Murals as Community Education Media in Surabaya: Cultural Semiotic Studies

Abstract

Visual signs that are displayed often appear in mural works in Surabaya as a means of communication and expression of the artist. The mural is significant with the reality of the time when the mural was made and the subsequent time span becomes important in seeing the significance of the mural on the image of Surabaya's public space. This study aims to examine murals as a medium of education through art in society, find out various public murals in Surabaya with consideration of the cultural semiotics of the surrounding community and describe the effects that arise related to education in the community through mural media with a cultural semiotic perspective. So it can be seen that the problems studied are qualitative in nature. The locations used during the research were limited to around South Surabaya, with the mural specifications intact. What is meant by intact is that the paint in the mural is still visible to the naked eye, the forms that make up the visual elements and the text still have clear legibility to the general public. This study shows The result of the research is that murals in Surabaya tend to display a narrative image style initiated by the government/institution with an educational message that appears in the visual signs, while the expressive image style is initiated by the mural artist/community, but the visual signs that appear are more critical and expressive. The mural structure has a fairly high legibility both in terms of visual and text. The existence of the mural is perceived as a spectator reaching individuals, but the understanding of each individual is the result of the relation between visual perception and the concept adopted. The process of community education can only reach individuals but cannot yet become a collective awareness that is able to move people to change their behaviour. The signs encountered are studied through the visual semiotic approach of Saussure and Yasraf with a socio-cultural approach in the people of Surabaya. The benefits of this research are to add to studies related to contemporary art and visual communication design, especially street art with a focus on murals, to identify mural forms in Surabaya, to become a reference material for similar research and to add the perspectives of other researchers regarding the study of cultural semiotics and to provide insights another for the learning process outside the formal environment, especially education in the community, through the mural media approach.

Keywords: Mural, Cultural Semiotics, Public education.