The impact of artificial intelligence on the world culture scenario is explored. Another “spring (AI)” of artificial intelligence of the last decade has led to the emergence of a new generation of neural networks, large language systems, computer programmes for board games, effective algorithms for working with images and sounds. The scale of the impact of the emerging technologies on our reality seems enormous. It is now difficult to assess. According to Lee Kai-Ffu, one of the leading experts in the field of AI, within 10—15 years, more than half of the people working in the United States will be left without the work they do now, they will be replaced by computers and AI systems. Forecasting the impact of these changes on culture becomes important and relevant. The scale and speed of the ongoing processes allow us to speak of a revolution in this sphere, as well as in many others. These changes are considered from the position of the theory of self-organisation or synergetic.

First of all, customs, rituals, language, culture, religions, writing, printing, radio, television, the Internet, social networks, mobile telephony appear as tools facilitating social self-organisation.

If we consider the biosphere to be the first nature, the techno sphere to be the second, we are now witnessing the birth of a third nature – the information and telecommunication space. Total computerization has led to a transition from quantity to quality, AI has emerged. Its development can fundamentally change the culture, and with it the future of mankind. It is shown that the project of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, put forward by the World Economic Forum and its founder K. Schwab, makes cultural reality an instrument of total social control. This variant of development leads to infantilization of the overwhelming part of the world’s population and to catastrophe. Studies related to content analysis have shown that our capacity to perceive and understand is very limited. Therefore, the problem arises to focus attention and efforts on the main, key processes – options of order in terms of synergetic. In this case, AI turns out to be not a master, but an assistant, whose capabilities are clearly outlined and regulated. Movement along this path of development requires significant changes in cultural, educational, and scientific policy. Variants of such changes are presented in the article.

Cultural studies as an interdisciplinary field of knowledge quite often faces the fundamental problem of lack of a unified, strictly systematized categorical apparatus. Unlike natural sciences, it operates with complex, multifaceted categories borrowed from philosophy, sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, linguistics and other disciplines. The formation of key categories of cultural studies is mostly spontaneous, when existing concepts are adapted and modified for the specific needs of analyzing cultural phenomena. This leads to a situation when the same terms can be used by different researchers with different connotations, and interdisciplinary terminological homonymy arises, which complicates communication and hinders the development of intra-disciplinary methodology. In addition, the continuous nature of culture complicates the process of categorization of cultural phenomena, which are thought of holistically by researchers. As a consequence, overlapping categories emerge in scientific concepts, representing different levels of concepts in a non-disjoint manner. A similar picture is observed in the scientific analysis of the concepts of “cultural universals” and “national cultural identity”, which “share” the main categorical names. For these reasons, the development of our own, specifically cultural categories, which could clearly categorize the “indivisible continuum of culture”, becomes a particularly urgent task for the further development of this discipline.

This article describes the semantic structure of the categorical field of “cultural universals” and indicates the areas of intersection of its subcategories with the conceptual field of “national cultural identity”. On the example of individual cultural universals it is demonstrated how they, getting into the adjacent conceptual field, change their characteristics: they lose the ability to “delimit” the generalized meanings of the category and acquire new properties of accumulation of specific information included in the integrating conceptual field. In this field these subcategories receive the name of “cultural constants”. The analysis of categorical transformations and the structure of categorical and conceptual fields, which represent scientific novelty in this direction of science, is presented.

The cultural and information space of the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic, the role of mass media and the state in its formation are considered. The emphasis is made on the cultural aspect of the information space on the basis of the cultural code and the national idea reflecting mental projections in the Transnistrian society.

It analyses the infrastructure, the implemented state programmes concerning the information and cultural development of the republic, the importance of state participation and its responsibility for the results of preserving ethnic cultures in Transnistria. It is noted that the activities of the leading state structures that form the cultural and information space of the republic, state traditional mass media, normative and legal framework need monitoring and subsequent adjustment in order to develop a targeted development programme taking into account the maximum proximity to consumers.

