'Genedit' Iphone/ipad concept app

The design of the app takes on a graphical element. I took close up photos of skin and in photoshop lifted out sections to create this fragmented and distorted body matter, reflecting what the app allows the user to do. I carried on this theme by using flesh tones and geometric forms that are used to symbolised genes.

No. 1 allows the user to scan the body part which they want to change, fundamentally reading or decoding the body, in the way that a QR code and scanner works. I thought that this illustrated the leak of technologies quite clearly and really the idea isn't too far fetched and seems quite plausible that this will be possible in the near future. To enforce this the screen layout is based upon a QR scanner, with the guidelines to help focus the section.

No. 2 adopts the fragmented skin photos as its theme and encourages the user to selected the exact section of the genome (read and decoded from the previous step). The polygon echoes the standard symbol for genes, but at the same time portrays a digital quality. I included the button 'clone' to make reference to they body and an 'organic' substance is being dealt with. However I then added the button 'delete' instead of destroy to maintain this leak and amalgamation of the two 'technologies' or 'information'. I believe that these two simple buttons alone pose significant questions concerning the future and the responsibilities that technology has to think about the consequences it may have.

No. 3 is based on the layout for a programme writing/ editing tool, again enforcing the idea that users will be able to write or edit their own 'body programme'.

Deconstruction of existing apps

Processing is a widely used programming language and environment, which allows the circulation of ideas amongst users. This is fundamentally the concept of my app and so in order to portray this connection, my app will echo elements of design within Processing. The icon attempts to portray the digital environment, using receding tones of blue to create a sense of endless space and depth, and interestingly a physicality and tangible quality. The notion of pattern and connections an individual envisions with digital technology is illustrated by the connecting white lines, which is carried through to the logo'P' in sans serif, basic font assimilated with code writing. I think the angular forms are most to credit for the sense of digital connections and make-up which will work well in my own app.

The design of apps is very vast ranging from the really low tech almost clip art gimmicky apps to the sleek, graphic lifestyle or business apps such as 'goop' or 'nike'. There are a few constants and common design elements however:

The tool bar at the top of the screen gives the screen/page name and a 'back' button

The keypad (if applicable) uses the standard iphone/ipod layout and keys in grey and blue

Majority of buttons or windows have rounded edges and have a gradient shift to appear convex.

DIEM

The DIEM project is an investigation into how we look and see. All research is available to use by the public for non commercial work and the data together with CARPE allows the user to visualize where people look during dynamic scene viewing such as during film trailers, music videos, or advertisements. This is similar to Kyle McDonald's facetracking programme displaying how technology is advancing to assimilate and perhaps even merge with out natural body functions, however what I found particularly interesting was the format describing the eye-tracking data:

[frame] [left_x] [left_y] [left_dil] [left_event] [right_x] [right_y] [right_dil] [right_event]

This very short instruction details such a complex process, it removes every hint of the organic or natural replacing it with a literal, unemotional even soul-less direction, which is very hard to connect with the body.

Above are two of my initial sketches and mockups for the app.

This is a rough timeline for the tutorial.

Some notes and ideas for a programme where users move and reorder the genome code.

Although I am still going to produce the 'spoof' tutorial, I still really like the idea of the app that allows users to modify their own genome code. It clearly shows the overlap and leak of human and digital code/information that I have been exploring in the project and asks important questions about the future in relation to this. I previously put the idea aside because I couldn't grasp the technology to create an app and believed that spending the time left in learning how to create an app my ideas would suffer. However, I now feel it may be best (alongside the tutorial) to produce a prototype or mock up of how the app would work and look, in the form of sketches and sample screenshots made using photoshop.

Ben Fry's HapMap (map of haploid genotypes). Fry also created a 3D genome browser called stripy but dropped the project before it was finished back in 2002, and also created a handheld device to do the same.

Screen Recording 3

Initial start on the tutorial.

How to Code in XML (Beginner)

Whilst researching and trying to figure out how a lot of coding works I noticed that youtube is probably the most common host for tutorials by using a simple screen recording. To make a tutorial in the format on how to mutate the genome code and manipulate your appearance I think will bring in all my previous research/experiments and still allow room to develop these experiments further.