EXPOSITION TYPOLOGY 1: Thematic Branding in Modern Culture through Semiotic Content.

Man is,

The symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal inventor of the negative (or moralizing by the negative),

Separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making,

Goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order,

And rotten with perfection. 

                                                                                                     Kenneth Burke    

                                                                                                     (Definition of Human)

As a phenomenon of branding and theme-based design, the 2010 World Exposition can be likened to a magazine, which limits itself to the now; what’s in vogue. Underpinning this is the semiotic content which is a kind of codification, encapsulating cultural knowledge in particular ways that are instrumental in the deliberate passing on of traditions.   One might argue that the conceptual underpinning of an exposition has more lasting value than its physical manifestation.  This is due in part to its short architectural life span, which ranges from three months to no longer than six, but more importantly it can be ascribed to its mode of cultural representation through signs.  Because the Expo only has to be current for six months, it can display today’s styles, today’s issues and today’s notions of the future without context or consequence. Paradoxically, the Expo can be extremely current and yet irrelevant.  This can be explained by the process of Modernization, of which the Expo is a perpetual prototype. Heidegger defined modernization as a modern world picture.  Drawing from an allusion to viewer of art, the term “world picture” articulates and privileges the subject, who believes everything exists only in and through representation[i].  Effectively, by producing the representation, the subject produces the world.

In the Information Age, where we have become obsessed with memory and the mythologization of the past as a way to rationalize the present, the concept of world picture is especially pertinent.  Our very production of culture is a kind of palimpsest, which highlights the epistemological conundrum of, “modern again and again expressing the consciousness of an epoch that relates itself to the past of antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new.”[ii] Our sense of the present is increasingly decontextualized, framed by the global tendency towards commodified homogeneity, while our notions of “classic” or historical are characterized only within our sense of the present.  As a result we look to the future as the harbinger of a new reality.  If one were to compare the differences between Disney World’s World Showcase with it editorialized selection of 11 national pavilions, and the World Exposition with its array of national, regional and corporate pavilions for example, we might construe the following: that the former subscribes to a kind of “Hyper-Reality”, a Baudrillardian concept, where the simulation of the authentic becomes more valid than the real subject.  This is as a result of the compression of cultural stereotypes, decontextualized by premise of entertainment and a more subtle hegemony of values, into an idealized stage prop, replete with authentic exports and staffed with “real people from the land of origin”.  The reduction is both spatial in the sense of using iconic architecture and temporal as a result of an anachronistic re-presentation of a bygone era.  In comparison, the Expo is akin to a fashion event, re-presenting reality with the technologically infused promise of the future; an example of psychological obsolescence [iii] that exhibits both the desire for branding (profit and market share growth) with novelty and change. What is at stake is  “culture [that] has been robbed of ambivalence and negativity in favor of a mass media capable of assimilating, and thus neutralizing, any form of cultural difference or dissent.” [iv]   

 

Exposition planners argue that a successful theme should reflect the following characteristics:

1. Appropriateness to the Expo location.

2. Simple and flexible.

3. Not requiring an overly technical or academic presentation, or a disproportionate investment in presentation technology.

4. Easy to translate into different languages (and across cultures).

5. Fresh: not used in recent expositions.

6. Embodying a beneficial attempt to improve man’s knowledge

7. Having world-wide appeal and a concept sufficiently universal as to have potential application for every participant

8. Providing opportunities to exhibitors to present themselves in a meaningful way

9. Not dependent on a political climate (which may well change between the time the application is submitted and the fair opens) [xviii]

 

The challenge presented is how to communicate across culture without reducing diversity to a dimensionless caricature.

