Sphere of culture

The network culture formed in the information and network society is used by Internet communities as a translator of their values, norms and is a source of violence and extremism propaganda, having a negative impact on the mass consciousness. Thus, the values of the dominant culture are offset, spiritual level of the society decreases, which threatens cultural security of the country. In order to prevent threats to cultural security, the author of the article proposes to create conditions for strengthening traditional culture as well as spiritual and moral values that form stable patterns of behavior; to retain the ability to distinguish between authentic culture and anticulture by means of mastering content analysis skills.

Two plays, Thunderstorm by Cao Yu (1934) and Rhinoceros in Love by Liao Yimei (1999), are of key significant importance for the popular literary genre of “colloquial drama” in China. The article reveals the main stages of the transformation of this trend in Chinese drama, the peculiarities of its motifs, plots, as well as the structural design of individual works. The author analyzes the poetic and metaphorical structure of Liao Yimei’s play Rhinoceros in Love, notes the special role of the remark as the main guide to the world of “colloquial drama”.

Scientific and theatrical performances and plays on the Russian stage are most often the result of the experimental activities of laboratories of theaters or scientific institutions. The author analyzes the genesis of the theater practitioners’ interest in scientific discoveries in the XXth century, as well as the communication process of theater practitioners and scientists at the present stage. The article proves that “laboratory work” creates a unique space for a creative experiment and the opportunity to demonstrate it to a wide range of viewers.

One of the promising forms of making creative products by university students is the development of projects aimed at finding and implementing a certain idea. The article examines the evolution of scientific understanding of creative activity, reveals the peculiarities of creative projecting in the socio-cultural sphere, its technological foundations. When making students’ creative projects, the author proposes to use a projecting technology that consists of three blocks responsible for the three main stages in the director’s creative process (“idea”, “implementation”, “reflection”).

In the digital age, reading culture is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Manifestations of this process have been observed over the past twenty years; however, no one has yet undertaken to clearly predict their prospects. The forecasts of some specialists are characterized by cultural pessimism (the end of book culture is near), by prediction of diversification of specific media (print culture will find its new niche), or by technological optimism (digital innovation is ahead). The documentary stream is abundant in reasoning, research on digital technologies, digital culture, digital transformation of the society, etc., but, at the same time, it reveals a shortage of publications on the culture of reading in general and its current state in particular. The author of the article reflects on the transformation of reading culture, the current realities of digital reading on a global scale, as well as changes taking place in the field of perception, consumption, information processing and interpretation of texts.

The Civil War resulted in the disintegration of a great number of military collections that had been formed for decades. Among them is a fundamental library of the Saint Petersburg Military Topographic School (MTS). This study, for the first time, examines its history, including the Siberian episodes connected with the evacuation of the educational institution in Omsk and Novonikolaevsk. The author reveals the reasons for this transfer and identifies all the books from this library in the funds of the “Novosibirsk Garrison Officers’ House” of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation; analyzes their subject matter and dedicatory inscriptions made by the former Head of the School, General N.D. Artamonov, and its graduate A.A. Noskov.

Andrei Osipovich Nikulin is an artist, a participant of a great number of all-Union and regional exhibitions, a member of the Altai Art Society. From 1924 until his death, he worked in Mosfilm as a decorator. The authors of the article examine the work of A.O. Nikulin, which clarifies one of the understudied pages of his biography related to cinematography. Studying patent documentation, which is permanently stored in the Russian State Archive in Samara, resulted in the authors’ conclusion that A.O. Nikulin was an active participant in the inventive movement in the USSR and was the owner of patents and copyright certificates for inventions related to cinema technology.

Most fully, culture expresses itself in transition situations. Finding himself in a zone of incompleteness and borderline, a person stays in a tireless search, striving to grab what is slipping away - he searches, loses, finds and inquires, and, therefore, all the time he is in the state of dissatisfaction with his culture and the completeness of his relationship with the world. Worldview breakthroughs and breaks are an integral part of human existence allowing people to steadily move forward and learn new facets of the world and themselves. In the process of requalifying the existence, extension of definition and discovery of new senses of culture, the leading role is given to art. N.A. Khrenov’s new monograph has made an attempt to comprehend the turn that is taking place in historical reality (more precisely, in the history of culture), as well as in humanitarian science.