Fluther: Have you seen the body worlds exhibit?

Have you seen the body worlds exhibit?

Asked by boxer3 (4150

) September 27th, 2011
16 responses
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Someone had brought this up a couple years ago, but I was just thinking about the exhibit, and I was wondering who has seen it, why you went, what you thought of it.

For those of you who don’t know body worlds is a traveling exhibit in which bodies are preserved and positioned into doing different activities: in which the muscles are placed as they would be in a living person doing that activity. There are some animals as well. Also a baby section, including the fetus at different stages of development and organs such as a smoker v. non smoker’s lungs. There are many many many different aspects to this exhibit.

I saw it twice when I was in highschool, once with my anatomy class, once with my art class.

What do you guys think. good idea bad idea- no opinion.

Here’s an example of one of the subjects
http://www.contemporarynomad.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/body_worlds_1.jpg

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Topics: science, art, anatomy, controversy

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I saw it a few years back with my son, I believe. It was pretty cool. Very interesting. Learned a lot of anatomy.

wundayatta (58722

)“Great Answer” (1

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@wundayatta I thought it was really interesting too…The first time I was kind of taken back, a little creeped out but really fascinated. I also learned alot.

boxer3 (4150

)“Great Answer” (0

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It’s awesome.

TexasDude (25274

)“Great Answer” (2

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Boring. I couldn’t fondle any of em. Lol

King_Pariah (11484

)“Great Answer” (1

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@King_Pariah All that plastic would have been creepy, although it still might have been cool to feel it. More like feeling a sculpture than dead bodies. Are you some kind of necromancer?

wundayatta (58722

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Unimpressed, for the most part – the tissues seemed very brittle and a little unreal to me, even though I knew they were real. I did like the blood vessels part of the exhibit, and spent most of my time looking at that. It seemed better preserved because everything rested in fluid, I suppose. The room with the fetuses in different stages was also very interesting.

wildpotato (15224

)“Great Answer” (1

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Necromancer? Sure. Best not give away all, knowledge is power and the less you know about me, the greater my chances for dominating the Universe. lol

My mom broke down at the fetus exhibit

King_Pariah (11484

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Yes, I did, back in 2008. It was fascinating, if a little bizarre. I was so intrigued by it all, that I took one of their applications for human plasticization, in hopes that I could get my own body plasticized. I think it’d be cool if they did me “swimming”, because that’s one of my passions, and many of the exhibits showed the cadavers in sports poses.

http://image53.webshots.com/53/9/18/42/2563918420082295732pxaLym_ph.jpg

I remember touching the flesh of one of them. It had a waxy feel to it. Very unusual.

MRSHINYSHOES (13996

)“Great Answer” (1

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Fascinating exhibit. I went there with my family just because it happened to be near where I live in the local science museum. Great way to teach about anatomy.

28lorelei (2529

)“Great Answer” (1

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It was very interesting.

tranquilsea (17775

)“Great Answer” (1

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I have actually made a point of avoiding the exhibit; it feels disrespectful to the dead, stripping them of their skin and posing them as they were in life. And the unborn! Don’t even get me started.
I have no qualms about med-school cadavers, probably because they’re training our future doctors and aren’t being shown around for edutainment.

Nullo (22009

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I really enjoyed it. This section was probably my favorite. It’s all so detailed and intricate!

8Convulsions (2182

)“Great Answer” (1

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It was at the LA county fair but I missed it unfortunately, I really wanted to see it.

cheebdragon (20506

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It was interesting, and only devolved into sensationalism a time or two. The coolest memory that sticks with me is the ‘shadow’ human – everything had been removed except for the blood vessels, all the way down to very fine capillaries. It left a ghostly shape of a human.

edit: I belatedly see that 8convulsions enjoyed something very similar to what I was attempting to describe.

syz (35943

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I saw it a few years back, and it was neat (if not a little creepy). I know there were a few different groups traveling with the same type of exhibit, and one of them was under investigation about how they got so many young, healthy bodies for their show….

tedd (14078

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@Nullo we had a discussion about the moral aspect of that at my school as well… though in this exhibit the background information told us these individuals knowingly donated their bodies for this…. alot of people still disagreed however had it not been for this exhibit my tiny little highschool in the middle of the woods would have never seen a cadavar…..even my college can’t afford/get cleared allowing them- for the sciences we workon cats. This was really educational for me… even more so because you could seee how the muscles worked in motion. When we went with the art department- I also learned alot because I was more comfortable the second time around- and was really looking at the bodies at a detailed level.
Though I did ga you for answering, and because I do understand where youre coming from. Just hoped to enlighten you abit that though some people just go to gawk- some people did get something educational out of it..

@tedd I did hear that too , which was kind of freaky.
@wildpotato , some parts did seem eerily not real- but having watched on video the process of how they made the bodies that way it sort of made sense- to me I guess.

boxer3 (4150

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