Here is an advertising poster for what I believe was a dance performance.

It was in 2005 as part of something called “The Moral Values Festival,” and while the post is mad-science-y enough to merit a mention here, the description of the play makes it even  more so.

This is High School, USA: tough classes, changing bodies, complicated relationships… Teenage life is hard enough without mad-scientist guidance counselors and twisted brain-switching experiments!  Chock full of Fifties music, slapstick ballet and raging hormones, “The Perfect Girl” is the latest installment in the acclaimed Bizarre Science Fantasy dance-theatre series.

Brain-switching experiments and raging hormones?  Well, I’d have bought a ticket.

I was a little curious about the image provenance and a little nosing about provided what I think was one of the sources, from the ever -helpful i09.com .

Piercing the unknown?  I’d buy a ticket to that, too.  As for the use of the poster?  More evidence, as if any were ever really needed, that everything really is a remix.

This splendid steampunk-inspired illustration has lots of interesting things in tubes (or at least globes) but here the girl mad scientist seems to be in charge of the tubes.

You can click through for slightly larger to see the amazing detail.  The girl’s left arm suggests the occupational hazards of mad science.  Found in a gallery here.

Someone with whom I’ve corresponded (and I’m very sorry to have lost track of who you are — berate me in e-mail or comments if you ‘cuz I deserve it) pointed out to me once that the casket of glass in which Snow White was temporarily held might make the tube-girl meme older than generally thought.   It seemed like a good thought to me at the time.

Someone else out there evidently thought so as well:

Although they do appear to be one dwarf short.  (Oh, stop…)  In addition to European folk tales and the tube-girl meme, it would appear that Wally Wood‘s immortal parody Disneyland Memorial Orgy was a key inspiration.

The image crops up at various places on the Internet, but I found it in this post at Janitor of Lunacy.

Some people are living out the most amazing things in virtual worlds, and some of them have a kind of mad-science feel.  My initial thought on seeing this one was that it was yet another manifestation of the ubiquitous tube girl meme.

Oh, but it’s still more than that.  It’s a Second Life render on a quite-kinky-thank-you blog called Doll’s Realm “A place full of news and information for people who love the idea of becoming a living doll.”  And it’s accompanied by a provocative bit of fantasy:

i’m locked in a tube, slowly undergoing mind and body conversion in SL at the Theodora Countrol Couture Main Store doing my model thing again. it suits me. i love tube as i’ve stated before. it maybe an old sci-fi or transformation mannequin fetish that i’ve detailed before.

Wow!