Donnerstag, 4. Oktober 2012

Mr. Big Bang is 50 now!

today is the 50th birthday of the premiere of the first James Bond film: Dr.No in UK.
In my series "Orbis TV pictus" I made drawings for almost all James Bond films, taking them as a sort of visual tutorial for our global handling of explosiveness (Eine Schule der Sprenglebendigkeit).

 
the following German text from 1993.

Mr. Big Bang: So nenne ich den vertrauten kalten Krieger, eine Mixtur aus Gilgamesch, Prinz Eisenherz, Philip Marlow und Rambo, der uns als Held aus all den James Bond-Streifen entgegentritt. Aus Standbildern der ersten 15 Bondfilme habe ich eine Sammlung von 120 Zeichnungen zusammengestellt, die als »Schule der Sprenglebendigkeit« einen Themenkreis der Serie Orbis TV pictus beleuchtet.
Diese Filme sind reine Unterhaltungsfilme, d.h. sie sind zwischen den ernsten Dingen des Lebens angesiedelt. Bond ist Geheimagent im Auftrag, er soll für seine Regierung, für die Konstrukteure und für uns nachgucken, ob sich im Geheimen und Verborgenen, dem, was längst nicht mehr einsehbar ist, weil es ohne Unterbrechung rund um die Uhr geschieht, neue Kräfte bilden, die sich terroristisch unserer Computersteuerung und der Atomkraft bemächtigen wollen. Diese virushaften, bösen Kräfte hat er aufzuspüren und mit seiner Lizenz zu töten unschädlich zu machen. Er gehört somit zum Immunsystem des modernen, kybernetischen Kultur- und Industrieorganismus, der auf Selbststeuerung, Homöostase, balance of powers ausgerichtet ist.
Mr. Big Bang läßt uns träumen, daß die Fülle der realen Bedrohungen, die unsere heutige Schnittstellenwelt durchzieht, in vereinzelten Bösewichtern oder Terrororganisationen lokalisiert und vernichtet werden kann.
Wir sollen glauben, daß das Verbrecherische und Böse immer nur mit einzelnen Eindringlingen, Störenfrieden und Tyrannen zu tun hat und nicht mit der Struktur des zivilatorischen Systems selbst. Auch viele Krimis, ob geschrieben oder verfilmt, fassen das Kriminelle gewöhnlich als Störung der Kultur- und Rechtswelt auf und unterschlagen die simple Tatsache, daß alle unsere Kunstwelten schon ein Durchbrechen (crimen) und Verdrehen ursprünglich wilder Naturgegebenheiten darstellen.
Filme spielen mit von der bildenden Kunst lange zuvor erarbeiteten Bildern, die jeweils zu einem Blick zusammenfassen, wie Wirkliches gesehen und verstanden werden kann und setzen diese Bilder in Bewegung, inzwischen immer schneller und atemberaubender. Für die Zeichnungsserie OTVP schaue ich mir diese bewegenden Motive einzeln in Standbildern an, zeichne sie vor dem Monitor und ordne sie zu kleinen Dreibildeinheiten, für mich visuelle Haiku, um sie in solcher Brechung wieder sichtbar und besinnbar zu machen. Ich betrachte Filme generell als eine Art von Schule, die uns Sichtweisen, Einstellungen und Auffassungen anbietet, wie mit Wirklichem umzugehen ist.
Die Bondfilme geben sich als reine Fiktion und lassen in ihrer parodistischen Überdrehtheit keinen Zweifel aufkommen, ob wir Entscheidendes nicht doch für bare Münze nehmen sollten. Was mich an ihnen wegen seiner bestechenden Logik anzieht, sind die verschiedenen Bilder von Spannern mit all ihren optischen Geräten, den dazugehörigen Sexualobjekten, den eingesperrten und manchmal rausgelassenen wilden Tieren, den diversen Fahrzeugen, den teuren Tourismusschauplätzen und vor allem, wie ständig etwas in die Luft fliegt. Für die ganzen Nach-Bond-Actionserien existiert schon eine eigene Autocrash-Industrie.
Andauernd explodieren Autos, Häuser, sogar Leute, was anscheinend immer wieder gern gesehen wird.
Ich behandle die Bondfilme als eine »Schule der Sprenglebendigkeit«, die uns Muster an die Hand geben soll, wie wir die in ihrer Konsequenz unausdenkbaren Explosionen nicht vielleicht doch vereinzelt ein bißchen denken und angucken können.
Die ausgewählten Motive decken sich nicht unbedingt mit dem, was die verschiedenen Gesellschaften, die mit dem Artikel Bond ihr Geld machen, als typisch Bond vorgeben. Diese Arbeit ist nicht als Huldigung, aber auch nicht als Parodie gemeint. Es stellt den Versuch dar, auf unkonventionelle Weise eine Art visueller Forschung zu betreiben, oder auch eine Philosophie in Bildern.
Zu den einzelnen Filmen sind unterschiedlich viele Zeichnungen entstanden.
Köln, 1993



