes can often play the role of noise and complicate communication" ^[2].

In M.L. Deflyer's model, the transmission of information (not necessarily by humans) is brought to the fore, while semiotic projection is secondary.

"The sender translates the "message" into "information" (encodes), which is then sent over the channel. The recipient decodes the “information“ into a ”message", which, in turn, is transformed into a “value” at the destination… The Deflower model takes into account the main drawback of the linear Shannon-Weaver model ‒ the lack of a feedback factor. He closed the information chain from the source to the target with a feedback line that repeats the entire path in the opposite direction, including the transformation of the value under the influence of “noise”. Feedback gives the communicator the opportunity to better adapt his message to the communication channel to improve the efficiency of information transmission and increases the likelihood of correspondence between the sent and received value" ^[2].

The concept of a lexicon allows us to analyze artistic communication, but again within the framework of a semiotic approach. At the same time, artistic communication, if the task is to understand the essence of art and the features of artistic works, is clearly a more complex education, which as a whole is represented by other projections ^{[6; 16; 17]}.

The main part

Bearing in mind the task of clarifying the essence of art, we will talk about the author's experience of a comprehensive analysis of artistic communication, which will result in the construction of an "artistic communication scheme." Unlike models, the complex scheme of artistic communication does not claim to be isomorphism with real artistic communication as an object, but only to characterize it, allowing us to understand this phenomenon, and precisely for the purpose of studying art. We see the difference between models and schemes in two points: the model assumes the existence of the modeled object (phenomenon), and the scheme defines its object for the first time; the model in relation to the modeled object allows you to predict, and the scheme only acts. For example, when we use the Moscow metro scheme to navigate the subway (let's say we got there for the first time), then this is exactly the scheme. She defines the subway for us as an object of transport behavior: we learn to distinguish between stations, routes, transfers, etc. But if we want to understand which route will lead to the desired station or which route is the fastest to get to this station, then this is already a model that allows us to make accurate forecasts and calculations (for the difference between schemes and models, see ^{[10, pp. 99, 119-121; 11]}).

The metro scheme is quite complicated, since it can also be used as a model. In the general case, discussed in the book "Introduction to Schemology: Schemes in Philosophy, Culture, Science and Design", there are three main cases in history and science: actually, "schemes", for example, sketches in design, "models", for example, in natural science theories, and "schema models" of the type discussed here. The author sees the importance of the concept of scheme in two points: firstly, the scheme is an intermediary between the problems of the researcher (or practitioner) and a new vision (representation) of the phenomenon under study, allowing to reach this new vision, secondly, the scheme is a semiotic education that is created by the researcher (thereby, in part, receives an explanation of it creativity). An analysis of the history of cognition shows that the schemes ‒ these are the most ancient ways of obtaining knowledge and at the same time modern ^[11].

If we talk about the nature of the research, then a comprehensive analysis of artistic communication will be carried out within the framework of the author's concept of "methodology with limited liability". The peculiarity of this concept is the analysis of thinking and creativity (in this case in art), mediated by cultural studies, semiotics, personality psychology. ^{[6, pp. 39-42]} The complex scheme of artistic communication contains four projections (plans) and will be introduced and illustrated using the communication case studies of the famous Israeli writer Meir Shalev (unfortunately, he left us in 2023).

There are several interesting discussions and reviews about Shalev's work on the Internet and literature, but they all relate to the genre of literary criticism or art studies. The author sees his merit in the fact that he proposed one of the first philosophical analyses of Shalev's works and creativity (see, for example, ^{[6, pp. 39-83; 8]}). The comprehensive analysis of artistic communication below also falls under the heading of philosophy of art. We will begin this analysis with a case study of Shalev's communication with his readers about the novel "Two Bears Came Out of the Forest."

The fact is that Shalev made revenge almost the main theme of the novel. This confused many readers. In an interview in the Lehaim magazine in 2015, Shalev responds to them, explaining his position. "I have friends who, after the book was published, began to wonder if everything was all right with me. Did I go through some kind of crisis or did something happen to me? They did not understand where this novel came from... Indeed, I included cases of extreme cruelty in it, although it was not easy for me to write about them myself. But it's not my personal experience that needs to be brought out. I'm very interested in revenge as a literary idea. It's exciting. The desire for revenge, in my eyes, is much stronger than jealousy or any religious feelings. Its consequences are tragic. There are three murders in the novel: In his thirties, Ze'ev's grandfather, then still young, kills his wife's lover, then the girl who is born to her, and seventy years later, Eitan, his granddaughter's husband, commits a blood feud and destroys the bandits who killed Ze'ev's grandfather. Revenge turns out to be curative for Eitan, heals him from the mental coma in which he remains for many years after his son's death. Yes, the only thing that gets him out of his illness is blood feud. And this angered some of my Israeli readers, they said: it is immoral to write that murder has a therapeutic effect, murder cannot cure! Well, you say, "impossible." But the fact is that it's possible for certain people, as it happened in my novel.… When I was working on this book, I was constantly trying on everything that happens in it. To kill my wife's lover... I understand that there are people who do that, but it's not for me. As for the blood feud, I can quite imagine myself in such a situation."^[13]

