"Daddy, where is that man's skin?"

Have you guys heard of this? It's an exhibit that's traveling the world and it's in OMSI right now. Gina and I went to see it last Monday (she got us tickets back in January when they first went on sale). This poster is from when the exhibit was in Houston, before it came here.

See, this doctor (I think he's German) developed a method of preservation that basically swaps all the fluid in the body for a plastic-type material. People donate their bodies to him (after they die, of course) so that he and his team can patrially dissect and then preserve them. That's right: these are real actual people, not statues or anything. We got to see the one pictured below - it's a dude holding his skin. Woah.

Here's the deal: I thought I'd be really creeped out by this. I mean, these are REAL people. The skin guy was behind glass, but a lot of the others were just hanging out in the open. They had signs that said "Please Do Not Touch" but there were no barriers between you and the bodies. Creepy, right? Actually, not really. The plastic process leaves the tissue looking a lot like, well, plastic. It was easy to forget you were NOT looking at a well-made model of a person. I'd get all sucked into examining the structure of the fibers of muscle that make up a taunt thigh, or the inner-workings of the kneecap and forget for a moment it was real.

Each one had a sign explaining what was going on in that pose: it also had a front and back graphic of that pose with all the major muscles or bones or nerves labled. Each specimen was amazing to look at (1) for the scientific aspect of seeing how a person is built, and (2) for the asthetic look of the poses. It can only be described as ScienceArt. There were only a couple of times that I felt funny. The above picture shows the Circulatory System: the bones and some muscles are left, but all the red fuzzy-looking stuff are veins. The head on the table is ONLY veins - no bones or other tissue. There was another one that showed (quite clearly) the huge vein that runs down the back of your leg. It's HUGE and I get to thinking about how clost to the skin it is and how easy it would be to......I'm actually getting a little dizzy just thinking about it to write this. Veins and blood make me queasy.The whole exhibit was amazing! OMSI itself wass really cool - I wish we would have had more time in the rest of the place, but we had both been on our feet standing for almost an hour and a half and were getting sore. Body World 3 is going to be there for a while more and you can get tickets at the door. I think they are $22 each, but it includes a pass to the rest of OMSI. I think you get a discount of you already have an OMSI pass. Anyway, it was awesome and I'm really glad we went!