When Nanoscience Becomes Art: INL's Journey to Osaka
A Scale Travels Story
October 23, 2025
When World Expo 2025 opened in Osaka under the theme "Designing Future Society for Our Lives," INL brought something unexpected to Portugal's pavilion—a multisensory journey through worlds invisible to the human eye.
Over two days in October, more than 10,500 visitors experienced nanotechnology reimagined as art, sound, and wonder.
マイクロ ⇄ ナノ: A Journey Through Scale
The centrepiece was "マイクロ (10⁻⁶) ⇄ ナノ (10⁻⁹)", a mesmerising media arts projection that transformed laboratory imagery into immersive soundscapes. Visitors stood beneath cascading projections, their perception shifting from the microscopic realm to the nanoscale universe.
This wasn't science education in the traditional sense—it was an artistic exploration of what exists in the spaces between atoms. Laboratory images, usually confined to research papers, were liberated into visual poetry.
Science Reveals Its Beauty
INL's Microscopy Exhibition presented three ocean sustainability research projects as artistic statements. Each microscope image was curated to reveal breathtaking nanoscale structures, proving that scientific observation and artistic creation are closer than we imagine.
Peer into a microscope with the right perspective, and you find landscapes and patterns that rival any canvas.
Technology Meets Tradition
The Virtual Lab showcased prototypes addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. One highlight captured imaginations: a smart sensor that monitors wine bottle temperatures via NFC technology, connecting users to a collaborative digital platform.
Science preserving culture. Technology enhancing craftsmanship. Innovation in service of heritage.
The demonstration sparked conversations and opened doors to new collaborations between European research and Japanese industry, partnerships built on shared curiosity.
Looking Forward
INL's journey to Osaka exemplifies the international art-science collaboration that Scale Travels champions. The thousands of visitors who engaged with the exhibition carried home more than information; they took inspiration.
And inspiration, like the nanoscale structures that fascinated them, tends to grow into something much larger than its origins.
Nanoexplorers
Nearly 3,000 Activity Books, specially translated into Japanese, disappeared by mid-afternoon on the second day. Children and families crowded around tables, immersed in games and illustrations that made nanoscience playful and accessible.
This wasn't simplification, it was translation. The same rigour that drives research is channelled into creative communication.
The Impact
What made this meaningful? Visitors praised INL's approach to translating complex science into accessible experiences. Nanotechnology, often abstract or intimidating, was presented as wonder-filled and relevant to daily life.
The exhibition succeeded because it invited everyone to look more closely, to imagine differently, and to ask questions.
Children clutched their activity books. Industry representatives examined the wine sensors with new appreciation. General visitors stood transfixed before the media arts installation, perhaps seeing laboratory imagery for the first time not as cold data, but as something moving and mysterious.
This is the promise of art-science collaboration: not to simplify science, but to amplify its capacity to inspire.
By the Numbers
38,000+ visitors to the Portugal Pavilion over two days
10,500 visitors engaged with INL's exhibition
3,000 Activity Books distributed
158 countries participating in Expo 2025
Grand Ring: World's largest wooden structure (60,000+ sq meters)