Expo Revisited

This was written over an extended period of time and suffers from a lack of proof reading so please forgive the probable repetition and grammatical errors.


I think I understand the concept of the Expo more than last time. For those of you who don’t remember, Expo/Banpaku is huge theme park of every major country in the world – each with an exhibition space. The theme for this Expo is ‘the environment’, a burning issue indeed. The issue is no coincidence with the G8 meeting happening about halfway through it’s six month life span. The Expo website gives some spiel about the ‘guilt of Japan’, ‘Japan has modernised quickly at a cost – (cue sarcastic ‘dun, dun, dun’ interlude) THE ENVIRONMENT’. Quite ironically Japan is falling short of targets of the Kyoto global warming protocol. In emergency action Japanese government has said it’s okay for Japanese businessmen to go a bit more casual on the top button always done up rule. In fact at the expo there was a “Cool Biz Collection” fashion show June 5 at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, with top executives — including Toyota chairman Hiroshi Okuda — strutting down the runway. This situation brings back disgusting memories of summer during my ‘wannabe private’ grant maintained all boys senior school, where we would have to wait until the first child would literally faint before we were allowed to take off our blazers and undo our top button. Japanese businesses have also been asked to turn down their air con. Easier said than done in 100 percent relative humidity and temperature averaging over 30 degrees c – as I am just finding out.

Perhaps it’s because the environment is such an issue in the press and with my peers at the moment, and perhaps it’s because I’ve been developing an interest in green technologies myself (and all the hippy stuff that goes with it) – but Expo has one too many contradictions in it. First of all Japan – yes great, robots that could potentially help the elderly, sweep the streets, even be security guards (the words ED-209 and Robocop mean anything to anyone?) but how does this bring to light the problems not just Japan, but the whole world faces? I mean the robots sing, dance, play instruments, but every article I have read about them simply states ‘wow – cool’. Okay, admittedly some go into how these machines can benefit society but none actually re-evaluate that ‘bigger picture’ and state the obvious that they are just another quick fix cure instead of the solution i.e. prevention. I mean where’s the profit if governments pump those billions into good education? Bush has already basically said that he’s not really going to agree on anything at the G8 summit because it would crush America’s economy. Instead he has revealed that America is looking more at ‘technologically based solutions’ i.e. something that investors and the military are going to get a return from. Also, Japan don’t really address the issue of wildlife (trust me they aren’t the only ones). I guess this isn’t surprising because the treatment of some animals by English, perhaps by extension, the Western world’s standards are pretty rough. Cat and dogs in tiny, sun warmed cages; Terrapins also in sub-sized cages, but easily reachable and shakeable by children; Siamese fighting fish in plastic cups. I know that I’m being naïve/ignorant for the sake of argument, but where do you draw the line when there is a clash between interest of culture and interest of environment? This has recently been brought up about Japanese increasing whaling for ‘scientific purposes’, and their promise to leave the International Whaling Commission if it’s demands are not met to have the whaling ban removed by 2006. All because eating whale is ‘part of their culture’ (and who are we to stop it?).

Next, Austria, who unashamedly had nothing to add to a sensible discussion about the environment, but saw this as a ripe opportunity to sell their country – and why not? There were a relatively large amount of people in this section of Expo, I wondered in and found out why. There was a man in Lederhosen pushing kids down a sizable ramp in, you’ve guessed it, a sleigh. I suppose it might be a green form of transport but like the curator was really thinking about that. Yep – we all cued up and had a go, and yep – it was fun. To make up for the total lack of any real information about any worldly issues, there was a seven by two metre wall of ice. Hang on – what did you say the theme for this exhibition was? I dread to think of the energy spent keeping a massive sheet of ice, 50 mil deep, frozen 24/7 for six months in what I have already stated is an extremely hot climate. I looked around for some reassuring information that this ice sheet was frozen using some impossibly envoi-friendly power source – no such luck. The kids, and the big kids loved it though. Despite Austria ostensibly being the bringer of many tonnes of CO2, it seems as though in terms of tourism projecting it’s image, it’s a runaway success with people ticking mental boxes of seeing all the stereotypes number one, two, and three. I was not the only person to be slightly perplexed by the display – an Austrian said to me quite sardonically when asked about their country at Expo, ‘and this is how we choose to be represented’.



