EXPO 2015: A Missed Premise is a Missed Promise

When I happen to attend a social event, from a dinner party to the Venice Biennale and I want to figure out how the event is like I totally rely on perception. 

The best indicator to find out what you should expect from a certain event can be the general mood you perceive from the environment and the best way to conduct such a task is to snoop around starting from visitors and staff. 

If you want to be able to assess an environment's quality, you want to look into people's eyes.

I look at everyone's eyes throughout every department from the security guards to bar staff to the keepers to the stewards.

And that's exactly what I did yesterday night when I first visited the Milan Expo. I started by looking into the sad eyes of the army officer who was babysitting the bridge that leads to the exhibit main site.

Then I saw the shaky carabiniere who had just being called to help the guards at the security check and I noticed the drill instructor voice tone of the steward who was addressing the sheeple: "If you hold still to take pictures please step aside, don't block the way".

The Expo starts at the Pavilion zero where a giant Latin phrase welcomes the visitor: “Divinus halitus terrae” that can be translated as "the divine breath of earth". 

Curated by tv Director Davide Rampello and designed by Italian Architect Michele de Lucchi, Pavilion Zero is supposed to "take the visitor on a journey to explore how much humankind has produced, the transformation of natural landscape, through the culture and rituals of food consumption". 

What you see first is a series of wall-to-wall library shelves and drawers that in a sort of Hogwart-Victorian style are supposed to gather the whole food memory of our civilization. Unfortunately that first room didn't impress me much as I have felt no emotion in seeing such a waste of wood. 

In my book, human memory when portrayed through matter it's all about carved stones as that's the way through which  the great civilizations of the past were able to pass on their culture to us.

Certainly you can't leave behind a series of posh Victorian wooden shelves that remind more of the Harry Potter saga rather than of human memory. 

The second landmark presented at the Pavilion Zero is a large old tree that stretches through the roof. The tree is supposed to depict "the boundaries of time, nature's resistance to change and the quest for spirituality" except for the fact that the tree is a fake as it's made of iron and plaster and what had to symbolize nature's resistence just created the opposite effect.

Celebrating nature through a fake certainly isn't the best debut for an exhibit whose story premise is "feeding the planet" but I didn't want to spoil the party just at its beginning and I went on through this amazing journey into what was supposed to be our civilization's history. 

More plaster is on display as you proceed through the exhibit as you see a 300 squared meter (3200 sq ft) landscape model that depicts a series of human settlements: from the German mines to the English Agriculture, to the Italian village of Crespi d'Adda and the Argentinian pampas.

The journey ends with New York' skyscrapers as if that would be the top of what our civilization was able to reach. Maybe because every architect secret dream is to build a Manhattan skyscraper? 

We don't know.

The model provides no creative inputs nor it's able to project the visitor into our future landscape it's just a dull representation that completely lacks vision.

As cool hand Luke would say: "What we've got here is failure to communicate"

In the second to last room, you enter a dark environment where a huge stock ticker board displays commodity goods being traded worldwide to symbolize speculation on produce goods as today's ineluctable reality is the stock market rules over the world's destiny.

The problem is the visitor is presented with a massive shiny ticker board whose presence is the most overwhelming in the whole exhibit as if what has to be celebrated here is the technological achievement of being able to trade zillions of tons of produce goods in a matter of nanoseconds.

I guess this is the biggest mistake the authors could have made as visitors might be led to confuse Evolution with Technology which is also the greatest misunderstanding of our time. 

Evolution is only about Consciousness and has nothing to do with technology which is just a reflection of the first. We have been reading a lot of propaganda lately about robots and artificial intelligence taking over, only to keep us away from the real deal which is Conscious-Based-Technology. 

In the last room the visitor is presented with a little mountain of wasted food which is made of plaster and it is supposed to represent today's food waste. The concept can be praised but the waste cannot be represented by a plaster model, waste must be waste or the concept won't reach the audience, unless the authors made it on purpose in order to send the message that in today's world made of media our only gateway to reality is just a representation of it but I strongly doubt it. 

After the Pavilion zero I went to the Thailand pavilion.

We've been waiting about fifteen minutes in line only to assist to a 360 degree projection in Cinerama style of a neverending video spot of Thailand as a tourist destination (Just like the infinite looping of Incredible India on CNN).

After the first commercial ended we were taken to a second room where a sort of 3D corporate Power Point was projected on the room surface. I started asking myself the big questions "what the heck is this? what am I watching? where am I?" I suddenly reached the exit onto the Thai food restaurant which I have been gasping for the whole time but only to clash with the harsh reality of a ........Thai Microwave Diner.

You read it well, the Thai restaurant is a frozen food diner where you can buy your favorite frozen dish and the staff heats it up just like in the early 60's the famous New York chain called Tad’s 30 Varieties of Meals featured frozen dinners on its menu.