It must be said that this is not the first time Shalev has encountered misunderstanding. After the publication of his novel Fontanella, the writer was accused of promoting sexual pathology, passing it off as eroticism. Here is Shalev's answer: "I would not call it eroticism, but sensuality. I don't give detailed physiological descriptions of sexual encounters anywhere. But I am a sensual person, I appreciate sensations – taste, smell, touch, variety of colors – and share them with the reader.… As for homosexuality, I do not find it a perversion or a disease, it is a variant of normal consensual personal and sexual relations between adults. As, by the way, is what is called “adultery”, and the relationship of two men and one woman, two women and one man, two couples. It's their own business.…

As for the prohibition of "spreading" – no one can and should forbid a writer from describing life in all its manifestations. Following the logic of those who ban novels about perversion, it is necessary to prohibit the publication of Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky as propaganda of murder and prostitution" ^[14]. Bearing in mind what Shalev said, we will propose a layered reconstruction (analysis) of artistic communication.

The work as an artistic reality (the first projection of the scheme)

This projection already assumes the most general formal linear scheme of communication: artist → work → viewer, in this case, writer (Shalev) → work (novels) → the viewer (readers). If we reveal the content of communication elements specifically for art, then we propose to consider these contents within the framework of the concept of "artistic reality" ^{[9, pp. 374-385]}. This concept was outlined in art studies back in the last century. "A writer," writes, for example, M. Polyakov, ‒performs certain social functions in a specific socio-literary situation, moving from social reality to artistic reality, forming a certain concept of values in a system (ensemble) of images, or, more precisely, a concept of life" ^{[4, p. 18]}. At the same time, the reader asserts Ts. Todorov, "starting from a literary text, performs certain work, as a result of which a world populated by characters similar to the people we encounter 'in life' is built in his mind" ^{[12, p. 63]}.

The author, on the one hand, relies on these ideas, on the other hand, interprets artistic reality within the framework of communication theory, semiotics and personality psychology. What is the purpose of communication in art? Not at all for learning and not just for pleasure, although these overtones are still present. There are not one, but several "problematic situations" that need to be resolved. For an artist, the desire to realize himself (for example, as in Shalev, to understand the nature of revenge or love, to experience their action), to create an attractive world and events, to write a good work for the audience. In the same interview, Shalev explains the latter: "Tell an interesting story. It's good to write it. I'm a craftsman: that's how you want to write a good article, a photographer wants to take a good picture, that's how I wanted to write a good story. A strong one. And I see that after people have read the book, they cannot forget it. I am very happy about this, it means that I have penetrated their soul after all and they have nowhere to escape from me. Readers say that the book, on the one hand, caused them suffering while reading, and on the other hand, they could not put it down. It's a great compliment to me. I also felt this while working on the novel. It was very difficult for me to write it, I left it, and then came back again, it became a special experience for me, more serious than other books" ^[13].

For the viewer, the first two desires are the same as the artist's, adjusted for the difference in their positions: to realize themselves and visit an interesting world, to live its events. And instead of the third desire, it is an installation to understand the work created by the artist, to get pleasure from it. It is especially worth paying attention to two polar results of artistic communication: the first is the coincidence (similarity) of the artistic realities of the artist (1.0.) and the viewer (2.0.), the second is the discrepancy, dissimilarity (Fig. 1). This is not necessarily a criticism, just a different interpretation, as, for example, in the case of one reader's review of the novel Fontanella. "Do you want to know what would have happened if a Jew had written One Hundred Years of Solitude? Well, here you go. No, seriously, it's a good family saga, where almost every character claims to be the only normal one in the family. Cockroaches in their heads ‒ at least open the store. There is a Family and those who belong to it, and there is everyone else. The family has its own rules and regulations, but they also provide the basis for the very glue that holds it together. Family Expressions, Family Orders, Family rules. With such a framework, how can Family rebels not exist? And the main character, with an open fontanel, his own kind of sixth sense organ, belongs both to his Family and to the one who gave him a second birth. Is love possible at the age of five? Well, the family believes that at a time when love was still love, anything was possible. With reservations. It's still a family, and it's useless to look for normal people here (despite the assurances of individual characters about their only normality) ‒ but it's all the more fascinating to watch all these Yofe, through the "o"." ^[3] I hardly think that's what Meir Shalev wanted to say in the novel, or just that.