South Africa was a outlandish mix of (for me) interesting facts, and debatable statements. Side by side there was a model of a recently found fish, thought to have been extinct for 75 million years helping scientists understand the process of evolution, next to a passage of writing which went something like this, ‘We may have had our problems [extreme repression, violence, civil unrest etc] in the past, but now South Africa is a charming, benign place’. Admittedly I am near completely ignorant about what is really happening at the moment in South Africa, but having recently met a South African who just said casually, ‘yeah, three of my friends have been kidnapped… but that’s just part of life’, I don’t really think of it as this reformed, unattainable vision of Utopia that was being projected upon me. Throughout were the standardised, clean-cut graphics we are all so accustomed to seeing. Display boards were comforting in their familiarity: legible Helvetica-like font; big, clear high contrast pictures, cleanly juxtaposed; sweeping vectors of various shades of sandy yellow – you know the type – suggesting modernity and cleanliness. No matter what the information was about, politics, wildlife, tourism, ecology, economy, development, it would all be displayed in the same format. Never mind the aphorism written because – this place is clean, this place is modern. Is this what people want from a place like South Africa? Different (but the same) – (don’t you worry) we’ve got beautiful scenery (with coffee shops and all the stuff you want from back home). I believe that the cool and trendy display helped convince people that there is no real civil unrest, I mean how could there be in a place which has cutting edge (‘Western’) design. If this sounds ludicrous, then imagine a display from a country you know not to have the most salubrious of civil-political history’s, and then they state ‘everything’s alright now’ on cheap/poor/economy material, say an A4 piece of paper, printed on, put inside a plastic wallet. Who is more likely to convince you that they have turned their country around? There were in fact countries who did display information in this way, but I assure you they were rarely even read.

What is the alternative? As I mentioned in the last post about Expo – Mexico also used the ubiquitous ‘trendy display’. I criticised this approach and my Mexican friend didn’t agree at all, in fact he was extremely positive about Mexico’s display. I asked him what had the dry ice door, the darkened room with light box pictographic and typographic displays everywhere, and the seemingly arbitrary ‘hi-tech’ game which involved standing on squares to reveal wildlife pictures that corresponded with words such as ‘love’ and ‘happiness’ had to do with Mexico. He responded by saying, ‘at least their moving forward… they’re not using stereotypes’. This was a very interesting and complex counterpoint. So, is this ‘moving forward’, this ‘progress’, involves removing the country from what makes it unique, and appealing in the first place? Is progress displayed as adopting the most ‘progressive’ country’s ‘way’, or (dare I say it) ‘style’? Perhaps it’s unintentional – you want to display your country in a contemporary way, so you look at what is contemporary. Contemporary is Helvetica, it is interactive games, it is clean, it is simple, it is Ikea, it is interactive games, it is Pentagram, it is Western. Contemporary is tangible. Obviously, with homogenisation a lot is lost – identity, culture, personality, versatility, the idea of ‘local’ all suffers. But something surely is gained, is it not? Yes – (again) comfort in familiarity. If the reader thinks that I am giving too much importance to what is ‘just a display’, then again consider the same scenario with the A4 piece of paper in a plastic sleeve, and maybe some photos, just laid down on a table in no particular order. While this may appeal to a few artz types, I think the majority of people, who are on a whistle-stop tour of this country’s display having just come from ten other displays, and just before going to lunch may be more than slightly bewildered –having seen the ‘poor’ display they may even completely dismiss this country and go for lunch early. Here, a much less extreme example: a country who arranges type in the centre in a strange font as appose to on the left in Helvetica – do you think people are going to think, ‘that’s different to how we’d do it in our country. Maybe this country’s actually interesting because it does things in a naïve/endearing/different way’? Or are they simply going to think, however subconsciously, ‘this country’s poor and unprofessional’? Or given the exhibition situation, ‘I don’t have time to decipher this, I’ve got twenty countries to do before dinner’? While English remains the lingua franca everybody has certain conventions they will have to obey if they wish to be projected ‘successfully’.

Of course I half-joke about people’s callous attitudes towards this exhibition. I can hardly blame them with a one day ticket costing over £20 and with over eighty countries to experience – or rather ‘do’ – before the day is out including the must see bipedal robots (1+ hour queue inclusive). The exhibition has large multi-cultural headcount targets to be met, subsequently they set it up to attract a mainstream audience from around the world, hence the word on the street being that Expo is entertainment rather than education (not that in reality it can’t be both). Much like advertising in any form, the countries at Expo have to grab and fight for a persons’ mind-share. And like any mainstream advertising it has to be quick and easy to digest, with maximum impact in as little time as possible.

Perhaps the promoters of the Expo in other countries should have gone to same advertising school as the designers who created the display for South Africa, because even though it is meeting the expected numbers, they are falling short of the set 10% international ticket buyers. Perhaps this target letdown is because of their, to my foreign eyes, dubious use of ‘kawaii’, or ‘cute’, characters to be the hallmark of Expo – although this kind of marketing is highly successful in Japan (at times it feels like the only kind of marketing), I don’t see my Mum and Dad forking out one or two thousand to see an exhibition on the meant to be serious issue of the environment when it’s advertised using Kiccoro, the cute little alive shrub, and Morizo, the cute bigger alive shrub (the real meanings being: Kiccoro, the forest child and, Morizo, the forest Grandfather). The want to attract a larger audience and introduce them to our wonderful world is admirable, but the criticisms which are constantly levelled at schemes such as Live Aid/8 could certainly be seen holding true here i.e. it’s just a good day out, nothing more.