Donnerstag, 13. September 2012

Some music

well, this is for visualisations of your own.

a Gamelan arrangement of mine of a techno piece, played last monday:

http://soundcloud.com/mogam/neulichimmuseum

Donnerstag, 23. August 2012

Dienstag, 14. August 2012

Supportmix for three German chromosomes

I still don't know, what to think about it, but was curious enough to reanimate my elder chromosome stylesheets and populate them in three examples with the latest results of Polakos chromosome paintings. There is no German reference group, so German admixture has to be composed with neighbour populations. I had a look on chromosomes 7, 9 and 12.








I see some ancestry countries, which seem plausible ( East English, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Vologda, Chechen, Bulgarian_Romanian or even Swedish ) but some are rather unlikely, like Tuscan, Spanish, Irish, Iranian or Saudi Arabian.



Sonntag, 1. Juli 2012

A bellybutton in Helsinki

a nice opportunity to mention:

Björn Otto, a German pole vaulter, today grasped for the EM title in Helsinski and at the end won silver. He belonged to those people, whose bellybutton I faced in a series of more than 500 drawings, called "MyBelly is the middle of the web" (2000 - 2002 at http://zaender.tripod.com/index.htm). My vision was the simulation of a social network, reaching far back in time and connecting people via their real relationships, represented through their navel. This series was preceding and both awakening my genetic interest, functioning exactly like a mitochondrial phylotree. Drawings were kept anonymous, only the dates of birth and drawings are listed plus the title "My bellybutton" in native tongue. Here I show two, who went public with the works themselves.










Dienstag, 26. Juni 2012

Magenta marias

Three new german participants for my real tested mtdna faces:

DE25





DE31




DE36

Montag, 18. Juni 2012

A blow on German Eurogenes participants

Eurogenes ran an extended version of the last SPA analysis, including individuals from Pakistan and North India, just to test their effect on the other samples, as David W. stated.
I thought, if there is an impact, we should somehow SEE it.
So I made 4 simple maps, in each centering another German participant, one from the middle (DE28), one from the Southwest (DE31), the Southeast (DE12) and one from the outer Northwest (PLDE2). To avoid misunderstandings, these are NOT screenshots of SPA_dual plots. I just overlapped two different versions of SPA_single runs, one with and one without Indian samples and marked the differences for German participants
.

Donnerstag, 24. Mai 2012

possible gedmatch visualisation

pie charts don't seem to go with my ancestry avatars, but perhaps columns in some way:

Dienstag, 22. Mai 2012

Genetic avatars

Figurines like the "Venus of Willendorf" ( 22 kybp ) always had a fascination for me, standing in a totally different aesthetic and cultural context. Whether they are a product of male fantasy or a ritual addition in a maternal surrounding, guarding the tent or an idol for fertility will perhaps never be complete cleared. But in a period of determining genetic components for an admixture analysis, I thought, it would be great to associate such female mother/goddess figurines with a certain population component. It would just be helpful, if at the end of an experimental process we could fix a component to a limited region and a certain timeframe, which could be represented by an icon in a senseful colour.
The oldest known figurines, including the new recent finding of the german "Venus of Hohler Fels" (35 - 40 kybp) are tied together in a belt, reaching from Southwest France to Sibiria.





After this homogenous paleo- and mesolithic area, which could have lasted for more than 30000 years, more abstract and diverging types are popping up.





Genetic data are globally not distributed equal like Descarte's "common sense" (Nobody ever has claimed to have herited less of it than others) nor are these figurines. They are clearly clustering in a neolithic period in the Neareast, the Danube bassin and the amerindian high cultures of Inca and Maya.