It is outline that the state policy based on official multilingualism in the field of cultural construction has a certain imbalance in the information field, which is reflected in the inequality of access to information. As a result, this affects the processes of preservation and development of culture in the multinational Transnistrian society. It is stated that the cultural space is evolving towards Russian-culturalism. It is concluded that the determination of state priorities in the development of the cultural environment, including through the informatization of society, and the preparation of the population for life in the conditions of the new information field that is emerging will help Transnistria to strengthen and preserve its identity and to withstand the impact of globalization.

Philosophical thought was one of the factors influencing Russian and, in particular, metropolitan architecture — sometimes explicitly, consciously, more often “by naivety” or with reference to world architectural practice. It formed the cultural atmosphere, the intellectual movement, which in fact disavowed the cultural tautology of the matrix of modernism and, more broadly, the ideological framework of the Art Nouveau era. Just as Romanticism, and later Neo-Romanticism, turned to different epochs and cultures, so postmodernism is inclined to stare intensely into the horizon, to wander, to perceive the old as an occasion for the creation of the new. Hence its keen interest in such literary tropes as metaphor and allusion, its penchant for quotations and references, its acceptance of bricolage as a projection of a mythological type of consciousness. The author categorizes postmodern concepts that have influenced architecture into two groups: established concepts reinterpreted in postmodernism and new postmodern ideas. This article is devoted to the former, in which such concepts as metaphor, quotation, allusion, collage and bricolage are considered in their reflection on the Moscow architecture at the turn of the 20th—21st centuries. Their brief characterization is given, and examples of their embodiment in architectural practice are considered in more detail, in particular, if we talk about the metaphor of the catamaran house, the hill house, the ship house, etc. It is emphasized that the influence of postmodernist concepts on Russian capital architecture is uneven: while the stage of the 1990s — early 2000s is marked by an appeal to quotation, metaphor, allusion, collage and bricolage remain relevant throughout the 1990s—2010s. In addition to architecture, the identified postmodernist ideas have influenced other types of Russian artistic practice, from literature and music to cinema and visual arts. This list can be extended to include other postmodernist concepts reflected in Russian capital architecture of the turn of the 20th—21st centuries, among them irony, play, double coding, nostalgia, palimpsest.

The results of a study on the Disney cultural transfer (by Michel Espagne), which became possible in the perestroika-era USSR after a long period of silence and criticism that began in the 1950s, are given. It presents the societal changes that caused it, what were the conductors and mechanisms, and the reaction of Soviet citizens to them. The article is part of the research field of media and film development during perestroika and continues the problematics stated by Valerie Posner in “Disney in the Land of Soviets, 1930s”. However, it uses a new methodological framework (the concept of cultural transfer) to study perestroika changes in the USSR media space. The study analyses three main “transfer points” that stand out against the background of the general flow of Western (Disney) media in 1987—1991 by their intensity and scale of reaction: 1) the Disney film The Journey of Natty Gunn (directed by Jeremy Kagan, 1985) wins a prize in the children’s programme of the 15th Moscow International Film Festival 1987; 2) the Walt Disney Film Festival in Moscow 1988; 3) the mass distribution of Disney products in the USSR 1989—1991. An analysis of archival festival documents and newspapers, interviews and LiveJournal entries revealed a number of mechanisms of cultural transfer, which this study refers to as the “Disney boom”: 1) the festival; 2) discourse in the media; 3) the distribution of Disney “artefacts”. The conductors of cultural transfer were identified: cartoonists, film critics, film industry workers, as well as Goskino, Gosteleradiofond, Sovinterfest, Physical Culture and Sport publishing house, and Walt Disney Pictures film studio. It is proved that the “Disney boom” of perestroika was not an introduction of something radically new into Soviet culture, but a reactualization of the transfer of the first half of the 20th century.

