Cultural code of the city: the interrelation of verbal and visual texts
- DOI
- 10.5922/2225-5346-2025-4-6
Abstract
The article presents the results of a study of the semiotic potential of urban sculptures as carriers of the city’s cultural code. It also offers an analysis of specific segments of this cultural code that have become integral to it as a result of conceptual transformation viewed through a semiotic lens. The relevance of the research stems from the growing attention to the role of visual culture in shaping the identity of contemporary urban residents, as well as from the need to develop analytical tools for interpreting such complex semiotic systems as urban sculpture. The study aims to identify the mechanisms of encoding and cognitive re-decoding of cultural and historical information within sculptural works, and to determine the role of these objects in enriching the city’s cultural code and in shaping a unique sociocultural context for its inhabitants. The objects of analysis are physical art installations, carriers of deep symbolic meaning within the cultural and semiotic field of urban space and represented in the visual cluster of the city’s cultural code. These sculptures were created based on or inspired by literary texts. Using examples of narrative sculptural compositions in Krasnodar (Monument to Catherine II, The Doggie Capital, The Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan, among others) and in Gelendzhik (The White Bride), the study analyzes the liminal mechanism through which a verbal text, in the process of materialization, acquires semiotic complexity and transforms into an iconic, static, spatial semiotic narrative that subsequently becomes a precedent phenomenon. The research culminates in the construction of a model describing the process by which not only secondary signification occurs but also new, contextually relevant shades of meaning are generated within the core of the cultural code. This contributes to understanding the mechanisms behind the creation of complex, multilayered, multimodal art objects that exert a significant influence on the social and cultural identity of urban inhabitants.