The picture shows the national speed skating hall image source: image China
The picture shows the National Ski Jumping Center. Image source: Image China
Core reading
The inheritance and innovation of ice and snow culture show people's brave and tenacious will quality and creative spirit of borrowing nature
The open, cooperative and inclusive will to innovate and the spiritual qualities of purity, fearlessness and perseverance have become the core of contemporary ice and snow culture, nourishing the daily life and spiritual world of contemporary people
In the integration with digital technology, the ice and snow culture has been further upgraded and transformed, and people's experience of ice and snow culture has also been continuously expanded
With the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics approaching, people's attention to ice and snow culture is gradually heating up. Ice and snow culture originates from people's survival needs to adapt to the cold environment, embodies the spiritual experience and fun pursuit of human beings in the ice and snow environment for a long time, and has the characteristics of seasonal constraints, natural creativity, extensive participation, and practicality of art. The inheritance and innovation of ice and snow culture show people's brave and tenacious will quality and creative spirit of borrowing nature.
Ice and snow culture has a long history
When the ice and snow culture first originated is difficult to trace. It can be said that since there have been human activities in the ice and snow accumulation area, there has been an ice and snow culture. Located on the northern edge of the Junggar Basin, the Altay Cave Ski Petroglyph in Xinjiang is one of the oldest recorded records of human skiing to date. During the snowy winter months, skiing has been used as a human means of mountain transportation for at least 10,000 years.
In the face of the cold winter, the peoples in the north of the mainland gradually developed the wisdom of borrowing ice and snow. The "ice lamp" that people love to watch today originated from the daily lighting needs of the ancients. The ancient poem "With alum into the ice does not melt, with candles shining on the ice", it depicts the situation of the ancient Chinese ice making lighting. To strengthen the defense, the ancients also watered ice, and then mixed ice with dirt to build walls overnight. For example, the ancients invented the ice climbing plough to improve the speed of hunting during winter hunting; people used ice and snow to store food to solve the problem of winter food supply, and the habit of winter storage has been followed to this day.
When the need for survival is met, ice and snow sports and ice and snow art as leisure and entertainment gradually appear. According to the "Song Shi Lizhi" record, "ice play" is an ancient ice and snow leisure activity that is historically verified. By the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, ice and snow sports had become very popular. The ice and snow culture of this period also includes skates, ice carts, skates, dragon shooting balls, rudder ice and so on.
The bucket turns from star to star, the times change, and the ice and snow culture derives the humanistic connotation from ecological culture. The open, cooperative and inclusive will to innovate and the spiritual qualities of purity, fearlessness and perseverance have become the core of contemporary ice and snow culture, nourishing the daily life and spiritual world of contemporary people.
Innovative landscape with ice and snow as the "material"
The innovative development of ice and snow culture is first reflected in the innovation of ice and snow as the "material". In the hands of people full of creativity, the form of ice and snow is constantly changing. The innovation of the materialization of modern ice and snow culture is marked by the improvement of artistry.
Through the development of environmentally friendly chemical pigments, people transform colorless ice and white snow into colored ice and snow; use ice lamps, ice sculptures, and snow shaping techniques to decorate the living space of northern towns and update ice and snow application scenarios. In 1963, the first Harbin Ice Lantern Garden Festival led to the rise of ice and snow art in various places. Harbin Ice and Snow World has been open every year in winter for more than 20 years. The 23rd Ice and Snow World, which opened at the end of last year, took the theme of "The Light of the Winter Olympics Shines in the World" and used 230,000 cubic meters of ice, which was colorful and beautiful.
Changchun Ice and Snow New World, which is also an outdoor ice and snow park, has combined the holiday town model since 2019 to create an ice and snow tourism area. In Shenzhen, people use insulated air film structures to build low-temperature venues, and facilities such as all-white buildings and snow machines simulate realistic indoor ice and snow landscapes. Scene-based and themed indoor ski resorts and ice and snow playgrounds in Wenzhou and other places have also enabled ice and snow culture to break through the restrictions of geography and seasons. In these fantasy ice and snow worlds, ingenuity is everywhere, such as the designers using low-freezing, harmless and environmentally friendly liquids to create ice and snow "low-temperature fountains".
