Today’s pornography constitutes a semiotic laboratory capable of meticulously describing some cha... more Today’s pornography constitutes a semiotic laboratory capable of meticulously describing some characteristics of the cultures from which it comes and for which it is intended. In it, the role of the face is preeminent and assumes relevance both from a diegetic and a formal point of view. A face which makes itself a sign and is articulated in a dialectic between the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic axis, finding expression as an aspectual device, establishing a peculiar semiotic procedure of absentia in praesentia, and highlighting an eminently enunciative dimension of the textual genre. Thus a facial semiotics of pornography becomes to all effects a cultural semiotics, which through the exploration of a transversal genre – both in its mainstream and more niche actualizations – produces significant results in defining how cultures of the face, including extrapornographic ones, delineate themselves. The aim of this article is to verify this peculiar facial semiotics through a case his...
Le retoriche giornalistiche e gli immaginari mediali ci parlano di un mondo in declino, il cui or... more Le retoriche giornalistiche e gli immaginari mediali ci parlano di un mondo in declino, il cui orizzonte si fa sempre più difficile da scorgere, tormentato da innumerevoli paure e messo in discussione da catastrofi imminenti. Crisi politiche, disastri ecologici, complotti globali, scenari da fine del mondo. Ma qual è il confine tra pericoli attuali o futuri, narrazioni mediali e immaginario socioculturale? Cosa rende il catastrofismo così radicato nell’immaginario collettivo, sin dai tempi antichi? Come si propaga nella società contemporanea e attraverso i media? Il volume rende conto di questo complesso intreccio simbolico e culturale, ponendo le basi per leggere analiticamente i discorsi contemporanei della e sulla catastrofe: mappandone le strutture e i temi comuni, ricordando le teorie matematico–semiotiche che lo hanno utilizzato, indagando le dinamiche culturali e il concretizzarsi della catastrofe nelle immagini, e indagando le narrazioni e le esperienze percepite durante e in seguito a tali eventi, i resti culturali e concreti della loro influenza nella nostra cultura.
Today’s pornography constitutes a semiotic laboratory capable of meticulously describing some cha... more Today’s pornography constitutes a semiotic laboratory capable of meticulously describing some characteristics of the cultures from which it comes and for which it is intended. In it, the role of the face is preeminent and assumes relevance both from a diegetic and a formal point of view. A face which makes itself a sign and is articulated in a dialectic between the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic axis, finding expression as an aspectual device, establishing a peculiar semiotic procedure of absentia in praesentia, and highlighting an eminently enunciative dimension of the textual genre. Thus a facial semiotics of pornography becomes to all effects a cultural semiotics, which through the exploration of a transversal genre – both in its mainstream and more niche actualizations – produces significant results in defining how cultures of the face, including extrapornographic ones, delineate themselves. The aim of this article is to verify this peculiar facial semiotics through a case his...
Le retoriche giornalistiche e gli immaginari mediali ci parlano di un mondo in declino, il cui or... more Le retoriche giornalistiche e gli immaginari mediali ci parlano di un mondo in declino, il cui orizzonte si fa sempre più difficile da scorgere, tormentato da innumerevoli paure e messo in discussione da catastrofi imminenti. Crisi politiche, disastri ecologici, complotti globali, scenari da fine del mondo. Ma qual è il confine tra pericoli attuali o futuri, narrazioni mediali e immaginario socioculturale? Cosa rende il catastrofismo così radicato nell’immaginario collettivo, sin dai tempi antichi? Come si propaga nella società contemporanea e attraverso i media? Il volume rende conto di questo complesso intreccio simbolico e culturale, ponendo le basi per leggere analiticamente i discorsi contemporanei della e sulla catastrofe: mappandone le strutture e i temi comuni, ricordando le teorie matematico–semiotiche che lo hanno utilizzato, indagando le dinamiche culturali e il concretizzarsi della catastrofe nelle immagini, e indagando le narrazioni e le esperienze percepite durante e in seguito a tali eventi, i resti culturali e concreti della loro influenza nella nostra cultura.
