Please let me know how my liver looks the next (and first) time you see me! :D

Really! Who needs X-rays when ISM is your friend!

That, it is...

:birdy:
for NA

So we went tonight, and I have to say my reaction was mixed. Perhaps you could chalk it up to it being the last weekend and the crowds were annoyingly well, crowded.

I have to say there are some fascinating things. The circulatory system was fascinating to see both intellectually as well as aesthetically. I really liked some of the "exploded" views that demonstrated how things fit together. I also liked the examples of "ailments" of the body gone wrong, a sagital section of an alzheimer brain, examples of strokes, tumors, cancer, etc.

But the exhibit itself bothered me in some ways. It seems the exhibits were placed with awkward site-lines, making it difficult to see without crowding around the individual displays. Some of the set dressings seemed bizzar to me. It was like they had all these organs, and stopped at the home depot to pick up a pallet of bricks and some astro-turf.

Some of the show elements, also lacked anything engaging. For example, a display case of various blobby organs. This one's a liver, this one's a spleen - each with a tiny typewritten lable, which really told me nothing about these blobby things inside me.

Then there's this claim to be "science" - and truely there were some awsome displays of anatomy. However, more copy about the plasticizing process, than about what these displays actually demonstrated. Then there was an unfortunate piece of wall copy explaining how the people who donated their bodies to this casue must remain anonymous so as to not distract from the science. I found myself wondering how much richer this would be, if you could say a little about the people, their lifestyle, and the anatomical consequences it might have. I think others felt the same way as in one exhibit, a tatoo was repeatedly pointed out on one of the cadavers.

With all the admonisions about taking photographs, the elaborate poses and disections, I couldn't think otherwise than someone had chosen to use the body as an artisitic media instead of paint or clay. The claims of being science along with the tiny typewritten lables, were just a distraction to what really was an aesthetic display. But I also have to add that seeing the booth in the middle of the exhibit calling for people to donate their bodies to science, left me reacting with a "No Way" I'd rather, use my organs to save a real human life, with a story, a personality, and a lifestyle.

For me, it was an opportunity to see the human body aside from a purely plastic model. Very few ever get to see the human cadaver, and even then, having something plasticized gives depth to the saggy remains of the dead.

I remember taking anatomy in high school. Often, high school anatomy (I'm not talking simple biology) involved a fetal pig, at best, and I was fortunate to be able to use a cat, as it is closer to our features than most other animals. Aside from that, I got to have mediocre plastic models of the body and organs, that were hard to learn from. The depth of understanding what happens to the body under certain conditions is not common for the commoner. See the enlarged heart, a black lung, a tumor, breakages, and prosthetics. For me, seeing those things gave me understanding toward myself. I checked out the prosthetic knee. With the shape mine is in, I don't doubt I'll have a later model of the ones they displayed there.

Of course, it wasn't probably as crowded when I went.

That can account for a lot.

Heheh, I hear they're staying open 24 hours a day until the exhibit closes on Sunday - - perhaps you would have had better luck with crowds at 4 am?

I certainly agree that the full cadaver displays were primarily artistic, and only tangentially scientific due the subject matter itself. But the organ display cases seemed purely scientific to me. And although not much was explained about proper function, so much was illustrated about improper function that I felt a definite educational legitimacy.

In fact, I think the whole point of the exhibit, from the educational angle, was that a picture speaks a thousand words.

Sure, the text labels and display copy were inadequate. But I think the point was that what you saw with your own eyes told you so much more, or at least conveyed the information so drastically differently, than words ever could.

I have been an ardent student of anatomy and biology. I am quite familiar with the functioning of the human body. This exhibit gave me additional knowledge on a "grok" level.

And, of course, from the artistic angle, the piece just floored me. I'll agree that the set-ups with brick platforms and poor sightlines were substandard. But the displays themselves were so phenomenally unlike anything ever seen before that I can hardly fault them too much for poor presentation. This is, after all, a traveling exhibit. And I don't know how you could really display all those cadavers with better crowd sightlines while still allowing the audience members to get so up close to them.


A week later, the shock value has begun to fade, my xray vision thankfully doesn't function all the time anymore. I am still conscious of every sight I see traveling along my optic nerve to the brain inside my skull that directs the function of the I-bio-robot that I am. But I have begun to really appreciate the humour of the exhibit...

The black-lunged cadaver holding a lit cigarette. One particular gentleman so flayed that he looked like something from Hellraiser was actually wearing a top hat, and rotating! The way they had several of the cadavers holding what was removed: the skinned man holding his bunched up skin; the body-cavity dude clutching his internal organs in his grasp, the split man riding skinned horse holding his human brain in one hand and the horse's brain in another. And who could forget the circulatory family, mom and dad and happpy child riding triumphantly on mom's shoulders? How comicly morbid to see a family displayed in this pose when all their blood vessels had been injected with red plastic and the entire rest of their bodies chemically melted away to leave only their circulartory systems standing there in the perfect form of three humans.

Frankly, I think the plasticization process was the big scientific news of this exhibit, and I'm glad they went into that a bit more. Biologic misfunction was another focus (which, as I understand, will be even more strongly presented in the sequel exhibit which opens Jan. 29). But as for anatomy and normal biofunctioning - - how much do you need to be told when you can, for the first time, see it with your own eyes?


(Besides, all the explanations of what the heart does or the liver does, or even what enzymes hit what receptors, or even which synapses of the brain fire to tell the proteins to go here or there .... none of that tells you how it happens. We many never know how it happens.)