The design of the Beijing Winter Olympic venues is a creative transformation of ice and snow elements. One of the main venues, the National Ski Jumping Center "Snow Ruyi", is magnificent, and the shape adopts traditional ruyi elements to express good wishes. The national speed skating hall "Ice Ribbon" is designed from the combination of ice and speed: 22 curved glass curtain walls are surrounded by 22 curved glass curtain walls, like the traces of speed skaters sliding on the ice, symbolizing speed and passion, and at the same time implying the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
The creativity of using ice and snow as the main "material" is also reflected in the artistic creation of cleverly using ice and snow elements. The ice and snow show "Mirage Aurora", which combines ice acrobatics and flying snow in the air, provides the audience with an audiovisual experience in the ice and snow environment. As an ice acrobatic, the work has won the love of the audience at home and abroad. Ice and snow are also combined with traditional art, such as the use of printmaking tools to texture the ice surface after color transfer, the use of ice melting characteristics to form a natural coupling, non-replicable picture effect, so as to create a unique ice print.
"Digital Ice and Snow" extends the cultural experience
Entering the digital era, technologies such as virtual reality, digital twins, and virtual performances are widely used in the cultural field, helping ice and snow culture break through seasonal constraints and transformation restrictions, and innovate forms of inheritance. In the integration with digital technology, the ice and snow culture has been further upgraded and transformed, and people's experience of ice and snow culture has also been continuously expanded. For example, a 360-degree camera captures panoramic images of ice and snow, supplemented by a VR helmet locator and an optional visual perspective, making the user feel as if they are in the snow and ice; the combination of VR helmet equipment and indoor ski training equipment, injury-free ski teaching benefits more ice and snow sports enthusiasts.
The integration of digital technology has also innovated the production of ice and snow sports theme TELEVISION programs. For example, "Mystery is Infinite - Shougang Ski Jump", which uses "3D + AI" technology to solve the problem of restoring high-speed and difficult ski jumping actions, and to analyze the skiing actions in more detail. By 3D rendering and virtual overlay of the competition screen, the audience can watch the movements of multiple athletes at the same time and see the technical differences between the players. The upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics will also use digital technology for event broadcasting, which will greatly enrich people's viewing experience.
Through digital technology, "activating" ice and snow characters or creating virtual ice and snow characters is a new exploration of the innovative development of ice and snow culture. After the digital transformation of the "Ice Frolic Map", which showed the grand situation of the "Ice Frolic Festival" more than 200 years ago, more than 1,000 characters in the original painting "came alive", and group interactions such as archery, flying forks, knives, and sticks on the ice vividly reproduced the scene of the ancient large-scale ice competition. In "2022 Winter Olympics Ice and Snow Theme Virtual Interactive Music Carnival - Night of Gathering Lights", virtual singers are placed in a realistic virtual live performance, and the audience can establish their own avatar to enter the carnival to participate in the interaction. The online short film "Ice Boy" is based on freestyle skier Gu Ailing and creates a virtual ice and snow athlete image.
With ice and snow as a bridge, we will actively give full play to the extensive participation of ice and snow culture and promote the development of the ice and snow industry. For example, at the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival, one of the world's four major ice and snow festivals, ice sculpture artists and ski enthusiasts from all over the world gathered together to exchange skills - ice and snow have become a medium for cultural exchange. Guangdong Province and Heilongjiang Province launched the "Exchange Winter" tourism promotion meeting to promote the development of the ice and snow industry and the creation of ice and snow culture brands. In 2020, the opening match of the China Digital Ice and Snow Games was launched in Guangzhou, and the model of "e-sports + ice and snow" attracted audiences from all over the world to enter the ice and snow world.
Ice and snow culture gives warm cultural feelings to ice and snow, and injects magical artistic life into the pure ice and snow. Ice and snow culture embodies the wisdom of harmonious coexistence between human society and nature, and reflects the practical experience of the Chinese nation in understanding nature and using nature. These exploration practices have further promoted people to go far and steady on the road of inheriting innovative ice and snow culture. (Liao Dan)
Draft: Zhao Kairu
People's Daily ( 2022-01-28 20th edition)