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Abstract
The aim of the paper is to examine how to bring together the general, large area of "semiosphere" (Lotman), the detailed ("close") analysis of cultural objects, and the point of the flexible methodology we call interdisciplinary. The semiosphere I address is the (uncertain) one we call "Europe". The starting point is the semiotic status of the exclamation mark as I have used it to connect two preoccupations in the title of a film I made in 2020. The heart of the analysis is ambiguity, in language as well as in other domains. This serves to enhance the uncertainties that always accompany semiotic analysis, which in my view is for the better. After the comments triggered by my film, I turn to visual art as the apparent "other" of language, but through a reflection on colour, I reject that binary in favour of the more flexible concept of the figural (Lyotard). Throughout the article I also undermine the opposition between still and moving images.

The article points out that the current expansion of the semiotic focus from signs and texts to whole cultures needs the development of a coherent method. It therefore proposes to establish it through an application of the topological theory of fractals to the analysis of different kinds of symmetries in the semiosphere. Having defined fractals as resemblance between two topological structures, the article first dwells on what "resemblance" means in the comparison of both visual and conceptual patterns; it then proposes a typology of fractal similarities, based on the topological operations of rotation, translation, and reflection. Examples of each typology are given from the fields of cultural and political analysis. The article concludes by hypothesizing that cultural semiotics might evolve into a "pattern science", challenging the customary disciplinary barriers between the study of regularities in nature and in culture.

Abstract
With this issue, Chinese Semiotic Studies introduces a section on the Tartu Semiotics School. This regular feature, appearing potentially in every issue, is justified by several arguments: this school has been persisting on the semiotic scene already since the 1960s; this is the school that founded the semiotics of culture and actively studied it ever since; the Tartu school has the potential to bridge the different approaches of semiotics-structuralist and dynamic, Western and Eastern, cultural and biological; and, as it is situated on many boundaries, the Tartu Semiotics School may be used as a source for creative ideas or new approaches.

The present paper explores the use of language teaching for educating students into becoming digitally-literate citizens, as well as conscious, active members of the digital universe. The material discussed derives from the eLang project, a flagship project of the European Centre for Modern Languages. The guidelines, and real-world and reflexive tasks put together by the eLang team of experts, along with the theoretical framework employed are examined with respect to the notion of semiosphere by Juri M. Lotman, and the way this endorses digital transformation in language education. Seen, thus, as partaking in the digital semiosphere, and at the same time in the multiplicity of the semiotic systems ingrained in it, the current language student and future citizen assumes different roles, interacts with distinct as well as overlapping communities, is asked to make sense of multimodal resources, so as to eventually acquire far more than the skills of a digital user. The eLang material addresses, in this way, the demand for training language students in the multifarious literacies that digital literacy has come to encompass. The language student overrides, thus, classroom topography and the boundaries of conventional language education, and traces those of the globalised digital semiosphere, within which it cannot but soar.

In his latest collections, the poet Jean Tortel (1904–1993) manifests an ecosemiotic approach to space which avoids the naturalist pitfall (systemism, determinism, thought of a subject "surrounded" by nature). Perceived in the instability of its "limits", the representation of the garden-semiosphere dissolves in the experience of its transformations giving way to the ecophenomenal environment of the exercise of relations between living and non-living and their interactions. The body of Seeing is traversed by space, adjusted to its variations. The ecopoem is no longer itself a circumscribed space but a form of life open to otherness, to contact and to the possible renewal of cosmo-poetic enchantment.

Abstract
The semiotics of phenomena like déjà vus and hallucinations constitute a limit-field of a theory of the sign, but one that offers opportunities to question the fundamental principles of the discipline while at the same time offering the opportunity to address their underlying cognitive processes. The article describes the cognitive nature of déjà vus and hallucinations, briefly reviews the literature about them, and reads them as cognitive perturbations in the light of a semiotics of mental simulacra related to perception, apperception, awareness, memory, and imagination. The article then uses such cognitive and semiotic modeling in order to develop a critique of present-day digital culture, in which the uncritical adoption of a mnemonic ideal based on digital memory jeopardizes one of the key features of embodied memory: imperfection and, as a consequence, the possibility to access aesthetic and temporal singularity. A collective memory prone to déjà vus and hallucinations ensues.

Cornucopia or the horn of plenty is one of the cultural and social symbols that signify abundance and blessing in Western culture. Cornucopia originated from Greek mythology, partly related to the legend of Zeus, and partly to the legends of Hercules, Hades, Demeter and Tyche. The sign of cornucopia is also depicted on ancient Iranian and Indian artworks, and the obvious inference is that this was due to Hellenistic influence in both countries.

