Life

A very basic form where you can send feedback and apply for a newsletter is online now. It is very basic and ugly, which I intent to do something about very soon. However, I wanted it online, and until somewhere next week I do not have time to figure out how I can integrate this into Wordpress somewhat nicely. It’s in the menu under ‘pages’.

Now that I’ve finally got my diploma for real, I think I should now turn this into a normal weblog, instead of my thesis. Read on if you’re intrested in what I intend with the future of Life.

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This concludes my thesis. From now on, I will be working on putting it together in a document, so it can be delivered in paper form coming Monday. In this post, I will reflect on the process of writing a weblog, and offer some advice to future students considering to write their thesis as a weblog.

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After a lot of puzzling, I’ve put all the information I’ve gathered together to create a suiteable set of genes for my creatures — or should I say: chromosome? I also think I’ve got a suitable system for reproduction.

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I have created another mock-up of the final product. The background is almost the same as the one shown before, but I have changed the effect to something I am more likely to be able to achieve in Flash.

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Finally, we get to the part where the future gets important. First, we have genes which make up a large part of who and what we are. Second, we’ve seen how these genes get duplicated, and mixed by crossing over. Third, mutations can occur, so actual the number of different possible genes keeps growing. In short, there’s a lot of variation.

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As it most clear at the moment, I have found much of my inspiration in Kandinsky’s abstract paintings (not his earlier work). In this post, I want to highlight a few paintings that I consider important for my project.

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I’ve already mentioned that one in two cells contain an error, or, more scientifically correctly speaking, a mutation in one of the genes. Since gametes (ova and sperms) contain only half the information, the error rate is in fact one in four, but as they will be combined later one, statistically it becomes one in four again.

Of course, if a cell contains a mutation in itself, this mutation will be copied to its daughter cells as well (unless of course it gets corrected by a mutation which reverses the earlier mistake — fat chance!). As will be evidenced by a simple look around, this doesn’t necessarily in offspring suitable only for horror movies. In fact, it sounds a lot worse than it is. Sometimes, it is even a good thing, too.

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I have decided this some time ago already, but I haven’t told you yet: even though I find Itten’s theories very interesting I won’t use them for this project. The reason behind this is that I have chosen to be inspired by Kandinsky in particular, and therefore shouldn’t be influenced by someone else (except myself, of course). It will result in a much clearer final result.

The theories of Itten hold merit, and have given me loads of ideas. They will likely inspire coming projects (as will no doubt Kandinsky).