Of That Ilk #165/200
The breakthrough work of geneticists and biologists of the twentieth century decoded the sequencing of our DNA, and revealed the science behind what makes each of us who we are. As though the existence of this encoded blueprint must be seen to be believed, genetic sequencing has since been carefully and artfully visualized by scientists over the years – a human-assisted ‘reveal’ of nature’s great conceptual painting.
These visualizations present snippets of our encoding through cryptic grids of colored rectangles – compositions of small marks that add up to define us, providing markers for specific traits that exist across people. These sequences become a shorthand for labeling who we are – yet, even in aggregate, these sequences cannot tell the full story of identity.
Of That Ilk imagines how the visualization of scientific sequencing would look if it included all the human attributes that we develop over time and that escape rigid definition. The fictional sequencing in this generative series reveals the blurring, blending, warping, overlapping, and shape-shifting of markings that represent each supposed attribute of our very identities.
This aesthetic abstraction of data ends up feeling more like us than any objective definition attempted for our individual identities – and the imperfections and variety within these artful visualizations are a celebration of the vast difference in character and quality of every person. By furthering the artistic interpretation of our genetic codes, Of That Ilk appreciates the elegance of life's underlying instructions, while representing how each of us can see these blueprints through in unendingly unexpected ways.