The pseudo-Chinese aesthetics of the object world of tea drinking, which developed in Europe in the second half of the 17th—18th centuries, was conditioned by the initial development within the framework of chinoiserie — the myth of distant and fabulously rich China, created by Europeans and for Europeans. With time, not earlier than the beginning of the 18th century, their own, independent traditions of material design of tea ritual develop. By this time, tea drinking had become the most important social practice, which contributed to the further formation of its rules and the formation of the associated world of things. The highest point of this process occurred in the middle of the 18th century, when things symbolizing tea drinking (primarily the cup, teapot and tea set) acquired individual and classical forms. At the same time, tea drinking in Europe becomes an established social custom with a known etiquette and a characteristic tradition. At this time it is still within the aristocratic culture: the scarcity and costliness of tea, the expensive paraphernalia accompanying its serving, and the leisure time required for its consumption strictly limited the use of tea to the upper classes. Tea drinking, as well as the possession of tea-table decorations, signified participation in current cultural trends and was a matter of social prestige. The process of “Europeanisation” of Chinese tea and the design of the object world of European tea drinking were synchronous; they reached their relative completion only by the third quarter of the 18th century, when tea consumption went beyond the aristocratic circle.

This article explores tea drinking in an interdisciplinary context as a social practice generated by the chinoiserie style and revealed through the prism of the world of things. Such a formulation of the question by domestic researchers has not been applied so far. We reconstruct the process of “Europeanisation” of Chinese tea; we clarify the range of objects that accompanied tea drinking as a new social practice for Europe in the second half of the 17th—18th centuries, and identify the circle of the most significant objects that characterize the boundary stages of its development. The significance of things-symbols, which acquired the significance of cultural markers demonstrating material, cultural and social wealth and exquisite artistic taste of their owners, is determined.

This article deals with the peculiarities of the construction of the violin bow and the performing technique widespread in the musical practice of the Baroque era in Germany. The comparative-historical analysis of original treatises of German music theorists and paintings of artists of the 17th—18th centuries allowed to reveal the characteristic features of the violin bow structure, the main way of its holding and playing techniques used.

As a result of the study, the conclusion was made about the stability of the structural structure of the German Baroque violin bow, which retained its typical form throughout the period under study. The peculiarity of its structure was a bow-shaped curved cane of medium length with an elongated head, the hair was fixed with the help of a clip-in frog clips or cremaillere. It has been established that the main method of holding the bow was the “French” grip, which allowed the violinist’s right thumb to be placed on the hair near the pad. It is assumed that this grip resulted in a specific technique of playing the baroque violin bow, which German music theorists described as a performance technique that changed the strength of the sound by adjusting the tension of the hair with the right thumb.

At the same time, within the unified complex of instruments and techniques of the German violin tradition of the Baroque era, a new understanding of the originality of violin art and the craftsmanship of bowed instruments was already emerging, and professional schools of masters and violinists were forming, whose aesthetic ideals were nurtured on the basis of Italian violin culture.

The painter Alexander Aleksandrovich Kolchin (1836—1885) was a representative of a dynasty of Yaroslavl church masters. He graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg in 1857 and lived a considerable part of his life under the shadow of the Holy Trinity Coastal Monastery of St. Sergius near Strelna. Until now, virtually nothing was known about the artist, and he was often confused with his father, the painter Alexander Maximovich Kolchin (1812—1866). The article for the first time introduces into the scientific turnover the basic information about A.A. Kolchin. Kolchin, drawn from his personal file stored in the Russian State Historical Archive: The biographical data of the artist is published and the characteristics of his surviving works are described: the iconostasis of the Cathedral Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1871), the mural painting of the Church of St. John Chrysostom in the Nikolsky Monastery in Staraya Ladoga (1873) and the Church of St. Clement, Pope of Rome and St. Peter, the Archbishop of Alexandria in Novaya Ladoga (1877). The revealed documents allowed us to establish that by 1871 it was A.A. Kolchin who painted 73 icons on canvases for the Sarajevo iconostasis. This is the only known to date large collection of icons of the master, located in the original place and in honorable conditions. It has been established that A.A. Kolchin created a number of large works, the authorship of which has been forgotten.

