Design

Screen 1 imitates a QR reader using the guide boxes to to achieve optimum focus and read the skin/body as it were a code. This is the first signification of the body as information.

Screen 2 adopts the fragments of skin lifted from photographs that was used on the title screen and app icon. This not only creates a 'theme' ensuring a parity between all pages, but also depicts the 'breakdown' or decoding of the body beginning; much like the icon the colours are flattened to create a 2 dimensional image. In this screen the user selects the gene string to be edited using the touch screen to position the polygon over the appropriate 'label' or 'tag'. I used a polygon as a reflection of how dna is often displayed :

enforcing the idea of body as code, and the tags attempt to convey the image of instructions, an almost how to build the body as if something from ikea. This asks multiple questions in itself, simplifying such a complex and (once) mysterious organism of life and the body into a series of tags and geometrical forms, are we really so complex or superior?

Screen 3 adopts the design of a programme editing/writing app such as wordpress, being very basic in design using the standard iphone/ipad presets for colour, background and keypad, and an almost primal, in terms of the computer, font. A few of the keys and buttons have been modified on the keypad however, as the genome code is only written using four different letters of 'T' 'A' 'C' and 'G'. The 'clone' button attempts to highlight its similarities with copying and pasting, it normalises the process of cloning and portrays it as completely accessible, asking in who's hands will creation lie in the future? The 'delete' button is described as enabling the user to destroy the gene, asking who in the future will have the ability or right to take someones life? The screen as a whole, allowing users to edit their genome and create mutations relates to evolution. Much like xmen who from their gene mutations are the evolved human being, this entwining of digital and human information may be our evolved form, growing extra limbs if needed even stronger organs, removing illnesses such as cancer. When thinking about computer programming it is fair to say that while the younger generation have embraced it, the older generation feels alienated and is completely 'unconnected' as it were. What happens to the older generations or those who do not grasp the technology? While others mutate and evolve they do not, and possibly through natural selection are extinct.

Screen 4 assumes a similar format and design to screen 3 with the basic font and standard buttons, whilst tying in with the theme and using the fragmented skin as its background. The buttons allow users to send existing or mutated genes to their phone's contacts. This portrays both positive and negative outcomes: one possibility is 'normal' or 'debugged' genes can be sent to those with mutated genes (which have lead to illness), in theory curing illnesses such as cancer, the human genome project is widely used by cancer research and so this idea is quite relevant. The alternate outcome would be that mutated genes leading to illness can be sent to healthy people, and thus causing illness, comparable to computer viruses being sent and spread via the internet or downloaded files. The later could result in the 'crash' of complete 'networks' of friends or families and even the human race.