ABSTRACT
THE FRENCH PAVILION The entrance to the French pavilion was on the top floor. The room was lined with cabinets filled with examples of French cultural production, evidence of France’s high culture, particularly all that is associated with literature, opera, history and scientific discoveries from ancient geometry to holograms. The floor of this room was glass. The drop, which was visible, was broken by a model of eighteenth-century Paris. Visitors stood on the glass floor and looked down through 200 years of French history. As they walked, they walked over a model of the city, in fact over layers of cities from different periods. Many people, including myself, were rather nervous about walking on the floor. The drop induced vertigo. At the far end of the room there were TVs, holograms and computers with more information available from the video-disks on the Paris exhibition of 1900.