Customers at Tad’s cooked the frozen meals at tableside microwave ovens just like they do it today at the Thai Restaurant of Expo 2015. 

That's the weirdest way to unfold the premise of "feeding the planet", but I actually saw a happy crowd who was eager to see how frozen Thai food would have turned into their Expo fairy tale food experience.

An Italian/Thai Mystery. 

The very core of the Expo Exhibit is supposed to be the "Tree of Life" a wooden-covered structure with hundreds of leds surrounded by waterworks. Basically it's like the Fountains at Bellagio in Vegas, a show of water, music and a bunch of lightworks with the addition of hologram-style projections on the water haze.

Unfortunately the only intelligible thing I could spot through the waterworks was the hologram of the Pirelli brand that sponsored the show. That's right: in 2015 we're still stuck with branded communication just like we were in the Middle Ages. 

Where's the innovation? Where's the show? Where's the vibe? 

My first impression of the Expo from the Pavilion zero to the rest of the exhibit is just the huge lack of narrative that affects the whole project.

When you aim at representing something that has to connect to an audience it has to be something that inspired your entire life and that can be inspiring for the rest of the Universe otherwise you better stay home. 

The Pavilion zero, like the rest of this huge exhibit has no heart...no inspiration...and lack of inspiration affects the whole narrative. Since you enter the Expo you can tell the main problem of this huge exhibit is the absence of narrative development as it lacks what Robert McKee would call "the Controlling Idea" or what Lajos Egri would call "the Story Premise" that only exists on the event's logline that is "feeding the planet". Such a narrative flaw engenders a major disruption as the story never takes off.

The Expo Story Premise doesn't unfold along the way because of its lack of development that creates a general sense of dullness and a lifeless mood that you can also perceive from the eyes and the voice tone of the people working there. 

A missed Premise is a missed Promise.

In today's world you must not only master storytelling and narrative but you have to be the nastiest crackerjack on the market as in today's world it's all about sharing stories and if you don't know how to structure a concept into a narrative pattern you're going to kill the whole story, the whole product and ultimately yourself.

Expo should represent the world and what's ahead of us in the future. Instead, what I saw was a soulless dystopian Shopping Mall with no Inspiration whatesoever. 

Where's the chaos in which our planet has been prospering over the past two thousands years? Where's the idea contamination the world underwent down the road? 

Where are the new ideas? where's the enthusiasm that led our world to present day's? where's the earth's divine breath? and where are the hope signs which we desperately gasp for? 

And most of all where is Consciousness? which should has been the real Story Premise of this whole event?

Apart from the missing content and the arrested development of the Expo Story Premise, you have to consider each adult visitor pays an admission ticket of €39 (about $42 or £27) to get into the fabulous world of Expo.

When the Paris Expo closed its doors back on 1889 the Eiffel Tower was left in living memory of that event and in 2010 the tower received its 250 millionth visitor.

What the Milan Expo could leave behind its lack of narrative?  a Frozen Thai Dinner? 

Gianluca D'Agostino is the CEO of GLD Marketing, a company focused on the Marketing of Narrative. "In a world made of social media, Narrative is pivotal to distinguish your business from the digital static. In such an environment you don't have to cope with great storytelling, you have to be the Master and Commander". At GLD Marketing we provide your business with on-the-edge Narrative solutions and set yourself on top of the wave. We won't lure your customers with make-believe copies, our strategy is maximizing your existing potential to the very brinkmanship

The Washington Post looks not very smart lately

This image file I posted above is from the Washington Post and it was published on April 7 2014, at 1:34 pm Eastern Time.

The story premise of this whole article you are reading here is based on the assumption that on average, 8 out of 10 people only read headlines.

I want you to focus on that headline. 

It says: "Want people to think you're smarter? Do this"

You sit in front of your PC and while scrolling down your Facebook updates  your attention is catched by such an appealing image of three human faces whose edges have been blurred to look more ethereal and catchy. Then the headline goes "You want to look smarter?" And that's the turning point, when your brain kicks in and you stop being Conscious about Yourself. 

I make you an example. You could tell any person on this planet: "You are the weak!" and he will start doubting about him/herself and taking your word for granted. Why? Well because the human identity on this planet and our objective as a civilization is everything but clear or taken for granted.

Two thousands years of superstitious beliefs carrying thousands of rules against Self-empowerment led us to the situation we are now: we don't know who we are, what are we doing on this planet and where we are supposed to go. That's it. This is the pre-requisite upon which the Neanderthalian propaganda set up by the Washington Post is aimed at. Identity is humankind's biggest problem since the dawn of times. And I am talking about real identity not just knowing your likes and dislikes.

That Washington Post's headline is aimed at placing a bug in your ear: "remember you are not smart", which behind the second curtain is: "remember you don't know who you are". 

