From the ancient time both in Korea, China, and Japan, there has been a legend that four sacred beasts or four gods exist in four directions protecting people. These four gods are; the blue dragon of the east, the white tiger of the west, the red phoenix of the south, and the black turtle-snake of the south.
This idea has been related to the concept of “feng sui.” Good fen sui is realized at a place with mountains in the back and water in the front, such as Yeosu city. It has been said that a place with good feng sui is well protected by the four gods.
In the Expo Digital Gallery, a main street of the 2012 Yeosu Expo, the images of these four gods will be shown in a huge ceiling LED display with the size of 250.6m x 23.04m and appealing their dynamic movements to the audience.
The background images express underwater scenes with traditional Asian landscape taste. This is based on the idea of integrating traditional Asian culture and the ocean, that is the main theme of the Expo.
At the same time as Expo would be an occasion to show people the vision of our future world. We tried to express how knowledge and wisdom came out of old concept of the four gods and also tried to express our future where people all over the world could be united filling the gap of various cultures.
After the dynamic movements of the four gods, they are merged and is represented by the blue dragon, as 2012 is the year of dragon.
Then the process of how human has progressed and obtained knowledge and wisdom throughout the long history is visualized by a group of old Chinese characters that came out of the blue dragon. These old Chinese characters gradually change into the normal Chinese characters and also change into a text.
Then we tried to express the future when people would have richer wisdom, exchange their wisdom and share their wisdom filling the gap of countries and cultures through the image that each of these characters would change into a form of Maitreya and they chat each other. Maitreya is a god that appears in the long future and is relevant to express the image of out future.
And then in the final stage the images of Maitreya change into the images of the four gods to express the dynamism human should maintain even in the future regardless of their country, culture and religion.