Fig. 1. Diagram of the realities of the artist and the viewer (in one case 1.0. and 2.0. are similar, in the other they are different)

A work as the realization of expressive means (semiotic projection)

What does it mean to "write well" a work of fiction? In particular, following the accepted art patterns and expressive means that allow the viewer to adequately understand and experience this work. Expressive means of art include images, metaphors, genre characteristics, compositions, dramaturgy, themes, and other means of the artist. Their use involves the construction of "semiotic schemes", that is, graphic or more often narrative constructions that make it possible to realize the artist's problems, as well as to define artistic reality or its fragments. For example, in Shalev's novel Esav, the writer sets an expressive metaphor for a young centaur woman using the scheme of the heroine Sarah, who harnessed herself to a stroller and rushes through Israel in search of a new place to live.

"On July twelfth, 1927, at about three o'clock in the morning, a "Tuck" suddenly burst out of the Jaffa Gate – a luxurious light carriage belonging to the Greek Patriarchate… Instead of a rider and a coachman, two children sat on the box, clutching the reins in their hands, and instead of a horse, a tall, fair-haired, broad-shouldered and beautiful young woman was harnessed to the wooden shafts.…

It was three o'clock in the morning. The young woman stopped the carriage at the city wall and cautiously looked around. Her gaze lingered on several Fellahs who had come to the city before dark and were now waiting for the markets to open.… Suddenly, the donkeys roared, rolled their necks and jumped up and down in incomprehensible fear. The Fellahs, who rushed to reassure them, saw a wheelchair and a young blonde woman frozen between its shafts. They were terrified…

The young woman lowered the shafts of the stroller to the ground and, trying to clear a path for herself, furiously stamped her foot, threw her head back high and let out a terrible wolf howl. In response, she immediately heard a terrible rumbling from the depths of the earth. Mighty stones suddenly rolled from the top of the city wall, frightened screams of people, roosters and dogs howled were heard from all sides, flocks of pigeons and bats rose from the cracks in the city, from the cracks in the towers, from the shaken dungeons…

–Get inside," the woman shouted to the little twins. She was horrified for a moment, thinking that her scream had broken the shackles of the earth, but she immediately came to her senses–her eyes were fixed with anger and stubbornness, and a deep crease appeared between her eyebrows. The red-haired boy got scared, hurriedly crawled inside the stroller and hid behind a cloth canopy near his bound father. But his brother only widened his dark eyes and remained in the driver's seat.

The young mother adjusted the harness more tightly to her shoulders, picked up the shafts again and squeezed them with renewed vigor. Then she took a deep breath and started running. Rushing past crumbling walls, under a rain of stones and screams, she swallowed the road with long, light steps, jumped elastically over crevices that opened under her feet and tore through the shroud of smells that enveloped the city, fumes that rose from burning bakeries, over burst spice jars, over stinking sewage that escaped from sewers, over puddles of spread coffee left over from those who came to morning prayer ahead of time. She, who had only drunk milk all her life, hated the Jerusalem custom of starting the day with a cup of coffee and now rejoiced at the misfortune of all her haters.…

The woman turned her head towards the city and spat angrily. Then she smiled contentedly, turned up the hem of her dress, tucked it into her belt and started running again. Her bare feet moved in the dark with silent confidence, like the strong white wings of that owl that lived in the Karaite cemetery, de los Karaites, and which used to frighten us in childhood" ^{[15, pp. 43-44]}.

By creating the metaphor of Sarah as a centaur, Shalev solved several problems: understanding the new meaning of women in culture, mystical interpretation of events (Sarah stamped her foot and an earthquake began), the confrontation and opposition of natural existence and civilization (see ^{[8, pp. 49-50]}). Figure 2.

Fig. 2. The scheme of construction of the centaur metaphor

If the schemes ‒ This is a unique invention of the artist, the means of expression set the normative, standard ways of working and creating in art. Of course, they are understood by each artist according to his personality and experience, but still they are arranged in such a way that they allow creating such an artistic reality and work that can be understood and adequately read (experienced) by the viewer. The discrepancy between the artistic realities of the artist and the viewer suggests that their means of expression also often do not coincide, which is understandable, given the difference in the tasks and activities of both communicants.