When I first read that Neanderthalian headline, I couldn't believe it was real! I mean, it sounds like a vintage PsyOp trick from the South American theater back in the 50's. Are you guys that behind???? You are the Washington Post honey! You can't make such Neanderthalian Cro-Magnon stuff. You want a real consultant? Call me! My company provides beyond-the-sky-consulting to whoever needs help. And you guys are in desperate need of help. 

The consequent question is: "The Washington Post is showing all its weakness while it wants to play the tiranny?" Tyranny is dead. Tyranny died once Consciousness entered our world dear you.

Can't believe this is happening for real, in the Era of Consciousness. Can't find the words except maybe this is a sad pathetic bad comedy that can seriously put at risk the reputation of what once used to be one of the world's major news-media.

That article's headline claims that it is important "what other people think of you". In the Washington Post "vision" this is the pre-existing condition of your roadmap to self-empowerment. 

Ask yourself this question: "You want to look or you want to be?" Make your own judgement. 

This is simply outrageous if it weren't tragic, the state of awareness among what we used to define "mainstream media" is simply pathetic. I have a the perfect metaphor for the Washington Post editorial policy:  

"The blind leading the blind."

Let's get at the end of this once for all by analyzing this question in depth:

"Want people to think you're smarter?"

First of all who told the Washington Post I have to be smart? What the word "smart" really mean?

According to the Merriam Webster the word has several interpretations. However the first is "very good at learning or thinking about things"

The second is "showing intelligence or good judgement"

The third is "showing lack of respect or talking in a rude impolite way"

Conclusion: we are not even sure about what the word "smart" really mean even if we read all the existing English Dictionaries. However as our starting point and in the common use we'll take for granted the firsts definition that is "very good at learning or thinking about things"

"Thinking about things"? We should write another story just on this but let's just put that off otherwise I would enter a state of  infinite depression.

Below I reported between brackets the implicit meaning of the words they used:

"(you) want that (other) people think you are smarter (than what you are)

Let's see: Do I want other people who are not me, to perceive me as a smarter person? Is that correct? 

Uhm....According to the Washington Post I should care what other people "think" instead of how I do perceive myself? 

But the Washington Post did not use the word "perceive" they used the word "think".

Hence let's go even deeper: here the keyword is "think" which is the most misunderstood and often overrated verb in the known Universe. Who told the Washington Post that "thinking" is the best human activity when it's about managing yourself and your own life? 

Some of the earliest written records of the Hindu traditions of Vedantism around 1500 BCE shows that thinking is not the natural state of our Consciousness but the exact opposite of it. As a matter of fact the activity of thinking (to what then?) might cause confusion and distract yourself from your own self. The practice of Meditation shows that in order to develop self-awareness you should be able to plug-off your brain and stop thinking.

In the end "thinking" means confusing yourself about everything. 

Although this is the starting point of the Washington Post's philosophy to empower yourself. 

Ok. Always according to the Washington Post, after I started thinking I have to project my "thinking activity" to what "other unspecified people" think of me. 

Hence according to this funny corner-philosophy I should be able to address other people's vision throughout a system that distract myself from my own Consciousness? 

At the end of the day the whole problem is that the Washington Post article is a pathetic attempt to distract Yourself from Yourself and start thinking to what other unspecified people think of yourself. 

Do you realize the Washington Post is stuck in the Stone Age? 

The Washington Post with this article is promoting the false assumption that how do I look might influence my own Consciousness? 

Uh I forgot to tell you that Intelligence is Consciousness. Sorry about that. 

The Washington Post wants you to care how do you look because according to their evolved science "how you look" is the basic fundamental attitude to take the right path towards self-awareness, self-empowerment and leadership.

Ok. Let's put it for a second that me, Mr. Nobody, I follow your Cro-Magnon advice and I start look smarter than what I think I am 

(because of you obviously, as before reading your smart article I was the smartest kid on the planet)

You might have lost the concept hence I repeat it once again: Let's put it for a second that me, Mr. Nobody, I follow the Washington Post's Cro-Magnon advice and I start look smarter than what I think I am. What then? 

I mean once "my smart look curtain" dramatically falls down what then? 

How do I keep looking smarter once the people I want to impress they go beyond that veil of appearance and realize I am a total retarded? 

Do you have a solution for that kind of "death" some after-life pill or something that is other than how to look or impress others? Do you realize how much retarded you are? Do you realize you are promoting mental retardation disguised by Self-empowerment? 

In the era of Consciousness and Self-Awareness the Washington Post Editorial Policy on Self-Empowerment is to focus yourself on "how you look". which in terms of self-awareness means absolutely nothing but nonsense, a bunch of static. 

This is Conscious Machine, not the Washington Post and this is Gianluca D'Agostino your worst nightmare on this and other time strings.

E Pluribus Unum

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