In a situation like found in the Expo, the content definitely seems secondary to the ‘ambience’, and design of the various sections. Mexico told me succinct fascinating facts like ‘there are so many thousands species of this, and hundreds of species of that, and this species is going to be extinct soon’. But what really caused this? What is really being done? Who is really responsible? One can argue forever if ‘style’ is indeed ‘content’, but whilst the über cool display was enveloping every piece of information in it’s style template, I don’t think that argument holds firm.

(Video of Britain’s contribution to Expo to go here)

Next stop: Britain. I wanted to know what it was like within the fantasy microcosm of my country. I also thought this might give me a relative value to gauge the afore mentioned countries’ authenticity (especially considering I have not set foot on any of them). I’m not an expert by any means on anything arboreal but there was definitely an alive Britaish woodland planted around the entrance path toward the building. It was more contrived than it would have been, but there was definitely a sense of ‘Made in Britain’ about it. I can hark back to those science classes and remember the scientific basics about how oxygen is produced from photosynthesis from leaves. And indeed I know that oxygen is important for living, as I know a lesser concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is more desirable for us sentient things. But really – digging up a patch of England and shipping it an impressive distance is hardly environmentally sound is it? However, my fellow Expoians were suitably stirred by this monumental display, as admittedly was I. This is when I realised that ‘Shaun, you are dense’: Which is more interesting – seeing the trees, seeing pictures of the trees, being told about the trees, or reading about the trees? Yes ‘depending on the creativity of the display, picture, narrator or story’ argument aside, seeing the actual trees is ‘generally’ more interesting and accessible. Which is more interesting and accessible – seeing something physical for example, the newest development in technology, or being told about how educational progress and new thinking in a country is helping people better understand ‘the environment’? In a situation like Expo I say GIVE ME THE ROBOT, but I suspect the latter suggestion is substantially more beneficial to people as well as the environment. The robot is easy to understand – for one thing it is tangible, it actually gives you something to display – it would hardly be groundbreaking if it was just a description of the robot and it’s functions. Yet with something so ethereal like ‘education’, ‘attitude’, and other hard to grasp concepts, that’s all it can be surely – a description, or perhaps some nice photos of happy people in a clean country, and who the hell is going to be impressed/entertained by that? I am not taking the moral high ground here – as I mentioned before I’m currently developing an interest in green technologies, but now I think investing mind-share in this area is the ‘easy way out’, it’s just maturation of that adolescent geek that never died (with a sprinkle of university eco-liberal-awareness for taste). If I invested just as much intellectual resource in really trying to understand the ‘tick-tock’ of people, really trying to teach people these values it would be a lot more beneficial for both humanity and the environment. But that would be more difficult, and at the moment I am just trying to scrape over the ever-taller hurdles of a degree.

Ah the heady mix of delusion and digression.



The illusion of sweet oak-filled Britain was then shattered when I ran into the first ‘man-made’ display (ha). I really have been trying to think about this one and give it some leeway in my mind but I can’t – The first ‘piece’ (well it’s almost ineffable) was a raised wooden pillar not that dissimilar from a totem pole, with singular wooden seats embedded at either side. Running up and down the pole on circular disks were arbitrary British names such as ‘Ross’ and ‘Agnes’, with equally random dates below. I’m not sure if this was meant to reflect the importance and the celebration of the everyday person in Britain but I assure you me, and my British friends were in bemused fits of laughter.


click here to see video

The Inside of the show was completely different – very dark with backlit cut outs in the shapes of leaves on the wall – trying to ease the transition from British forest, to totem pole, to trendy darkened room I imagine. Initially I felt very happy and envious for the graphic designers who got to do this display, exactly the ‘kind a thing’ I like – it was utilising technology to create a more interactive experience, a similar ‘style’ of exhibition can be found at the Churchill Museum, London (art directed by Nick Bell). First I was presented with a pendulum like dongle, I stared at it, then I child more curious than I pushed it and instantly a buzzling noise was produced and lots of things followed the dongle around in an appropriate bee like motion. However, these were no ordinary bees, they were small buzzing letters – bees made out of the letters B E E – how wonderfully charming for both the graphic designer and the participant. The information on the display board on the reverse of the bee game stated that we have borrowed the hexagonal honeycomb structure to create stronger structures. In a nutshell – we as Man have borrowed and learnt from nature. The information was very light but I still had a feeling of ‘Oh yes, very good point Britain, nice clever way of fitting into the Expo without resorting to The Queen or Buckingham palace’. I can forgive the fact the interactivity is nothing to do with the structure of honeycombs and is slightly facile but hey, good use of a cultural trademark, looking forward with a nod to the past – I liked it.

