Uan exhibition designed to make 6-11 year olds aware of the joys of scientific observation, that is not so common. The one that opened on Tuesday, April 4, at the City of Science and Industry, intends to rally this young audience around the question of metamorphoses. Mutations at work in the living world or in matter; mood swings; energy transformations; metamorphoses of the characters of tales: so many evolutions presented at this age, itself subjected to great transformations.
Playful, this course plays on the gift of children to pass with grace from one universe to another. “With a common thread, bringing science and their imagination into dialogue”, explains Julia Maciel, curator of the exhibition. First of all, welcome to a “wonderful forest”. As soon as you enter, a fascinating creature native to Mexico, the axolotl, can be admired in its aquarium. The lizard-like creature sports three red gills, like three ferns sprouting from either side of its head – thanks to which this UFO can breathe underwater. Is it fish? reptile? batrachian? scientists wondered for a long time in the XIXe century. The animal is actually a salamander larva. It can remain all its life in the larval state, while managing to reproduce. A spectacular way to introduce the notion of animal metamorphosis, expanded here with the cases of beetles, butterflies, bees, dragonflies, ladybirds and frogs.
All types of transformations
Plant transformations are not forgotten in this magical forest, with the example of narcissus and oak. Then the marvelous springs forth: Beauty and the Beast rub shoulders with Ovid’s Narcissus, “A must see given the subject”says Julia Maciel.
Further on, an animated film poetically presents the transformations – physical, physiological, social and mental – of a human being, from conception to old age. The public then enters the world of mirrors. A two-way mirror allows the duos (mother-child, brother-sister, etc.) to see their faces reflected or merged, depending on the lighting. Return of the imagination: visitors will be able to replay the story of Pinocchio by placing figurines on a screen, which will make the trajectories of the hero with the telescopic nose diverge.
Place in the theater of shadows, now, where the child can put on accessories drawn from a « dressing room of little monsters”. He will then admire his silhouette: here he is transformed into a chimera of human and bat, frog, horned beast, insect, fairy or butterfly… Something to play with “the dark side that we all have in us”says Julia Maciel.
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