One of our more popular stories in our daily Pro AV Today newsletter this month was, unsurprisingly, a fail. Everyone loves a fail unless it’s happening to them.
The fail was set in South Korea, which also got my attention because of my own experience with the World Expo in Taejon, South Korea in (gulp) 1993. Technical fails were a way of life then in a country that was just emerging, technologically speaking.
In this recent incident, attendees at the Cheomseongdae observatory and heritage site in South Korea didn’t get the light show they were hoping for thanks to a projector malfunction. The Korea Heritage Service, alongside Gyeongju City, had spent 1 billion won (about $700,000) on a projection-mapping show to coincide with the 2025 APEC forum. Instead of the expected show, the observatory dome was filled with super-sized renderings of “Shutting down” and “Display mode”.
The malfunction forced attendees waiting for a fix to eventually leave to engage in social media blowback (we didn’t have that in 1993).
What we did have at Expo 1993 was also a domed attraction, but with a film projection system. It failed to black obviously. The thing that stands out in my memory was that even all those decades ago, the content was so realistic that sitting in the ride vehicle in the dark, I thought for a brief moment, “How will I get back?” From space.
Fails are kind of a reminder that in our industry, we have always been pioneering stuff. If I think back over projects I was on decades ago, engineers were doing things with technology that would still dazzle today. Things that predicted a future that dazzles us now. In my experience, because our industry was so unregulated (especially then) and because these advancements happened in countries that were even less regulated, most of my colleagues were akin to magicians. I still see that spirit today. I still meet people who invent for a living—who live to make things work. I see that happen in small, irritating saves and big gestures of software development. It’s funny how a fail reminds me of just how unique AV really is and how resourceful so many of you are. That’s what I’m thinking about headed into 2026. Hope it’s been a prosperous 2025, even if it’s been messy and hard, and here’s to the new year.
