World's Fair

[nemorathwald]

The 2005 World Fair in Aichi Japan has a wonderful website. Check out the pavilions. This World Fair is incredibly robotized, by the way. I'm not talking about Disney's Audio-Animatronics. I mean white plastic robots that walk around and see their environment and interact with it, offering to guide visitors to their destination or just sweeping up the trash. I want one.

I really need to not look at this so much-- it's threatening to my finances. Last week I got out my gigantic Disney Imagineering coffee table book and looked at concept art of Epcot Center for hours. Do any of you love World Fairs (or "Global Expositions" as they are called now)? Do you know what I'm talking about? The apex of the technology, philosophy, and creativity of the human species come together in a meeting of cultures. With each expo, the confusion of tongues is defeated at the hands of mortals, and we glorify the successful completion of the Tower of Babel. This is secular humanism at its most beautiful expression, and I am grateful.

Comments

[paranthropus.livejournal.com]

Wonderful. I wish I could be there. Not to get up on a soap box, but Japan shows us what nations can accomplish when they focus their resources on industry and creativity instead of pointless military expansion, pandering to special interests and propping up dead technologies at the expense of the new. It's true that the secular vision of humanity plays an important part. The darker aspect of religion is that it can control a population through fear. We are compelled to disregard rational medical ethics, as in the Schiavo case, in favor of pointless gestures like "Terry's Law" - nothing more than an opportunity for politicians to pose, to say that they tried to intervene. Fortunately, most Americans didn't buy it and the vocal extremists are being revealed as just that. Anyway that's where we are are at in this country: pointless pseudo-moral gyrations instead of working toward progress.

It was not always like this. I don't mean to threadjack, but I thought this was appropriate. It's an episode of Disneyland (the TV show) from 1967 in which Walt, just a few months before his death, outlines his utopian vision for the community of tomorrow: EPCOT. Enjoy.

http://waltopia.com/epcot_film.html

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! This is not threadjacking at all. Disney is sufficiently utopian to have even bought and built a whole suburban city near Orlando, "Celebration, Florida," in which people can buy homes to live full-time in the painstakingly realized, rigidly enforced and policed Essence Of The American Dream.

World Fairs, and Epcot in particular, are certainly not without their detractors. You can enjoy the future and celebrate the glory of human accomplishment without having to think about the world you're leaving your grandchildren, or you can eat Americanized food in all the countries of the world without having to put up with foreign languages. All this is exaggeration of course, but even were it all true, it would still be a great vacation destination, it would just no longer be my favorite one on earth. Who wants a vacation to involve trouble and problems? I go on vacation to relax, and that's not helped by deliberately seeking out hardships, stresses and challenges like many-non-Disneyers seem to do. Hey, whatever blows their hair back, let them do it on their own vacation. Now, I can understand if somebody doesn't like crowds or Florida heat. That's different.

To those who complain about that the depictions of foreign countries are too stereotypical and unrealistic, I present the following idea: Coming to World Showcase in 2003: The Realistic Pavilion! Guests will be given dysentery and sleep in an authentically rancid train station while fending off the attempts of disgusting street performers to steal their wallets. Featuring all staff who don't bathe, speak no English and urinate in the streets of the pavilion. Future attractions include The Bidet Experience.

It's consistently been the lowest-attended of the four parks. Which is a shame. It's a combination of several types of museum: science, technology, culture and aquarium. There are performing arts and artifacts brought in from around the world, and festivals of authentically foreign food and drinks. The nightly fireworks, fountains and lasers is the best I've ever seen, and the accompanying millenium parade is so beautiful that I've got the soundtrack. But more than that, overall the park's presentation encourages vision, motivation, friendship and hope.

This might be why ever since 1984 it's been my favorite. This was where I first saw computers, videophones, cell phones, hydroponics and Segways. I remember being selected from a tour group in the late nineties to pilot a prototype of a virtual reality magic carpet ride. That was a pivotal moment of life direction, when I realized that computers could be used to combine my interests of animation, sculpture, puppetry and interactive games into a single art form.

A couple of years ago my family sculpted clay tiles to be used in a wall in my parents' redecorated bathroom. Each of us was to choose one thing to put on our own tile, such as a guitar, a bible, a gecko, a rose, or the Detroit Tigers logo. I chose Spaceship Earth (better known as the Epcot globe), and put the millennium decorations on it, which were the giant arm of the Mouse with his magic wand and the numerals 2000, as seen here: http://www.intercot.com/themeparks/epcot/default.asp I could think of no better fusion of art and science, of logic and imagination.

[rainbowgnosis.livejournal.com]

Wow. That stuff is really quite awesome. Wish I could see it IRL!

Because I'm evil...

[phecda.livejournal.com]

http://www.nwa.com/features/tpacspring05/

NWA's spring sale to Asia extended to March 31 (tomorrow...)