The paper studies change and continuity in the urban semiosphere of Kharkiv in the post-Maidan period, focusing on themes such as the interplay of languages, street art, toponyms, and the significance of political, ideological, commercial, and artistic discourses in the urban space. The urban vernacular of Kharkiv is examined via the concept of the palimpsest that helps to expose the process of acceptance or rejection of the past, and to assess how things are remembered and forgotten through the tropes of the old narrative that were scrapped and replaced with new ones. The analysis of the linguistic landscape in this study focuses on a broader, more inclusive set of components that are part of public spaces, such as street graffiti metaphors and reactions to the text on graffiti. Thus, а multimodal approach is essential to provide deeper meanings and interpretations of public spaces. To examine the complex linguistic landscape, I bring together a representative collection of public signage that mirrors the dynamics of different historical, linguistic, and ideological factors that shape the contemporary Ukrainian identity, along with the too obvious and simultaneous presence within it of markers of the collective identity from the Soviet period. The juxtaposition of overlapping narratives provides a means to discuss the city's community-building efforts. My paper introduces a few familiar cases of how post-Soviet urban dwellers have shaped social spaces.

The paper studies change and continuity in the urban semiosphere of Kharkiv in the post-Maidan period, focusing on themes such as the interplay of languages, street art, toponyms, and the significance of political, ideological, commercial, and artistic discourses in the urban space. The urban vernacular of Kharkiv is examined via the concept of the palimpsest that helps to expose the process of acceptance or rejection of the past, and to assess how things are remembered and forgotten through the tropes of the old narrative that were scrapped and replaced with new ones. The analysis of the linguistic landscape in this study focuses on a broader, more inclusive set of components that are part of public spaces, such as street graffiti metaphors and reactions to the text on graffiti. Thus, а multimodal approach is essential to provide deeper meanings and interpretations of public spaces. To examine the complex linguistic landscape, I bring together a representative collection of public signage that mirrors the dynamics of different historical, linguistic, and ideological factors that shape the contemporary Ukrainian identity, along with the too obvious and simultaneous presence within it of markers of the collective identity from the Soviet period. The juxtaposition of overlapping narratives provides a means to discuss the city's community-building efforts. My paper introduces a few familiar cases of how post-Soviet urban dwellers have shaped social spaces. ; Published version

The article discusses a possible development of Yuri Lotman's concept of semiosphere by supplementing it with the idea of semio-poiesis. Analysis of the processes of origination, evo­lution and functioning of the genetic code makes it possible to describe the main mechanisms of these processes. The associations of material phenomena (in this case nucleotides and amino acids) led to the establishment of semiotic links, resulting in mechanisms of information stor­age and transmission, allowing the creation of stable life forms. The increasing complexity of organization leads to the crystallization of informational and semiotic origins. Semio-poiesis, a recursive autoreference of the semiotic system, becomes a form of organization of the bio­world, where such parameters as sense and purpose become determinative. Such an under­standing of these processes makes it possible to develop Lotman's concept of the semiosphere and, firstly, to confirm his assumptions that semiosis can be preceded only by a previous se­miotic form, and, secondly, to show the original mechanisms of semiosphere self-organization and autonomous functioning. The very dualism of the genetic code, its simultaneous biochem­ical and linguosemiotic organization, and the processes of gene expression can be compared with what Lotman considered to be the basic principle of semiosphere functioning — the in­teraction of oppositely organized heterogeneous mechanisms.

Abstract
Literati landscape painting was the mainstream of Chinese art in the Yuan dynasty; its keynote is the idea of yi, literally, escaping for freedom, which is represented by the notion of reclusiveness at the conceptual level and the notion of spontaneity at the formal level. Based on an analytical interpretation of the development of Yuan literati landscape painting at the two levels, this essay intends to make a point that, under the Mongol rule, reclusiveness and spontaneity became the artistic pursuit of Chinese artists in the period from late 13th to late 14th century. Employing Yuri Lotman's theory of "semiosphere" in this study, I argue that the blueprint for the solitary world is designed by the early Yuan literati artist Zhao Mengfu, and this world is constructed by the later Yuan literati artists Huang Gongwang and Ni Zan, among others. I further describe the structure of this world as having two levels and three concentric circles, with reclusiveness as the signified central idea and spontaneous brushwork as its signifier. I then conclude that the interaction of the reclusive idea and spontaneous style semioticizes the structure, and completes the construction of the unique artistic world of Yuan literati landscape painting.

A semiotic theory of spheres -- A short history of globes -- Juri Lotman and cultural semiotics -- 'Inside thinking worlds' -- Dialogue and dynamics -- Cultural semiotics in a multidisciplinary environment -- What does culture want? -- Text, transmission, translation -- Text, creation, newness -- Text, preservation, memory -- Planetary systems of culture production -- Bubbles production of continual systems -- Blows production of discontinuities -- Foam production of dynamic multiplicity -- Globe production of digital distinctions -- The digital semiosphere and the technosphere -- Semiosis regulating politics and economics -- Staged conflict new demes and classes -- Populations of rules the constitution and coordination of media-made groups -- Where to now, planet?