From Material To Symbol-A Study On The Media Construction Of "Erqi Memorial Tower"

The Erqi Memorial Tower,located in Erqi square,Zhengzhou,Henan Province,was built in 1971.It is a memorial building built to commemorate the Beijing-Wuhan Railway workers’ strike.As a landmark and Museum,the Erqi memorial tower enables people to understand and continue the regional culture from part to whole,from concrete to abstract,from individual to general through the interaction between shaping and being shaped.Buildings have the ability to organize and unite.Materialization or establishment of memorial buildings is actually to make things form a group,produce a place and make it continue.Architecture is a device for inheriting human memory.For Zhengzhou,the capital of Henan Province,the Erqi memorial tower built to commemorate the strike of Beijing-Wuhan Railway workers is a very representative cultural landmark.At the same time,the shaping of landmarks is a process,and symbols are not formalistic.They are related to everything in society,and even establish the concept of ideology.Buildings have the ability to organize and unite.At present,the material turn and the rise of "media" research in the field of communication provide new media research ideas other than the effect and use research for the local communication theory.Cultural landmarks have media characteristics,carry historical memory in time and space,and realize the dissemination and inheritance of culture.Taking the Erqi memorial tower as a case study,we can see how the symbolic value of cultural landmarks has an impact on society and how it has new significance in the interaction between people and society.Due to the immobility of cultural landmarks,the realization of memory flow and meaning reproduction must rely on the power of media.Through the media,the symbol of " Erqi Memorial Tower " passes through the text carrier: books,newspapers,news and information;Image carrier: advertising packaging,trademarks,postcards,photos;Video carrier: documentary,promotional film;Interactive media carrier: technical intermediaries such as short video and live broadcast continue to evolve the content and narration,and integrate the cultural memory of generations in different periods with the dual narrative clue of official and folk.The media construction of Erqi Memorial Tower not only stays in the intertextual narration of various technical intermediaries to the abstract symbol "Erqi Memorial Tower",but also extends to spatial media such as physical places.Taking the Erqi Memorial Tower as a medium,its architectural narrative,broadcast narrative,space place,exhibition hall display and other material elements have translated the Erqi spirit geographically.At the same time,the Erqi Memorial Tower plays the same function as the museum memorial hall,and can encode,interpret and disseminate information.The interaction between material factors such as technology media and space media and human beings as actors affects all aspects of social and cultural life.Text and ideology are not given unilaterally and mechanically,but constructed through the interaction between discourse,vocabulary and narration.In the process from transmission to inheritance,there must be a lot of participation of people and organizations,such as intergenerational inheritance of residents,research and study tours,organization visits and witness of major events as a political,economic,cultural and commercial center.The production and acceptance of text itself is a part of the construction process.People complete self positioning and identity in the interaction between physical space and media space.After the establishment of official narrative,in order to keep consistent with the society,individuals need to obey the collective memory to a certain extent in order to obtain individual social orientation.The media construction of Erqi Memorial Tower is all kinds of technology-based communication and communication activities around Erqi Memorial Tower.They have a long-term and mutual penetration effect on all aspects of cultural life.The architectural entity of the Erqi Memorial Tower is transmitted through a series of material carriers,such as media and infrastructure,so as to brand the " Erqi Memorial Tower" symbol of the concept in people’s hearts and convey the historical and cultural connotation behind it.In the process of shaping the concept of Erqi Memorial Tower,the physical media of buildings and space places,the technical media of graphics and images,and the social interaction of residents form a trinity construction chain.This media construction logic coincides with the definition of intertextuality in Text Sociology.Extending it from literary text to media research is reflected in the process of mutual connection and transformation among media texts of various carriers,the relationship between media texts and society,and the relationship between media texts and human recipients.