 

It is at the level of signs, where differentiation and value generation happen in a post industrial economy.  Looking at a timeline of Expo themes, there is a consistent display of universal values that parallels technological invention and economic progress.  At the same time, there is a trend that begins with territorial acquisitions and development during an era of late industrialization, that later becomes increasingly self-aware with technologies that reveal the spatial extents of the earth and a new conscientiousness towards limited resources. In semiotic terms there has been a shift of the epicenter of production from the material to the immaterial.  New methods of wealth acquisition are created from intangible assets such as information flow, images and entertainment.[v]  This intangibility is evident in more recent Expo themes that are embedded with symbolic content. “A More Human World” for example is potentially both one with more respect for one’s fellow man in a moral sense, and a world that is of humans, reflecting in other words, our understanding and ability to develop and manage the world’s resources.  “A Shrinking Globe and Expanding Universe” speaks to our increasing knowledge base about the world and the universe, where discovery reaches beyond our physical limits from quarks to black holes light years away.  At the same time, there is commentary on the finite resources of the earth that correlates with a more profound existential crisis in a universe that has not produced neither transcendental meaning or tangible resources.

The evidence of the impotence of the Exposition as a concept of simulating solutions for the future using technologies of the present resides in the ability to use signs across cultures.  In a world of cultural pluralisms, the Expo connotes universal truths that are useful only in a contemporary setting.  “Progress and Harmony” is an ideological paradox conceived in 1970 for the Osaka-based Exposition.  This meta-term reflected Japan’s introspective goals of achieving consensus and harmonizing opinion conveyed with the term matomeru meaning "to decide" at a time when the country was shifting its dependency from foreign oil and investing heavily in infrastructure.  Representing another major cultural paradigm at the same time, the USA was approaching it first trade deficit in eighty years while still embroiled in the Vietnam War.  For Japan, the phrase progress and harmony suggests a strategy, while for the USA, the wording is heavy with irony and the rhetoric of an aggressive foreign policy. Evidently similar themes such as Nature, Man, Progress, Industry and the Future recur in the Exposition’s history, seemingly in an attempt to educate and entertain new generations of attendees.  Yet while the same values and didactics are promoted, the context is invariably different.  This is a comment on the Exposition’s ability to sustain or even convey the knowledge, failures and successes of its previous iterations in a constructive, sedentary manner.  “Artifacts regularly carry the past into the present, and symbols not only encourage but are the primary vehicle permitting continuity of the past into the present.”[vi]Unconsciously each exhibition is a fresh reprisal of familiar themes, repackaged so as to be valid for the now. 

 

Planners understand the success of an Exposition is underwritten by a theme that is already deeply important to the audience, but which must also reflect the true values of the “brand” being promoted.   Philosopher Ernst Cassirer, suggested that symbols, as the quintessential human characteristic, can be used to shield people from reality, “People use symbols not only as a way of communicating information to others, but as a way of communicating with themselves, to construct an image of reality.”[vii]   The term “brand” [viii] is used to describe the country, province, city or organization that is represented at a pavilion and the Exposition as a whole.  The holistic theme of the 2010 World Exposition “Better Life, Better City” summarizes contemporary themes of urban development, sustainability, cultural communication and architectural heritage.  Promoted benefits to local industry include a more heterogeneous urban culture, economic prosperity, innovative application of science and technology, opportunity to remodel communities and a heightened interaction between urban and rural areas.[ix]   Such shared values cannot be faked or created, only found.  When the values resonate with the audience, there is a connection that becomes brand preference. 

 

Through its history, the branding of the World Expo through official emblems has been a critical signifier of its goals and identity using the language of semiotics. All signs are conveyed with the Index, the Symbol, and / or the Icon.[x]  An Index is a sign where there is a dir­ect link between the sign and the object. In the case of traffic signs, there is a rep­res­entation of inform­a­tion which relates to a loc­a­tion - a ‘slip­pery road sur­face’ sign placed on a road which is prone to flooding. An Icon is a sign that resembles some­thing, and may be a photograph, illus­trat­ive or dia­gram­matic.  In this example, the illustration the Icon of Uncle Sam is used in a symbolic manner with respect to the subject of smoking, while the textual message is indexed to the original message of instruction in a parodic inversion of the propaganda. A symbol has no logical mean­ing between it and the object and there is a crossover between design and branding, which carries the dual connotations of ‘people power’ through a unified identity and the phenomenon of universal placeslessness.     The conceit of ethnocentricism can be likened to a “loss of narrative’s social function describing the Postmodern phenomenon of being unable to contextualize ourselves historically; When we discover that there are several cultures instead of just one and consequently at the time when we acknowledge the end of a sort of cultural monopoly, be it illusory or real, we are threatened with the destruction of our own discovery.  Suddenly it becomes possible that there are just others, that we ourselves are “other” among others.  All meaning and every goal having disappeared, it becomes possible to wander through civilizations as if through vestiges and ruins.” [xi]  As a typology, the Exposition exhibits both formally differentiated sameness and the burden of semiotic indulgence.  Every pavilion is a form of modernism, each seemingly incompatible with their respective referents as much as each other.