In addition, thanks to the artist’s personal file, it became clear that he painted the now-unpreserved churches of the leading monasteries in the capital: the Resurrection Cathedral and the Church of St. Savva Stratilatus of the Holy Trinity Coastal Monastery of St. Sergius, as well as the Resurrection Cathedral and the Church of the Vatoped (Athos) Icon of the Mother of God in the Novodevichy Monastery in St. Petersburg; he painted icons commissioned by the royal family and other aristocratic families (the whereabouts of these works are not yet known).

For many years A.A. Kolchin was under the patronage of the most famous clergyman–archimandrite and artist Ignatius (Malyshev; 1811—1897), the abbot of the Holy Trinity Coastal Monastery of St. Sergius. The appendix to the article for the first time publishes a unique document – a certificate issued to A.A. Kolchin in 1877 by Archimandrite Ignatius to confirm the authorship of his works, in which the main works of the artist are indicated. It is shown that A.A. Kolchin’s work reflected the main features of the epoch of historicism: while remaining faithful to academic principles, the master sought a support for his artistic language in the ideals of medieval art.

Boris Viktorovich Shergin (1893—1973) was a Russian storyteller, writer, artist, and expert on traditional Russian artistic culture. His name is known mainly for his literary legacy: stories about the way of life and traditional culture of Arkhangelsk Pomoria, — as well as fictional adaptations of folk literature. Having started his career primarily as an artist of folk decorative and applied art and book art, in the second half of his life Shergin was forced to focus largely on literary work: the reason for this was his progressive loss of vision. The tragic turning point in the spiritual and cultural life of Russia, marked by the revolution, the fall of the empire, anti-religious sentiments and persecution of the Soviet period, and the crisis of traditional culture as a whole. This is the background for the life and work of B.V. Shergin. Shergin’s “non-modernity,” and therefore the value of his figure, is manifested in the following. In his native language of folk literature of the White Sea region, he expressed the high ethical principles of the traditional northern Russian Pomor culture. Love for his earthly Fatherland and its traditional culture were inevitably shaded by bitterness about their fate in the destructive twentieth century. Correlating the content of Shergin’s diary entries with the content of his works gives an understanding that the solution to the problem of the fate of Russia’s cultural heritage lies in the spiritual, not socio-cultural realm. In April 2025, the exhibition “A Bow to Boris Shergin” organized by the Arkhangelsk Museum Association “Artistic Culture of the Russian North” within the walls of the Museum of the artist and storyteller S.G. Pisakhov ended its work. The exposition was an attempt to comprehend the spiritual and moral content of Boris Shergin’s life path, the significance of this content for future generations.

The reasons underlying the historical development of art are one of the most complex and debatable subjects of research in various fields of scientific knowledge. The hypothesis is put forward and substantiated that each universal creative method of creating artistic reality is a representation of human/artist’s perceptions of the world order. The change of these perceptions determines the change of creative methods dominating in art – mimesis (in the classical period), construction (in modernism) and deconstruction (in postmodernism). The author proceeds from the fact that the image of the world existing in the social imaginary and in the artist’s consciousness determines the way of human action (activity). The results of this activity (works of art), in turn, influence the image of the world: support it, correct it, modernize it. Special attention is paid to the perceptions of the nature of relations/connections that in one way or another connect all elements of the universe, including man. It is these relations that are reproduced by the human/artist in the production of social and artistic reality. Thus, the mimetic method of classical art is a representation of that image of the world dominated by the idea of order in its various manifestations. Construction, which became the dominant method in modernist art, is a way of acting in a world balancing on the edge of order and chaos. The predominant creative method of postmodernist art practices, deconstruction, is an artistic representation of ideas about the chaotic world-rhizome. The successive establishment of these creative methods as the dominants of art indicates a linear development of artistic creativity. However, the cumulative and dialectical nature of the build-up of aesthetic experience, as well as the simultaneous existence of all three methods in the contemporary art world, point to the non-linearity and complexity of the dynamics of art.

Requirements to Information and Articles