On 16 Jan, I went to "Gunther von Hagens' Body World & The Cycle of Life" at Singapore Science Center. This is a very special exhibition because the show piece are authentic human specimens! Yes, I'm taking about dead body that is transform into an art that is now shown in this exhibition :) If I have not taken the course named Anatomy & Physiologies, I will not have appreciate and enjoy this exhibition as much as I do now. Those who interested with human body should not missed this exhibition.
The display items range from embryo, fetus, child's skeleton, to adult muscle, ligament, skeleton, all the internal organ inclusing brains, blood vessels, nerve system and animals specimens. Gunther von Hagen using a technique called plastination, invented by himself, to transform the dead body into portrait in different post. There are portrait, post like a painter, a taichi master, in a sitting and thinking positioan, playing basketball, doing gymnastic etc. You must be wondering how could the dead body post in this way, those human couldn't have die in that position, right? That's true, the magic happen during the last stage of plastination, where the dead body will be position into different post. The whole process of plastination take up at least 1500 hours, some even take up to 1 year! (If you are interested to know about plastination, you can visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastination)
Among those specimens, I like the "Man holding his own skin". It is a human body without skin (with muscle, ligament) standing in fornt of you with 1 hand holding his own skins. The other one that I like is the "Standing Woman", giving me a chance to see the position of the internal organ inside my body :p I must talk about the "Tai Chi Master", because from this portrait, you can see all kind of implant that can be installed to human. With all those implant, this human is a human or robot? Besides that, there are also cross sectional view of our body. The most impression is the midsagittal section of a healthy person vs an obese. You can find "FAT" everywhere (yuck). Another good things about this exhibition is there are labels on the specimen, so that the visitor know what are they seeing. The other one is the transverse section of a non-smoker vs smoker, yup, you can see the black colour lung. Besides that, there are also, stomach with ulcer, uterus with myoma, brain with hemorrage etc. Is the comparison that I like :)
Lastly, is the animal specimen. There are horse, raindeer, giraffe (yes is huge), gaint squid, etc. Besides tha giraffe potrait, there are also cross-section view of giraffe. It is not a single cross section, but Gunther actually chopped the giraffe into hundreds of thin slice, impressive right? I hope the organiser will allow photographying in the exhibition, then I can illusatrate better to you all. Picture always speak louder than word. Unfortunately, no photo allow, too bad. Again I want to recommend to anybody who interested with human body, is really worth the entrance fee that you pay. If you are a passion card member, remember to bring along, as there is a $4 discount :)
I spents about 2hours for this exhibition. I did visit to another anatomy exhibition later that day, haha, is called The Body Show at Clarke Quey. I will write about it in next post.
(Official website of Body World: http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html)
