The Universal Exhibition of Osaka, already a fiasco? | EUROtoday

On Apr 12, 2025

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Sur the exhilarating theme of “the society of the future”, at first look, theUniversal Exhibition 2025 impresses. Dozens of pavilions with loopy architectures dispersed within the heart and round a huge picket round ring, 615 meters in diameter and 20 meters excessive, image of a world Union. All on a small island within the bay of one of many largest cities in Japan, a rustic perceived as on the forefront of technological advances. In brief, an occasion that presents itself a priori very nicely. And, the truth is, once we journey the aisles, we don’t hesitate to {photograph} a number of pavilions with shapes, dimensions or stunning colours.

It is whenever you enter it (having reserved or ready for a really very long time) that you simply begin to be disillusioned. First of all as a result of some are empty: there are solely projections on the partitions, the ground, the ceiling, in every single place. Plaging music, lights, soothing phrases, smoke, in brief, digital, vaporous. The designers name this of “immersive” (French pavilion, Panasonic pavilion, and so on.) supposed to “create an allegedly” distinctive “experience” however which has turn out to be far too frequent.

And after three immersion pavilions, we’re afraid of getting already undergone mind washing. Then there are the pavilions that give you to satisfy your self however in a number of a long time (NTT, metropolis of Osaka, and so on.). And there, we rating you from head to toe, even your waist and the situation of your scalpyour wrinkles on the brow, and, after getting supplied with complete consent all this biometric info from which turns into you escape, you visualize on a display screen the aged and ugly particular person you’ll turn out to be. And you come out struck.

Extend your life within the type of an android

Then you meet the inevitable robots. A priori, we should always belief the Japanese authorities who’ve chosen to entrust an entire pavilion on “the future of life” to the “Android specialist” Hiroshi Ishiguro, professor of the University of Osaka, an odd character who created a very good one already her clone-android, Much appreciated by native media. It has been a long time that there are robots and that they are often seen in every single place.

There remains to be a slight drawback that the Japanese appear to be noticing: its robots have hardly developed for no less than twenty years, and have no idea learn how to do something. To schematize, these are dolls of the Grévin Museum sorta bit articulated, generally distant -controlled, which recite, after they communicate. Or metallic creatures with a human face, hardly extra cell, no more clever and completely ineffective. However, in his pavilion, Ishiguro presents his imaginative and prescient of the longer term along with his specimens, a few of that are indescribable (see pictures).

Read too Osaka, town the place we eat “to the ruin” According to him, “in 2050, it will be possible to choose an end of natural life or an extension of its existence in the form of an android”. And earlier than that, “Androids We will be very useful on a daily basis as is a computer. We may say that we don’t like it, we can’t live without it, ”explains the real Ishiguro. Without the slightest state of mind, the man thus shows us a video in which a little girl grows alongside her grandmother and whom she manages to convince not to abandon her by dying and continue to accompany her in an Android form.

We will console ourselves from this edifying scene and other nightmarish visions of “Androids in 1,000 years” by watching real shows and going to eat some specialties from various countries. Because there are at least that of tangible and appreciable in this 2025 exhibition, gastronomy … While waiting for meat to be “manufactured from cells assembled by a 3D printer that may be at dwelling, which can keep away fromrack And kill them ”(dixit a consultant on the Osaka pavilion).

We are removed from having seen all the things, and there are undoubtedly superb issues, past digital worlds. However, for lack of upstream info, the overwhelming majority of Japanese (75 % in keeping with polls) had been hardly on this exhibition. And they produce other comprehensible causes.

The lifetime of tomorrow, on tons of waste

Is there, certainly, worse place to represent the theme “to conceive of the society of the future where our lives shine” than an open-air discharge? It is nevertheless what this synthetic island, Yumieshima, on which Expo 2025 is constructed. In the seismic space and seaside. Its subsoil is made up of successive contributions of detritus, industrial waste, incinerated rubbish, related to layers of sand and clay. It is that this embankment that kinds the island of 390 hectares.

This imposed some directions for the development of pavilions, stipulated within the paperwork given to the assorted architects and of which The level obtained a duplicate: “Since the location is a newly backfilled space, a subsidence as a result of clay layers can happen even through the building interval (from April 2023 to April 2025). It is really useful to take this threat under consideration throughout design. In addition, the excavation depth should not exceed 2.5 m in order to not contact the layer of sand, draining. »»

Read too Universal Exhibition 2025: “This withdrawal from France is dismaying” All this isn’t reassuring or very wholesome, however, with a couple of centimeters of asphalt above, nothing is seen, and we might fake that we didn’t know. Except that annoying incidents stop us, just like the explosion that happened in March 2024 through the building of the bathroom. From the methane escapes from the basement, a spark and growth. “This is not a problem, we have made the necessary arrangements and there are other sites of the same type where buildings are also built,” replied the Point Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura, additionally a boss of the appropriate -wing occasion Ishin No Kai.

Communist elected officers (opposition), who went on April 6, measure the methane content material At the sewer’s mouths, discovered it. So “we have to strengthen controls,” admitted the organizers. According to the weather supplied by the city corridor of Osaka, the buildup of so many rubbish has additionally compelled to construct a gallery of pipes so as to channel gasoline and in addition requires treating polluted water, to make preparations towards varied bugs and critters, and so on.

Station to non-public information

Another concern, entry, by a single crowded metro line or by bus shuttles, and the acquisition of tickets. Everything is finished on-line, nevertheless it’s tedious. In Japanese, it’s already unacceptable as it’s lengthy, however the translations of knowledge and common situations in different languages, made by software program and never verified by a human, are incomprehensible, similar to the presentation web site.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

Now it might be higher to know what he’s going again earlier than clicking on “Accept” when it’s private information. Because, along with the id, tackle, cost strategies, passport quantity, additionally it is essential to obtain apps with which the organizers have the appropriate to gather location coordinates, the historical past of purchases on the location, the biometric information (taken throughout avatars experiments on pavilions) and many different info.

And all the things could be “shared with partners”, it’s specified beneath the overall situations. With a paper ticket (out there in supermarkets), much less dangers on this plan, however extra expectations and difficulties to benefit from pavilions. And it’s going to even be essential to take into consideration the summer season warmth that kills and sends 1000’s of individuals to the hospital yearly.

https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/ia-robots-androides-l-exposition-universelle-d-osaka-deja-un-fiasco-12-04-2025-2587191_24.php