At EXPO 67 there were notable advances in presentation technique. Robert Simpson, Founder Director of Electrosonic, attended EXPO 67 and saw the main exhibits mentioned in this article. Electrosonic provided the AV and lighting control systems for the UK Pavilion and the high power sound replay system for the Gyrotron.

By Robert Simpson

EXPO 67 is remembered as one of the most successful EXPOs of the twentieth century. Contemporary press articles say that there were 3,000 movies running in the pavilions at EXPO 67. Whilst almost certainly an exaggeration, there is no doubt that the way in which movies were presented was exciting, and that EXPO 67 was a milestone in the development of multi-screen movie and multi-slide projection.

Here we must remind ourselves that video presentation did not exist. There was no practical or economic way of running color video recorded images on a continuous basis, and the only viable method of video projection was extremely expensive–so all the movies were just that; 16mm, 35mm or 70mm film with more or less successful methods of running the film in endless loops. Many of the design ideas first seen at EXPO 67 have been developed since then and today are seen in "video versions".

However, the notable thing about movies at EXPO 67 is that many shows used unconventional or irregular formats. While both the USA and UK Pavilions had excellent three-screen movie presentations, the former about children at play, and the latter illustrating the history of energy; it was the use of wholly unexpected formats that caught visitors' imagination.

USA Pavilion

The theme of the EXPO was "Man and His World" and it was explored in the Labyrinth Pavilion. Echoing the Greek myth of Theseus entering the labyrinth to slay the Minotaur, visitors moved through a series of dark and mysterious corridors and chambers. The films shown in the large spaces were produced by the National Film Board of Canada, and were presented in a number of different and unusual multi-screen formats. One space had five screens arranged as a cross; another, possibly the most stunning, had a narrow vertical screen 13m high, and another screen the same size laid horizontally on the floor. The audience viewed the show from tiered galleries either side of the screens, and the interplay between images on the vertical and horizontal screens was startling.

Montreal Pavilion

EXPO 67 had a number of theme pavilions, and one of them "Man the Explorer" featured a clever movie called“Polar Life”. This used a rotating annular auditorium divided into three 120°segments, so at any time an audience saw a very wide film (presented using fixed multiple 70mm projectors). The arrangement had the advantage that audiences could "load" more frequently than they could have done for one single show, and this smoothed out the visitor flow.

By common consent the outstanding contributor to the EXPO was Czechoslovakia which had no less than four novel presentations. The pavilion was developed by a talented team of artists and film producers led by Josef Svoboda, the noted theater scenic designer.

Canada Pavilion

"Polyvision" presented a show on Czech Industry; it used a mixture of ten 35mm movie projectors and large slide projectors, but instead of being projected on a conventional screen, the images were presented on mixture of surfaces including rotating spheres and other three dimensional objects.

"DiaPolyEcran" presented a huge back projected multi-image show called "The Creation of the World" with 112 square (70cm) screens in a 14×8 array. Each screen used two Carousel? automatic slide projectors (224 in all) and could be programmed to move in and out so the overall display had a 3D "cubist" look.

Britain Pavilion

"Kinoautomat" presented an interactive film where the audience could choose how the plot developed. Introduced by live actors (who also appeared in the film) the story would run for a short while and then "freeze", the audience could then choose one of two ways for the story to go. The votes were shown on a series of red and green lights round the screen, with the majority vote winning. The process was repeated several times in a highly amusing story...and, yes, it was all done using film projectors with special control and programming.

"Laterna Magica" had, in fact already been seen at EXPO 58 and in Prague, so was not actually new at EXPO 67, and was not in the Czech Pavilion itself but in the amusement area La Ronde. This was a highly entertaining theatrical review where live actors were augmented with movie projection screens built in to the scenery. Actors seemed to walk in and out of the film. (A successor to this show still runs today in Prague.)

USSR Pavilion

Taken together the Czech contribution was hugely influential in the fields of scenic design, exhibition design, multi-image AV and film presentation. For the rest of the twentieth century and right into the twenty-first the influence of these four shows could still be felt all over the world.

The UK Pavilion was also one of the most popular pavilions, and this was largely because of the British Life section, designed by James Gardner. There were two notable features of this exhibition. One was the introduction of humor -- many of the exhibits were light hearted, witty or both. The other was the clever integration of audio visual techniques into the exhibit design, such that one was almost unaware that technology was being used.

For example one exhibit was a small "art gallery" with six representative paintings of British Art; however, three of the "paintings" were actually back projection screens, and these came to life in turn, running a sequence of dissolving slide images. The sequences were subtle and amusing and demonstrated how short AV inserts could enhance an exhibition.

Another exhibit was in the form of a well; if you looked into the well you saw the countryside of England, as if you were flying over it. The image quality was exceptional, and this was because the image was quite small (about1.5 m diameter) but it was projected using a full scale theater 35mm movie projector. The result amazed visitors–it presaged the idea of using high definition images within exhibits.

This exhibition, and others completed by James Gardner in the same era, was also hugely influential in the field of exhibit design. Gardner showed that it was the story and the design that mattered, and that technology could be successfully integrated into exhibits in a way that made visitors unaware of the technology itself.

As with all EXPOs there were some "magnificent failures" -- ideas that were bold, but did not quite come off. Principal amongst these was to be found in the La Ronde amusement park area. It was an amazing triodetic structure called the Gyrotron, notionally in two parts, the "pyramid" and the "volcano". Visitors traveled on a cable car ride through the structures, first in a "space"environment and then into the mouth of a giant mechanical monster in a sea of molten lava. Architecturally and mechanically this "dark ride", which again was influential in the theme park business that was to develop later, was successful–unfortunately the money ran out so the exhibit content was very thin!

EXPO 67 was real fun. Anyone who attended it has happy memories of the event, and anyone in the exhibition and presentation business owes it a huge debt in terms of its influence on both exhibit design and audio visual presentation technique.