As you enter Zone 2 of the NTT Pavilion at Expo 2025, you pick up a pair of 3D glasses and walk into a darkened room. What happens next is part theater, part cinema, and part time machine. It's the kind of fun ride you'd happily spend an hour queuing for at Disneyland.

A-chan, Kashiyuka, Nocchi

Your eyes adjust to the low light and the glasses. Then you see an image of the 1970 Osaka Expo site being built. A flash of lightning, fireworks, an old-style rotary phone rings, to be picked up by a white-gloved hand. A-chan, Kashiyuka, and Nocchi, the three members of Japanese pop group Perfume, appear on the screen just in front of you. Talking on the phone, they zoom forward in time: 1970, 1972, 1976, 1983, 1995. They sign and throw a paper plane towards you that feels as though it's going to hit you right between the eyes. The plane travels from Osaka, Suita, the site of the Expo '70, to Osaka, Yumeshima in 2025. Perfume, now gigantic and taking up half the room, place three life-sized video avatars on the stage.

Feeling the Floor Vibrate

The avatars resolve into... Perfume, moving with clockwork timing. The 3D effect makes it feel as if you could reach out and touch them. No music at first, just the sound and vibration of their feet stamping in rhythm, a fusion of flamenco and tap dance. As the song Nebula Romance starts, the screen shifts between decades. Costumes merge from 2025 to 1970 and back again, as the singers fly through time and space on a floating platform.

Bubbles drift towards you in 3D and you find yourself trying to pop them. Older readers might remember the 1980s 3D short film Captain EO with Michael Jackson and it's a similar sensation, although more gentle. You're reaching out to pop bubbles, not dodging asteroids or spears. Perfume, in 1970. Perfume, in 2025. Arriving from the past? Returning to it? Who can tell?

Recorded at Suita, Presented at Yumeshima

The version shown to more than 100,000 visitors since the opening of Expo 2025 is pre-recorded, but the original event on April 2, was performed live -- in one, flawless take -- using a new system for real-time spatial communication. Although presented at the Yumeshima venue, Perfume recorded their performance at the site of the former Telecommunications Pavilion from Expo '70. From there, data was sent to Yumeshima over IOWN-APN, a photonics-based network developed by NTT. This high-capacity, low-latency system makes it possible to transmit video, 3D visuals, and even physical sensations in real time.

LiDAR to 3D Map the Performers

Seven sensor arrays were set up around the stage. Each one combined three LiDAR sensors with an optical camera. LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) uses laser light to measure distance and map environments, created a constantly updating 3D map of the performers. These "point clouds" were sent live to the NTT Pavilion and rebuilt as full 3D visuals on a large LED screen, which meant that Perfume could be transmitted as they were and also as graphics avatars, dissolving into sparkles and reconstituting, all in real time during the performance. Watching from Zone 2 of the NTT Pavilion, it's like looking at something genuinely taking place right in front of you. Change your viewing angle and you see something slightly different; it's very far from watching a flat, unchanging video.

Acceleration Sensors and Vibration Actuators Make it Feel Real

The Perfume trio also wore acceleration sensors -- small devices that produce controlled shaking or buzzing to provide tactile feedback -- to measure the energy and motion of their steps. The signals from their steps triggered 128 vibration actuators embedded under the NTT Pavilion floor, letting you not only see the show, but feel it through the soles of your feet. Visuals, motion, and physical feedback all combine to create a shared physical illusion.

From 2025 to 1970 and Back

The theme of the three NTT Pavilion presentations is "PARALLEL TRAVEL." Zone 2 takes inspiration from the 1970 Expo and brings it to 2025, turning the two events into a single shared space. Using live 3D capture, vibration feedback, and high-speed data transmission, it's possible to experience what it might be like to exist in two places at once.

Communication of the Future

It's a fun show that leaves you with a smile on your face and a happy memory, but there's some serious tech underneath it all. The same setup that brings Perfume's performance to life is totally adaptable to entertainment of the very near future. And there's so much more to come. It could one day support remote work, virtual travel, and realistic communication across long distances. Right now, though, it's enough that thousands of people are reaching for floating digital bubbles, feeling the floor hum beneath them, and watching a pop trio from Hiroshima step between eras.

Daniel O'Connor

Daniel O'Connor joined the NTT Group in 1999 when he began work as the Public Relations Manager of NTT Europe. While in London, he liaised with the local press, created the company's intranet site, wrote technical copy for industry magazines and managed exhibition stands from initial design to finished displays.

Later seconded to the headquarters of NTT Communications in Tokyo, he contributed to the company's first-ever winning of global telecoms awards and the digitalisation of internal company information exchange.

Since 2015 Daniel has created content for the Group's Global Leadership Institute, the One NTT Network and is currently working with NTT R&D teams to grow public understanding of the cutting-edge research undertaken by the NTT Group.