Even examples of the japanese Jomon culture are numerous, while early pieces for China and a lot of other parts of the world are still lacking. But perhaps we get enough of them covering what we need.





some additions:


Sonntag, 20. Mai 2012

Genetic landscape 1

Using eurogenes K6 comparison



Images should explain themselves without too many annotations, but I wanted to add the complete used avatars and an example, how the figures develop with a scale at the beginning. This is DE22, my mother.


here is the map with a selected set of references:


Freitag, 11. Mai 2012

Colours in genetics

In all the joy and appreciation for genetic comparison there had always been left an annoying rest about the used color sets, changing each time. I tried to imagine a unified system, which could help to identify a certain position, tying specific components to visual avatars. No matter, what representants we choose, a genetic neighbourhood will create similar colours. We could do maps for specific reference populations and see, what kind of distribution they produce.
The first idea was to head for the triangle structure of the "Global similarity" tools of 23andme and deCODEme. I tried to create a triangle set of colours, using the CMYK system and combine them:




I made a collection of 35 drawings, focussing ancient mother figures of the paleolithic, mesolithic until early neolithic period, which could be used as representants for specific ancestry components (will be presented in more detail in the next blog). To determine the colours, I did a sort of genetic bush after roughly evaluating a whole bunch of detailed BGA-plots, mostly done by David W.


After this I tried to give each avatar the appropriate colour, placing them in a map, I once developed as a background for the east-west korridor, describing the distribution of certain haplogroups.





This is a first approach, so any comments are welcome!

Freitag, 13. April 2012

Hunter/gatherer versus farmer

A visual approach to BGA comparisons


It is really fun to follow the developments in Eurogenes and Dodecad from the first attempts at deCODEme, but it is somewhat confusing to always look at numbers and ciphers and to handle each time a different color sytem. I would appreciate to have diagrams, which are selfexplicable without the need to translate them from proportions to columns to pies.




This is a first approach to go for a unified color system, playing around with a K12 series of hunter/gatherers versus farmerset.


The 12 components, shown here as named by David W. are free to download at:
https://docs.google.com/#folders/0B_4jqJn_kICvQV9fLWRISkNpNk0

for those, who want to play with these pics, building their own diagrams. Two add-ons, drawn at eastern in the Eifel:

I will go for other series, do some references and will try to work out a color sytem!
The basic pic is named "musterpic.jpg", containing the scale. One can insert all the necessary pics. Best is the "multiply-option in photoshop".

Freitag, 30. März 2012

Longlin 1 again!

The first version of the Longlin 1 skull was still made under the assumption, that this could be part of a new species. But meanwhile I am rather convinced, that he is quite in the middle of a normal range of east asian people.

On a blogsite I found this picture, supporting my estimation:
https://blogs.wellesley.edu/vanarsdale/files/2012/03/Slide2.jpg

in another blog Maju commented:
     " I think that the nose of both Longlin and Mai Da Nuoc have remarkably small triangular nasal holes and neither have the "bridge" of the nose (nasal bone) too prominent. They could well have noses similar to those of modern East Asians: rather flat and small but actually most modern Mongoloids have broader nose holes and these are remarkably small and triangular. I've tried to find comparisons but no luck but they must have got very small noses, probably narrow, as well as very strongly marked cheeks. "
As I offered open to correct me in my partly exeggerated approaches of selfmade reconstructions I made a second version of Longlin 1.


Montag, 26. März 2012

Homo Mousteriensis Hauseri faces

Reflections about the uncertainties of reconstruction

In my first high school year at the age of ten I could enjoy a privileged status concerning Biology. My appreciated teacher Dr. Krieger knew to use my drawing abilities for his lessons at a time without tons of copies and without a beamer, giving me his private books to blow up the illustrations with color charcoal on a board of one to three square meters. I remember gigantic drawings of single cells, plants and insects. In the huge archive of the biology collection I first met the famous skull of one of the latest Neanderthal people, found 1908 in Moustier, Dordogne and considered to have lived about 40000 years ago. I met him again in 2005 in the Anatomy Institute of Cologne, hold him in hands, made a drawing and quickly noticed, that he must be wrong recomposed (done by Hermann Klaatsch, Breslau).



In 2005 I ommited to do a more detailed drawing and added it now, imagining, this could be a half bald man with freckles and full of testosterone. The green sculpture, I found some days ago, obviously is based on the wrong replica too.





I made a second drawing trying to correct the exaggerated prolonging of the face. This replica was probably spreaded throughout Europe a thousand times, being the first complete skull of a Neanderthal man, giving a chance to visualize this new species. Otto Hauser was not only a skilled amateur archaeologue, but also very good at promoting and merchandising his findings.

