FEATURE
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Chile The Chilean pavilion is an extraordinary mix of technology and organic styling, creating a unique experience at Expo. Even the most technological aspects of the pavilion are muted in favour of preserving the warmth and pleasantness of the Chilean culture. The journey begins in a small room with a vertical LCD screen on a wall looking down on to a four-way blended projection surface, one metre below the surrounding catwalk. From the screen, a young Chilean girl looks out to scenic views of her city. Views, which took almost four months to shoot and have now been compiled to show a varied landscape that makes up her country. The fourminute loop can be quite mesmerising. Moving on to the second room you find yourself in the girl’s apartment. However her apartment is upside down above you, taking license from the ancient joke that if you dig far enough you will end up in China. On the wall there are 24 more vertical LCD windows. Day moves to night, as the threeminute video loop again gives you a peek into Chilean homes. The pathway moves on, clad in wood imported from Chile. At no point is the visitor overwhelmed by technology, rather the technology is used to support the narrative from the girl. As in other pavilions, the technically exciting exhibits are left until last. The first is Antipode’s Well, a beautifully crafted wooden wishing well encases a horizontally laid
LED screen. The screen again takes license from the digging theory displaying live streamed images from a portable camera in Chile. The portable camera goes to bars, football matches and all sorts of daily events in Chile. In return, there is a camera in the well that sends back images from Expo to Chile. This has proved a highlight in the pavilion and indeed back in Chile. The final wow for the visitor is The Wall of Chile, billed as the world’s largest HD interactive multi-touch wall. At 4m wide by 1.2m high, the wall is made up of eight 46-inch MultiTouch Cells. Designed by Francisco Arevalo of Riolab in Santiago and supplied by Finnish company MultiTouch, the system contains over six hours of HD footage and thousands of still images. Each piece of media can be triggered, sized and moved using traditional multi-touch gestures. Think Minority Report with Tom Cruise type manipulation. Watching the public begin using the system after a short time, it is evident multi-touch technology is something people can intuitively grasp quickly and easily. The back end of the wall is a cluster of high-end computers feeding content for up to 36 users at any one time. The technology isn’t without its glitches and there are moments where the system needs to catch up, however, running multiple HD videos on demand with real-time variables in play is very impressive. Paul Collison