EXTRA, the marketplace for scientific touring exhibitions.
The exhibition invites young members of the public to explore both the scientific and magical dimensions of metamorphosis or transformation. Larvae that turn into butterflies, bulbs into flowers, maize into popcorn, water into ice or seeds into plants … children find such transformations fascinating.
The exhibition transposes all these perspectives through 5 unique universes based on an amazing forest, a world of shadows, a funfair, etc.
During their visit, members of the public are offered games, interactive and immersive multimedia, animated films, etc.: a whole series of experiences for a visit full of surprises around the theme of metamorphoses. Children of all ages can explore the extraordinary within the ordinary as they follow the itinerary.
The Amazing Forest
A field of study for scientists, a place to live or a thoroughfare, a magical or fantastical place, the forest is teeming with secrets. It is conducive to the nurturing of children’s natural curiosity and is the setting for numerous tales and myths. Here, visitors actively observe, compare, associate, ponder, listen to stories, etc. On the agenda are animal metamorphoses and plant transformations, both natural and imag inary phenomena.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Numerous magic mirrors figure throughout literature, tales, films, etc. They reveal invisible truths and sometimes the deepest desires. Mirrors also allow people to see themselves growing up, changing and growing old, but also becoming or «stepping into the skin of...». Here, children and parents are the subjects or protagonists of transformations, whether real or imagined.
The World of Shadows
Humans are complex beings. Our emotions, moods and thoughts vary throughout the course of a day, a week, the years and the different phases of our lives. They are fleeting and as elusive as shadows. Here, in a large shadow theatre, children can play around with light, their bodies and props: their silhouettes are transformed and the shadows they project change. They can let their imaginations run riot and create all sorts of chimeras, thus revealing the little monsters within them.
A Thousand and One Eyes
This space invites us to step aside and offers a change of perspective. Children put on various pairs of goggles and explore a setting: distortions, shifts and coloured filters – and the space is transformed! An incentive to see the world “through someone else’s eyes”, to look at the world differently and realise that we don’t all see it the same way.
The Funfair
Next the itinerary conjures up a funfair - the most amazing place to explore - devoted to transformations of matter. Originally, funfairs were bubbling laboratories where artists and scholars, physicists and magicians, chemists and jugglers mingled. Here, science becomes entertainment!