Shanghai Daily news

Yu Li, one of the organizers of a World Expo exhibition now showing in Shanghai, has definite views on the educational value of music.

"Music is one of the most essential elements in successfully abstracting World Expo history," the 52-year-old says.

It's Yu's fourth Expo exhibition for Shanghai, and his fresh and vivid introduction to 2010 World Expo in Shanghai is an ambitious attempt to extract and distill the event's 156-year history and into a 10-minute video clip - with music, of course.

"We composed a symphony for it," a proud Yu says of the video, which traces the journey of humans through the Industrial Age and into the Information Age.

Even Vicente Loscertales, secretary general of the Bureau of International Expositions, was deeply moved by the video and music, according to Yu.

Yu, born into an artist's family, has worked with the World Expo for the past 10 years. Before that, he played violin and was the photographer for the late famous artist/designer Chen Yifei.

Yu worked with organizers of the Kunming Expo in 1999 and the Aichi Expo six years later.

Because the history of the Expo is so abstract, Yu believes music is the best way to describe it. He invited An Dong, a local musician, to compose a symphony and for four months solid the two worked to capture the spirit of the Expo. The result, Yu says, was worth all the hard work.

The prelude introduces the video and outlines the relationship between humans and the universe. The first movement, with bright notes and a touch of Wagner, rings the bell of industrialization in the 19th century and the World Expo's role in that period as a platform to spread new inventions.

The second movement, a steady andante, describes the heyday of the World Expo, the first half of the 20th century, as technological progress made rapid strides.

Overshadowing this new zeal, however, is the coming darkness of two world wars, which end in the explosion of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

This bombshell actuates the third movement as humans change their ideas about war and how energy should serve the people instead of killing them.

The music in the fourth and final movement is modern and brings the listener back into the present day.

"We used a lot of musical elements that accord with a particular era," says Yu. "That can give you the sense of each different age, that's why it sounds familiar. But we reconstructed the music to make it more powerful."

Other features

The screen that will show the film is another innovation of Yu's.

"It is the first time we have used double screens - the background is composed of ordinary screens but the foreground is just a layer of gauze."

The pictures and videos transfer back and forth in accordance with the rhythm of the music, which creates an effect that Yu hopes will leave the audience gasping.

"We want to display the essence of the World Expo - everything begins with the Expo. It's all about the development of human beings," he says.

According to Yu, everything tells the story of human development, which is why you will see in the exhibition pictures of famous buildings such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris alongside everyday objects like the phone, the zipper and an elevator.

"A rock could be the best exhibit," says Yu, pointing to a 75-kilogram rock that used to be part of a small boatyard in the current Expo site.

"Now the factory has been relocated, but these rocks that witnessed local industrialization are kept here to tell the story to the public."