It was a luck, that they divided the original parts (brown) from the additions (grey - the small skull in the upper left). A study by Thomson, I later found, which worked with computer tomography, recombining all known pieces into a plausible skull, showed no significant difference to my initial sketching. 





After looking for a possible version of the newly found Maludong skull I remembered my own elder reflections about the subjectivity of reconstructions. Even when we face a complete skull without errors like above and can turn him around in hands, we know nothing about all the fleshy and psychic facts, that determine a person. We can only guess, wether he is healthy or sick, vivid or timid, selfconfident, kind or mean, bright or dull, handsome or ugly. The simple fact, that there sometimes is only one version of a head - and often a very expensive one, when a sculpture - can lead to the misleading impression, if you have a scientific method like "Three millimeters flesh on the cheekbones", you will automatically reach an objective version of a skull. The truth is far from that!
The most important determinants for an empathic and real looking version is a well founded prejudice, a guiding idea. I simply played with those possibilities to show, that we could imagine our famous Hauseri skull both as european or rather african or asian.



At http://s4.zetaboards.com/Sciences_and_History/forum/3841977/
I opened up a thread to discuss this and to start a project, I will offer to run series of drawings after your proposals.


Donnerstag, 15. März 2012

Maludong versions

collecting different possibilities of ancient faces will perhaps create a weird thing like a "morphological difference" to head for probable faces without anatomical proof like those of Denisovans!

Two actual versions of the Maludong samples. Not that far away, I think!


Samstag, 25. Februar 2012

Professor Koebke and the old man of La Chapelle




I sadly have to announce, that Professor Juergen Koebke, former director of the anatomic institute of Cologne, was found yesterday suicided in the south of Cologne, obviously no longer bearing unfair accusations against him and his responsability. Last week it became public, that up to 80 corpses in his institute have not been buried as usual. It was the guilt of a staff member with a lot of private problems. Since Koebke was known as extremely human, he did not want to destroy that member, but it came to an official warning, signed with the designated next professor (who is not reachable anymore).

In 2005 we both organized an exhibition in the big lounge of the anatomic institute and buying the above painting he even enabled the printing of the invitation cards. He was highly educated and interested, was repeatedly in the list of top three beloved teachers and was so generous, that he gave me free access to all parts of a huge collection. For the course of three weeks I was able to have all the original sculls and repliquas in hands to draw them.

This is a real tragedy!

Donnerstag, 5. Januar 2012

iWulff


aus dem Nachlaß von Steve Jobs:
das rote Präsidententelefon für besondere Anlässe.






Sonntag, 1. Januar 2012

POIESIS & TECHNE

Comments about 23andme's new terms of subscription

Repeatedly the question arise, who owns our genome and I think, it is worth a notion, that greek philosophers around 500 bc already developed a rather appropriate distinction about two different powers, how things can be produced. One is named POIESIS and it means the power to let natural things grow and evolute into their own shape. The other is related to human intelligence and means the power to transform given things and to invent something completely new. It is called TECHNE.
Applying this to the field of genetics, we can easliy see, that a "Genome" is undoubtly part of the natural world, is a result of the power of POIESIS and belongs both to all of us and nobody as does the air around us, we can breath. Nobody can claim, it is his creation or invention or propriety. What of course not means, that someone else has the right to put his hands on information about my genome!
On the other hand we have to agree, that all methods of Genome investigation, sequencing and chip technologies, tools like Relative and Ancestry Finder are part of TECHNE and must be regarded as unique inventions, innovations of the several companies, who owns them.
In so far I have to agree to the new terms of subscription, they mostly correspond to what I think about the freedom of a companies business strategy.

The problem is the timing. What seems to be ok for the future, must not be ok for the past!
The current consumers for the V3 technology ordered under different conditions and will be blamed with the new TOS.
I wanted to know, how it will look like, when the new terms are not taken back!

This is the current situation for each participant of Relative Finder. There are distant cousins, tested with the V2 chip, those with V3 and about 3/4 are non responders ( coloured icons! ). I omitted decliners and the chaotic fact, that some accept contact, but decline sharing.




The new TOS will only concern the users of V3 and those unlucky ones, who paid for an update to V3. If they decide to continue paying the subscription fees, they will lose all the non payers of V3.



Who cancels the subscription, will maintain the access to his raw data, but will face a situation, anybody can have for free installing a simple demo account. He will see this:

I deeply recommend to sign a petition, compiled by Larry Vick against the new terms of subscription.
http://www.change.org/petitions/23andme-dont-take-away-our-relative-finder-matches#