Next I read about how researchers and developers at such and such a university have created a super near-frictionless swimsuit from looking at the structure of shark’s skin. Okay, the information again was about fifty words long but still forgivably shallow. Unfortunately the accompanying ‘cutting-edge’ interactivity really helped me understand how thin Britain’s educational contribution to Expo really was. It was beyond inane – there was a computer-generated shark in water with an outline of a hand waving over it. I followed the motion of the outline with my hand and guess what, the shark really moved – wow! I could have almost forgiven the dreariness of the game were it actually related to the understanding of the structure of sharkskin. Strangely what really peeved me was not the disjuncture between parts, but the fact that the animal on display had nothing to do with Britain really at all. I understand that I may be running into the illustrious land of hypocrisy from admitting that I actually want to see some kind of stereotype, but really a shark (not even a semi-native such as a basking shark I may add)!

The next display was in a similar, but even worse vain – learning how to make strong sticky stuff from gecko’s feet. The interactivity involved rotating an object to make a silhouetted gecko crawl over the famous London landscape – happens all the time didn’t you foreigners know? This one was perhaps the most objectionable despite, being momentarily appealingly, ironically surreal. Why didn’t they have an interactivity displaying what this technology was actually useful for? They could have displayed how people could scale walls by actually becoming nearly molecularly bonded with whatever surface they are touching – they could even have used, for posterity’s sake, the Gherkin or Saint Paul’s. Wouldn’t that have been more relevant, interesting and entertaining?



Just before the exit there were these annoying, tacky looking honeycomb shaped information boards (as though acknowledging that the only English animal referenced was the bee). There were also some viewfinders with backlit pictures of the picturesque rolling hills of the Cotswolds, the Yorkshire Dales etc etc. For me, backlit displays in viewfinders can only look so natural.

Even though I was dissatisfied with what Britain had shown me, I still think it was a (relatively) ‘successful’ display. People seemed wowed and amazed by the novelty of interactivity of the displays. I am sure that people who weren’t trying to squeeze some kind of research project/dissertation out of this would spend those five minutes with their friends and their families and be entertained, might even buy some of those Walkers’ shortbread biscuits, and most importantly the status of ‘Britain’ would be elevated in their minds. Perhaps, if the information were to go deeper then people children would become restless and people would be quicker to leave. Nevertheless, the reason why I am excited by the use of new interactive technology (apart from that ‘geek-streak’) is because it should allow an easier understanding of a complex subject. With the evidently big budget in Britain’s show I feel the graphic designers and ‘they’ (whomever ‘they’ are) missed a really good opportunity to show what technology can help to do – be inclusive, cross language and age barriers, be entertaining AND educational. Instead of Dumbing-up, the designers and ‘they’ took the easy option and dumbed-down. The content of this display reminded me of is in my foundation course when I was first getting to grips with software packages such as Photoshop, critiques would consist of me simply demonstrating what I could ‘do’ with it rather than the content. There is a power that comes from novelty, and I believe Britain missed a prime opportunity to showcase how clever and dynamic it can be.





Having been to my ‘home-country’ I could now understand what my Mexican friend was saying about Mexico. It was refreshing to see Britain not harping on about ‘the glory days', and misappropriating and 'moderninsing' icnoic images – for example the appropriation of the London Underground sign in the pictures above. The problem is that, that is what people want to see and if you don’t provide that then people are going to be disappointed. We rely on stereotypes to keep a sense of identity, and if your identity is successful it is a highly profitable business. When I visited the Mexico section it provided me with exactly what I didn’t want to see – hardly any of these cultural trademarks were present. Sure I want Mexico to be ‘advancing’, but I want it to be more rugged than Britain, I want there to be desert, I want it to be filled with Cacti, I don’t want to see a computer, I want to see happy smiling people drinking under sombreros. And instead I was provided with something cool, calm and too technologically enhanced. If a country removes itself from what it is expected to be, what does it become, something new, or something the same? A Taiwanese friend said England was ‘cool’, and I came away asking myself is this a good thing?

The bridging of the gap between theme park and environmental issues for all ages is an admirable, if ludicrous concept. Especially when there are ulterior motives such as tourism and money involved. Does the Expo encourage good international relations, or with it’s up-beat, almost politic free, ‘progressive’ feel does it make the world seem somewhat utopian and problem free? All these pressing questions and no real answers.