 

 In this sample series, almost all the emblems connote universality using the shape or coloring of a globe.  Cyclical qualities, the environment and sustainability are prominent secondary themes in combination with the year of the Exposition.  According to the official 2010 World Exposition site, their emblem, “depicts the image of three people-you, me, him/her holding hands together, symbolizes the big family of mankind. Inspired by the shape of the Chinese character"世"(meaning the world), the design conveys the organizers' wish to host an Expo which is of global scale and which showcases the diversified urban cultures of the world.”  The theme “Better Life, Better City” also acts as a linguistic sign, comprising a relationship between a signifier and the meaning of the signifier.  In this instance the signifier is a material object, the Expo which functions as a prototype for a “Better City”, while the meaning of the material object is a “Better Life”.  In addition, there is the referent, the real object in the real world to which the sign refers – the city[xii]. 

 

Signification is relevant to the Exposition because its representation is aimed at a diverse audience with the intent to generalize.  Global branding through the vocalizing of contemporary issues is part of the international rhetoric of the World Exposition.  The economic and bureaucratic advantage of global campaigns is to court culturally differentiated audiences in a unified market. Internationalization, viewed as a democratizing force that facilitates intercultural communication, contributes to the ecology of information through an economy of signs. [xiii] Because mass media, internationalized markets and tourism suggest a future “world culture” of designed sameness, the competitive advantages implicit in emblems and mascots are more useful that direct marketing. Capitalizing on the potency of a striking design, where an emblem can be a way to promote universal values, organizers of individual pavilions have created their own emblems at the 2010 Expo more than any other expo in the past. Complementing their pavilion, the emblem advances the interests and values beyond the physical space.  The emblem used strategically, alludes to an immersive experience promised by the pavilion it represents, through the medium of two-dimensional advertizing using color, shape and iconography.  Like the pavilion they are intended to entertain as much inform. 

In a fashion similar to sports games and the Olympics, mascots of the World Exposition are developed to be specific symbols through their meta-function, although the regional qualities of the character are more ambiguous. As a meta-sign, the mascot is intended to convey social meaning in a manner that allows other signs, such as the emblem (whose symbolic references generally much better explained) to be interpreted as a style. Where the Exposition emblem represents the world outside of the immediate sign system as world picture, the mascot functions in a more interpersonal way, projecting the relations between the producer and receiver of the sign system. [xiv]  The interpersonal qualities engage through techniques that posit the subject in an apriori relationship to the the meta-sign in which semiotic content is interchangeable.  Put another way, the mascot and emblem are a dual strategy of qualifying the consumer of the sign as an individual within a larger social narrative; “the mascot is a spokesperson who escapes questions of cultural identity entirely. The mascot is a speaking, acting logo—a proprietary beast of burden who is trademark and spokesperson rolled into one.”[xv]  With a relatively static world picture and no overriding social narrative, Olympic mascots are almost uniformly animals with a clear, definable aesthetic and regional character.

Over the last twenty years, the World Expo mascot have shown more conceptual variation than Olympic or other sports mascots, exploited qualities that are endearing and anthropomorphic, while interpreting more ambivalent social issues such as gender and race.  The 1984 Seymore D. Fair duck stresses the phonocentric play on words to “see more [of] the fair” over the visual attributes which allude to the iconic Uncle Sam and Scrooge McDuck. In this sense the character is politically charged, making both references to propaganda of American ideals and values and wealth acquisition. Ernie, the life-sized robot of Expo 1986, consciously subverts the face and hands, critical to conveying tone and relatability.  Curro, the mascot for the 1992 Expo, is a schizophrenic construct comprising a big white bird with the legs of an elephant, whose long conical beak and crest feature the colors of the rainbow rich with political and social connotation. Twispy from the Hanover 2000 Expo is a multi-colored creature: with a large mouth, a big nose, a plant for left arm, a human hand for right arm, a man's foot and a woman's foot. [xvi]  Imbued with a Frankenstein-like logic, Twispy is an ideological construct of all the most relevant issues. Morizo and Kiccoro from the 2005 Expo appeared to pay homage to Hayao Miyazaki in their conveyance of nature’s wisdom, while Fluvi the raindrop from Expo 2008, speaks to the issues of water conservation in a similarly unambiguous manner. 

