Gene Network Art Work
To start out my project, I interview a scientist, Francis McMahon, about his job in the area of mood and anxiety disorder research. When I asked him the question about what I could do to represent his research artistically, he suggested that one possible idea was to represent a gene network. This, as he described it, looks like a bunch of dots connected by lines. So I did a little bit of research, and found an image that I liked of a gene network. They are much more complex than I have shown here, but I wanted to make it less complex due to the extent of this project. The entire black structure is made of lines, but I did not put that level of detail into the drawing.
The image is done in colored pencil on a square of white paper. It is backed with a square of black paper. This is mounted on a canvas decorated with different words taken from my interview. They are suppression, nerves, depression, episode, serotonin, dopamine, DNA, disorder, genetic marker, schizophrenia, anxiety, network, prevention, bipolar, gene, manhattan plot, molecule, family tree, Francis McMahon, genes, disorders, mood, recovery, nerves and suppression. All of these words have some sort of relevance to my main researched disease that I studied, which was depression. For example, dopamine is a chemical in the brain which plays a large part in the development of depression. Suppression because my scientist said that there is no way to really prevent or cure different mental illnesses. The symptoms are simply suppressed. Medication and treatment can be given to help the recovery from an episode, but there is not real cure.
This picture is a representation of a gene network. This is showing the connections between the different genes in the network, the red being one gene, the blue being another and the yellow being another. The higher the concentration of the gene that is present, the larger and more concentrated the circles are. Like the red circles, they are collected in one space and then fading off. The black section is made by all the millions of connections of the genes.
To start out my project, I interview a scientist, Francis McMahon, about his job in the area of mood and anxiety disorder research. When I asked him the question about what I could do to represent his research artistically, he suggested that one possible idea was to represent a gene network. This, as he described it, looks like a bunch of dots connected by lines. So I did a little bit of research, and found an image that I liked of a gene network. They are much more complex than I have shown here, but I wanted to make it less complex due to the extent of this project. The entire black structure is made of lines, but I did not put that level of detail into the drawing.
The image is done in colored pencil on a square of white paper. It is backed with a square of black paper. This is mounted on a canvas decorated with different words taken from my interview. They are suppression, nerves, depression, episode, serotonin, dopamine, DNA, disorder, genetic marker, schizophrenia, anxiety, network, prevention, bipolar, gene, manhattan plot, molecule, family tree, Francis McMahon, genes, disorders, mood, recovery, nerves and suppression. All of these words have some sort of relevance to my main researched disease that I studied, which was depression. For example, dopamine is a chemical in the brain which plays a large part in the development of depression. Suppression because my scientist said that there is no way to really prevent or cure different mental illnesses. The symptoms are simply suppressed. Medication and treatment can be given to help the recovery from an episode, but there is not real cure.
This picture is a representation of a gene network. This is showing the connections between the different genes in the network, the red being one gene, the blue being another and the yellow being another. The higher the concentration of the gene that is present, the larger and more concentrated the circles are. Like the red circles, they are collected in one space and then fading off. The black section is made by all the millions of connections of the genes.