IV International Conference on Semiotics and Visual Communication, Cyprus University of Technolog... more IV International Conference on Semiotics and Visual Communication, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
Neurophysiology and cognitive psychology, visual history and digital art, artificial intelligence... more Neurophysiology and cognitive psychology, visual history and digital art, artificial intelligence and plastic surgery constitute the daring cross-disciplinary perimeter of the symposium, which is meant to be an important step in a major research agenda, awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2019 (FACETS: Face Aesthetics in Contemporary E-Technological Societies, June 2019 – May 2024, 2 million Euros). Within this perimeter, a specific issue is investigated: the agency of facial images. As a vast literature indicates, the face is the most versatile interface of human interaction: most known societies simply could not function without faces. Through them, human beings manifest and perceive cognitions, emotions, and actions, being able, thus, to coordinate with each other. The centrality of the face is such that it is often attributed to non-human entities too, like animals, plants, objects, or even landscapes and, in certain circumstances, countries and cultural heritage. Symmetrically, defacing people literally means denying their faces, debasing their humanity. Such centrality of the face is the outcome of biological evolution, as well as the product of cultural post-speciation and social contextualization. On the one hand, as Darwin already showed in a seminal essay, the facial expression of some emotions, like shame, cannot be faked; on the other hand, countless cultural devices can alter faces, from makeup to tattoo, from hairdressing to aesthetic surgery. The social centrality of the face manifests itself also in the omnipresence of its representations. The human brain is hardwired to detect face-shaped visual patterns in the environment, as the phenomenon of pareidolia or the syndrome of Charles Bonnet indicate; at the same time, most human cultures have extensively represented the human face in multifarious contexts, with several materials, and through different techniques, from the funerary masks of ancient Egypt until the hyper-realistic portraits of present-day digital art. Depicting the face, moreover, plays a primary role in religions, with Christianity setting the long-term influential tradition of a deity that shows itself through a human face whereas other traditions, like Judaism or Islam, strictly regulate the representation of the human countenance so as to avoid blasphemy. Within this complex trans-historical and trans-cultural framework, the symposium essentially revolves around a straightforward hypothesis: since the face is so central in human behavior, facial images that are considered as produced by a non-human agency receive a special aura throughout history and cultures, as if they were endowed with extraordinary powers. Furthermore, since in many societies the face is read as the most important manifestation of interiority, ‘non man-made’ images of faces are attributed a status of authenticity and earnestness, as if they were the most sincere expression of some otherwise invisible agencies. So as to test this hypothesis, the symposium cross-fertilizes several methodologies.
International Symposium Jointly Organized by the University of Turin (CIRCE, Prof. Massimo LEONE)... more International Symposium Jointly Organized by the University of Turin (CIRCE, Prof. Massimo LEONE) and the University of Potsdam (Institute for Romance Languages, Prof. Eva KIMMINICH), with the support of MIUR-DAAD (project: CONTAGIONS. Proposal for the Constitution of an Italian-German Network of Young Scholars for the Study of Viral Misinformation and Hate-Speech in Present-Day Communication).
An international conference on the virality of extreme images jointly organized by the University... more An international conference on the virality of extreme images jointly organized by the University of Turin (CIRCE) and the University of Potsdam, with the support of the DAAD and the MIUR (Italian Ministry for University and Research).
The image of Japan, and everything Japanese, one could argue, is one very powerful factor in West... more The image of Japan, and everything Japanese, one could argue, is one very powerful factor in Western popular media (for the volume we would like to limit the term, and solely focus on film and television). While travelling to Japan is the order of the day for many show formats (travel guides, culinary shows, etc.), the Japanese aesthetics of anime are already an essential part of Western popular culture as well. Japan has also reached Hollywood, as the numerous productions of remakes of famous J-Horror movies in Western apparel emphasize. Japanese aesthetics are consequently being integrated into Western popular media, and what we are able to highlight in all these cases are forms of translation from one cultural context to another. These cultural adaptations have exploded in the era of unrestrained globalization, contaminating cultures from a fusion perspective, and also producing some reverberations worthy of analysis.
Dire “isola” pare implicare un senso di chiusura, oggettivazione, naturalità, sintetizzato dal co... more Dire “isola” pare implicare un senso di chiusura, oggettivazione, naturalità, sintetizzato dal concetto d’insularità. Questo volume di semiotica delle culture vuole invece cogliere la soggettività delle isole e di chi le popola. Per farlo tesse connessioni fra mito e storia, utopia e distopia, metafora e modelli, immaginario e teoria; fra semiotica, nissologia, antropologia, filosofia, mediologia, studi culturali. Parlare d’isolanità significa dunque contribuire ad emancipare lo studio delle isole da una concezione riduttivistica, facendo vedere tutta l’arcipelagica ricchezza di relazioni e identificazioni che queste custodiscono nella loro storia, nel loro presente, nelle loro aspirazioni.