The work as a way of socialization (third projection)

Let's return to Shalev's conversation with the readers of "Two bears came out of the forest." Shalev understands that some readers negatively evaluate his novel, especially in connection with the theme of revenge. At the same time, he doesn't want to ignore them. It's not that he seeks consensus, in this case he is difficult, but he wants to save these readers and explain his position to them. To do this, he reflects on the foundations of his work ("I am very interested in revenge as a literary idea") and partly on the foundations of readers' statements ("it is immoral to write that murder has a therapeutic effect"). In other words, I want to draw attention to the fact that, on the one hand, readers do not want to identify with Shalev, on the other, on the contrary, the writer wants to continue communicating with them. There is a social two-way process that contributes to the life of the community (maintaining an artistic audience).

Here, of course, the old question arises: is it possible to specify an absolute aesthetic content ("beauty", "beautiful", "imitation", "expression", "irony", etc.), which would indicate the type of invariant, non-historical connection between the members of this community; so that once and for all it becomes clear, what is right and what is wrong in works of art. An analysis of the history of art shows that this is impossible. In different cultures and in different historical periods, the absolute aesthetic content was understood in different ways and often in the opposite way. And what about the other two projections, do their contents also change over time and in different cultures? It changes, but rather in the logic of development or evolution ^[9].

The narrative (speech) of the artist as a condition of his contact with the audience (fourth projection)

In an interview, Shalev explains to his readers the idea of the novel "Two bears Came out of the forest" or how he understands love in the novel "Fontanella". At the same time, we not only begin to understand these works better, but also to feel Shalev himself. He appears in front of us, even though he is, say, in Israel, and we are in Moscow. It is difficult to explain this miracle, but it is impossible to deny the fact of our meeting ‒ we come into contact with Shalev. As Mikhail Bakhtin says: a feature of the humanities is "two spirits, the relationship of spirits" ^{[1, p. 349]}. Our spirit meets the spirit of Shalev, and they (we) communicate directly. How? Talking, trying to understand, recreating each other's images, feeling each other.

It is worth noting that the viewer can meet not only with the artist, but also with his characters, unless, of course, the work is well written and talented. Then the viewer's spirit communicates directly with the spirits of the characters in the work (the viewer with the characters). How is this possible? But our human essence is based on this, i.e., the ability to represent and feel speech constructions (signs, words, narratives) as reality. B.F. Porshnev, L.S. Vygotsky, your humble servant, show that the condition for the formation (origin) of man was, on the one hand, the stopping, blocking of biological processes of hominids ^[5], on the other hand, the replacement of real situations with imaginary ones using signs (words, narratives), and those perceived naturally (as actually existing), on the third hand, the restructuring of physicality and psyche under the influence of these transformations is a long process that ends with the appearance of a person. A new ability (of imagining and constructing reality under the influence of semiosis) formed the basis of human cognition, thinking and creativity, as well as recreating other subjects (spirits) and communicating with them. In art, we create works by living the events of artistic reality, and at the same time we get in touch and communicate with the characters of these works and their author.

Conclusion

The complex scheme of artistic communication proposed by us includes four projections: semiotic, artistic reality, socio-psychological and spiritual (speech). Depending on the type of work or artistic phenomenon being studied, as well as the specifics of the research task, certain projections will come to the fore, while the rest is reflected in the structure of the content. For example, if the task is to analyze a work in terms of artistic language and its meanings, then we will turn to the semiotic projection, and we will resort to the other three in the second place, for example, to reveal the content of the meanings of expressive means or the meanings of the work (the fourth projection). If we are more interested in the artist's image of the work, in this case the fourth projection will come to the fore, and for example, the meanings of the expressive means used by him (metaphors, comparisons, themes, drama, composition, etc.) will be used to better reveal this image.

Given the semiotic and anthropological nature of art, it can be assumed that art largely boils down to artistic communication. To analyze the latter, a layered reconstruction of the artistic communication scheme is necessary, an example of which is presented in this article.

We do not believe that a comprehensive scheme of artistic communication has advantages over existing communication models, this is another description of artistic communication. But the new scheme, in our opinion, is more effective than the existing models when it comes, firstly, to understanding the essence and nature of art, and secondly, to the methodology of cognition. Art is a complex phenomenon, and a layered analysis of artistic communication allows us to capture (express) this complexity. In terms of methodology, we immediately indicate the boundaries of our knowledge: not a communication model, but only a scheme that allows us to understand and act, but not predict.