Pictograms on the Screen and Their Functions

The subject of research is screen pictography and its influence on the audiovisual media industry, which today includes a vast number of pictographic objects created by using diverse technologies. 3D characters are now commonplace not only in animation but also in the field of cinematography and television programming — appearing in news, entertainment, and educational content. There are now screen productions and programs, the main characters of which are pictographic holograms of people. These digital objects are no longer perceived by viewers as alien or unusual. On-screen characters have become "living" beings within their digital worlds, and audiences are ready to empathize with these graphical elements as they would with real people or intelligent beings. In examining this phenomenon, a hermeneutic analysis was conducted, focusing on the screen pictography itself and its role in film and television productions. The key findings of this study are: evidence of the hybridization in modern cultural formats, the emergence of a new universal screen language, and the assertion that on-screen pictographs function as simulacra, confirming their place within postmodernist culture. In the films analyzed, pictography impacts on the plot and the semantic field of the works. Moreover, the advent of these new hybrid formats is changing audience perception. In movies or TV shows, the main characters can now be graphical objects rather than real people and actors, and these are perceived by the viewer as living beings existing within the screen world. This phenomenon in its broad scope represents a problem raised by the philosopher J. Baudrillard, who conceptualized the distinction between the real and the imaginary. Artificially projected graphic images are presented to the viewer as real people, and therefore a substitution of concepts occurs.