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Saying "island" seems to imply a sense of closure, objectification, naturalness, synthesized by the concept of insularity. This volume of semiotics of cultures, on the other hand, seeks to capture the subjectivity of islands and of those who populate them. To do this, the volume weaves connections between myth and history, utopia and dystopia, metaphor and models, imagination and theory; between semiotics, nissology, anthropology, philosophy, mediology, cultural studies. Speaking of islandness therefore means contributing to emancipating the study of islands from a reductivistic conception, showing all the archipelagic richness of relationships and identifications that they preserve in their history, in their present, in their aspirations.
Il destino impresso. Per una teoria della destinalità nel cinema, 2019
Esiste un nesso fra i film che guardiamo e il modo in cui diamo senso a noi stessi e al nostro ab... more Esiste un nesso fra i film che guardiamo e il modo in cui diamo senso a noi stessi e al nostro abitare il mondo? In che modo le storie sul grande schermo ci aiutano a rifuggire l'horror vacui? Se il cinema veicola un'idea di destino, se guardando i film ci rimane un destino impresso, si possono pensare dei metodi per capire come effettivamente si attua un procedimento tanto delicato ed essenziale? Attraverso una metodologia sfaccettata, che integra semiotica, film philosophy e storia del cinema, questo volume prova a rispondere a simili domande, accompagnandoci in un vertiginoso viaggio attraverso centinaia di film, dal cinema del-le origini a quello contemporaneo, dal cinema d'autore al b-movie, dal cartone animato al documentario, delineando le basi per una teoria della destinalità nel cinema.
Geographically and anthropologically distant cultures inspire awe and fascination: for centuries,... more Geographically and anthropologically distant cultures inspire awe and fascination: for centuries, Europe and China, the West and the East, have fantasized about each other, longed for journeying toward each other, mutually projected onto each other their own alter egos. Modern innovation in the transport of people, goods, and especially cultural contents in digital form, has increasingly narrowed the distance between these two geographic and human poles. Today, China is everywhere in the West, and vice versa. Yet, facility of access is not always tantamount to in-depth comprehension. Century-long differences, prejudices, and asymmetries still persist. Comprising the essays of several specialists in cultural theory and analysis, both from Europe and China, the volume seeks to uncover the semiotic formula underpinning the encounter, the dialogue, but also the clash between Western and Eastern aesthetics, especially in the neglected field of popular culture and arts. The title hints at the Chinese fascination for waterfalls and the natural flowing of the elements, compared with the European attraction to fountains as exploit of technological mastery over nature: each chapter in the volume focuses on as many aesthetic dialectics, spanning from literature to painting, from videogames to food.
Protagonista assoluto della storia della semiotica italiana sin dagli albori e intensamente attiv... more Protagonista assoluto della storia della semiotica italiana sin dagli albori e intensamente attivo sin dalla sua fondazione, Ugo Volli intercetta, modella e influenza alcune fra le tendenze intellettuali più cruciali degli ultimi cinquanta anni. La sua produzione accademica, in termini di pubblicazioni, lavoro culturale e formazione di studiosi, è prodigiosa. Le pubblicazioni spaziano fra più formati, dalla monografia filosofica al manuale, e costantemente intrecciano alcuni temi ricorrenti: la razionalità interpretativa; la singolarità delle forme testuali; la necessità di conseguire un’intelligibilità delle culture e delle loro forme di comunicazione senza cedere all’ideologia. Nel lavoro accademico, l’esempio di Volli ispira un’etica professionale e una scrupolosità epistemologica che sono il suo lascito più importante per la moltitudine di giovani semiotici che egli ha contribuito a formare, specialmente nell’ambito della “scuola torinese di semiotica”.
Le retoriche giornalistiche e gli immaginari mediali ci parlano di un mondo in declino, il cui or... more Le retoriche giornalistiche e gli immaginari mediali ci parlano di un mondo in declino, il cui orizzonte si fa sempre più difficile da scorgere, tormentato da innumerevoli paure e messo in discussione da catastrofi imminenti. Crisi politiche, disastri ecologici, complotti globali, scenari da fine del mondo. Ma qual è il confine tra pericoli attuali o futuri, narrazioni mediali e immaginario socioculturale? Cosa rende il catastrofismo così radicato nell’immaginario collettivo, sin dai tempi antichi? Come si propaga nella società contemporanea e attraverso i media? Il volume rende conto di questo complesso intreccio simbolico e culturale, ponendo le basi per leggere analiticamente i discorsi contemporanei della e sulla catastrofe: mappandone le strutture e i temi comuni, ricordando le teorie matematico–semiotiche che lo hanno utilizzato, indagando le dinamiche culturali e il concretizzarsi della catastrofe nelle immagini, e indagando le narrazioni e le esperienze percepite durante e in seguito a tali eventi, i resti culturali e concreti della loro influenza nella nostra cultura.
