Contemporary culture is defined as a multitude of distinctive cultures that are in dialogue and interaction with each other, and both of them go along the axis of past-future. Modern culture also has the specific properties that give it originality and uniqueness as a consequence of the development of previous cultural traditions.
Explanation:
Contemporary popular culture is a dynamic process in which constant change is occurring. The creative activity of a person stimulates the process of continuous progressive development, formation, change, and transformation of the culture. According to Thornton, “the idea of culture shares a complex intellectual history with the ideas of “society”, “nation”, and “organism”, all of which appeared with their contemporary sense around the beginning of the nineteenth century”.
The changing nature of culture is determined by various factors, among which the most important are socio-economic, political, legal, ethical, religious, cultural-aesthetic, and technical.
Analysis of the current state of the contemporary consumer culture theory culture suggests that the leading factor in its development, the dominant tendency, and at the same time, the process is visualization. The phenomenon of viewing is presented quite widely and ambiguously in foreign theoretical sources.
From the 1970s, the beginning of the theoretical description of the visualization phenomenon, rich practical material on visual experience was accumulated. The rationale for visualization as a trend reflecting contemporary culture is reflected in the works of Merleau-Ponty.
Since the leading idea of modern culture is the visualization process, the cultural component acquires a particular characteristic, becoming mainly the visual environment. It can be defined as the entire visible diversity of the world, actually filling the living space of a person.
The visual environment includes both the natural surrounding and everything that is created by human labor as a result of an active cultural-creating activity. The visible cultural background can be divided into two types – external and internal. The external visual cultural environment is made up of objects located in free natural space. Objects found in a confined space (mostly of artificial origin) represent the internal visual environment.
It should be noted that the external visual cultural environment for modern man is predominantly urban. Visual images in the downtown cultural environment are represented by objects of architecture, landscape design (parks, squares), outdoor advertising, and sculpture. The urban visual cultural context is a rapidly changing structure that carries a considerable flow of information in which people actively and strictly interact.
Speaking of the internal visual environment, the high concentration of visual images in it is of great significance. A dynamic process aimed at increasing the number of museums, exhibition complexes, galleries, and exhibits allows us to state that the visualization process is steadily growing. In contemporary culture, the external and internal visual environments actively cooperate, immersing people in this process.
Increasingly, the internal and external visual environment is being replaced by a virtual one. The impact is defined by a combination of computer technologies that simultaneously comprise some information about social media (graphics, text, video, etc.). Thus, the visualization process is determined not only by the enrichment of both environments with real art objects.
In the modern world, people are more and more being immersed in a virtual space, replacing a real existing external and internal visual environment. In concluding, contemporary culture is the leading process of modernity visualization in a society, based on the development and production of visual images. Images are intended for people to know the reality, exchange information about it, and receive artistic and aesthetic pleasure.