Haibao, the mascot of the 2010 Expo, showcased in the introductory image series, is by comparison, the most controversial and choreographed mascot. Translated as treasures of the sea in Mandarin, Haibao is described as an anatomical abstraction of the pictographic Chinese character人 (rén) meaning ‘people’, where the convergent strokes symbolize support and teamwork, as well the Chinese concept of harmony. While the underlying reference to the ocean is unclear, compositionally Haibao references the sea withhis crest of hair tand the azure color that is intended as an allusion to the horizon and its connotations of latitude and imagination.  The feet are intentionally large, which in Chinese terms suggest strength - perhaps as an unconscious reaction to foot binding.  While the creators of Haibao have been accused of plagiarism, the momentum created by the mascot’s strategic representation has not been lost on participants in the 2010 World Exposition, many of whom have created their own mascots in a flurry of competitive whimsy.  Perhaps more striking is the use of the Haibao mascot as a symbolic conveyance at the launch of pavilions.  As Umberto Eco reminds us, “The basic ideology of an exposition is that the packaging is more important than the product, meaning that the building and the objects in it should communicate the value of a culture, the image of a civilization.” [xvii] 

REFERENCES

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[i] The Anti Aesthetic, Essays on Post-Modernism, Craig Owens, The Discourse of Others, Ed. Hal Foster, The New York Press, 1998, PP. 76

[ii] The Anti Aesthetic, Essays on Post-Modernism, Jurgen Habbermas, Modernity – An Incomplete Project, Ed. Hal Foster, The New York Press, 1998, PP. 2

[iii] Semiotics of Investment: The Wall Street Fashion System, http://knol.google.com/k/semiotics-of-investment-the-wall-street-fashion-system#

[iv] Ellen Lupton, Critical Wayfinding, The edge of the Millennium, Ed. Susan Yelavich, New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1993. 220-232.

[v] Semiotics of Investment: The Wall Street Fashion System, http://knol.google.com/k/semiotics-of-investment-the-wall-street-fashion-system#

[vi] Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy. Semiotics and Communication, Signs, Codes, Cultures. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

[vii] Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy. Semiotics and Communication, Signs, Codes, Cultures. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

[viii] The Expo Book, http://www.theexpobook.com

[ix] SHANGHAI CHINA THEME VISION, Urban China Magazine and Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, http://www.docstoc.com/docs/20484916/World-Expo-2010-Shanghai-China-Theme-Vision 

[x] Boulton, Mark. Icons, Symbols and a Semiotic Web. http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/icons-symbols-and-a-semiot...

[xi] The Anti Aesthetic, Essays on Post-Modernism, Craig Owens, The Discourse of Others, Ed. Hal Foster, The New York Press, 1998, PP. 66

[xii] The Anti Aesthetic, Essays on Post-Modernism, Frederic Jameson, Modernity – Postmodernism an Consumer Society, Ed. Hal Foster, The New York Press, 1998, PP.135

[xiii] Ellen Lupton, Critical Wayfinding, The edge of the Millennium, Ed. Susan Yelavich, New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1993. 220-232. 

[xiv]   Rumiko Oyama. Visual Communication across Cultures, A study of visual semiotics in Japanese and British advertisements

[xv] Ellen Lupton, Critical Wayfinding, The edge of the Millennium, Ed. Susan Yelavich, New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1993. 220-232.

[xvi] http://en.expo2010.cn/expo/expoenglish/mascot/wem/userobject1ai39550.html

[xvii] UMBERTO ECO. Author: Neil Leach. Published in: book Rethinking Architecture, Volume 1, Part 4 March 1997 , pages 181 - 204

[xviii] The Expo Book, http://www.theexpobook.com