Book of Abstracts (ed by S. Stano and A. Bentley)
International Conference "Food for Thought: No... more Book of Abstracts (ed by S. Stano and A. Bentley)
International Conference "Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning" (New York University, Oct 14-15, 2019)
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As a vast literature indicates, the face is the most versatile interface of human interaction: most known societies simply could not function without faces. Through them, human beings manifest and perceive cognitions, emotions, and actions, being able, thus, to coordinate with each other. The centrality of the face is such that it is often attributed to non-human entities too, like animals, plants, objects, or even landscapes and, in certain circumstances, countries and cultural heritage. Symmetrically, defacing people literally means denying their faces, debasing their humanity. Such centrality of the face is the outcome of biological evolution, as well as the product of cultural post-speciation and social contextualization. On the one hand, as Darwin already showed in a seminal essay, the facial expression of some emotions, like shame, cannot be faked; on the other hand, countless cultural devices can alter faces, from makeup to tattoo, from hairdressing to aesthetic surgery.
The social centrality of the face manifests itself also in the omnipresence of its representations. The human brain is hardwired to detect face-shaped visual patterns in the environment, as the phenomenon of pareidolia or the syndrome of Charles Bonnet indicate; at the same time, most human cultures have extensively represented the human face in multifarious contexts, with several materials, and through different techniques, from the funerary masks of ancient Egypt until the hyper-realistic portraits of present-day digital art. Depicting the face, moreover, plays a primary role in religions, with Christianity setting the long-term influential tradition of a deity that shows itself through a human face whereas other traditions, like Judaism or Islam, strictly regulate the representation of the human countenance so as to avoid blasphemy.
Within this complex trans-historical and trans-cultural framework, the symposium essentially revolves around a straightforward hypothesis: since the face is so central in human behavior, facial images that are considered as produced by a non-human agency receive a special aura throughout history and cultures, as if they were endowed with extraordinary powers. Furthermore, since in many societies the face is read as the most important manifestation of interiority, ‘non man-made’ images of faces are attributed a status of authenticity and earnestness, as if they were the most sincere expression of some otherwise invisible agencies. So as to test this hypothesis, the symposium cross-fertilizes several methodologies.
TITLES AND ABSTRACTS available at:
https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/romanistik-kimminich/team/aktuelles/tagung-moderation-internet/tagung-moderation-internet-abstracts.html
Questo volume di semiotica delle culture vuole invece cogliere la soggettività delle isole e di chi le popola. Per farlo tesse connessioni fra mito e storia, utopia e distopia, metafora e modelli, immaginario e teoria; fra semiotica, nissologia, antropologia, filosofia, mediologia, studi culturali.
Parlare d’isolanità significa dunque contribuire ad emancipare lo studio delle isole da una concezione riduttivistica, facendo vedere tutta l’arcipelagica ricchezza di relazioni e identificazioni che queste custodiscono nella loro storia, nel loro presente, nelle loro aspirazioni.
***
Saying "island" seems to imply a sense of closure, objectification, naturalness, synthesized by the concept of insularity.
This volume of semiotics of cultures, on the other hand, seeks to capture the subjectivity of islands and of those who populate them. To do this, the volume weaves connections between myth and history, utopia and dystopia, metaphor and models, imagination and theory; between semiotics, nissology, anthropology, philosophy, mediology, cultural studies.
Speaking of islandness therefore means contributing to emancipating the study of islands from a reductivistic conception, showing all the archipelagic richness of relationships and identifications that they preserve in their history, in their present, in their aspirations.
Comprising the essays of several specialists in cultural theory and analysis, both from Europe and China, the volume seeks to uncover the semiotic formula underpinning the encounter, the dialogue, but also the clash between Western and Eastern aesthetics, especially in the neglected field of popular culture and arts. The title hints at the Chinese fascination for waterfalls and the natural flowing of the elements, compared with the European attraction to fountains as exploit of technological mastery over nature: each chapter in the volume focuses on as many aesthetic dialectics, spanning from literature to painting, from videogames to food.
International Conference "Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning" (New York University, Oct 14-15, 2019)