Shanghai Expo invites world to China
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"We tried to integrate them together in new way."
"So it turned out to be a foot in the Chinese camp, a foot in Italy with something Australian as well."
Jones believes the major difference between the Shanghai Expo fireworks show and the Beijing Olympic was that the expo fireworks were on a 3.5-kilometer-long section of the Huangpu River.
"In terms of geography, it was quite different. The scale of what we could do was much greater," he said.
During the last three seconds of the show, 3,080 shots of fireworks were shot -- the largest firing at a single time.
"It was one of those amazing moments. Anyone who saw it said, 'Oh my God,' that was just...that was just...mind blowing."
Besides the traditional fireworks, the show also adopted high technology for a giant screen and for fireworks timing controls, he said.
"What we always tried to do was not let technology take over the show. It should serve the art," he grinned.
The technology was used to create shapes like the Chinese symbols for luck and prosperity: fish, bat, crab, lotus flower and jasmine.
"China is a unique country and a continuous civilization for more than 5,000 years, both physically and culturally. It is amazing," said the artist whose father' s grandfather was a Chinese man from eastern China' s Fujian Province.
Jones has had many introductions to Chinese culture as he was born in the Philippines and his aunt was a painter interested in Chinese traditional painting.
Jones himself started to learn Chinese painting when he was five and he can still remember how to paint bamboo.
"I knew Confucius before. Actually, there is another Confucius saying, different from the one we used in show: 'Many rivers going to the sea and the person with the big heart is the master.'"
Jones, previously a classical ballet dancer, journalist, editor, and hip-hop book writer, was the artistic director for the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. Before that he worked in entertainment in Sydney.
"I did the biggest fireworks show here in Shanghai. I' m on top of myself."
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