Hox Morph

"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!"
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Ch.2
 
This interactive project is inspired by the properties of the Homeobox genes which essentially define body regions in all animals as well as humans. We seek to create and experiential space that relates the idea that we are all interconnected.
 
The goal is to entice the audience with these fascinating genes that are responsible for many different variations of legs, arms and other parts of the body exist in the animal kingdom. The hox gene also plays a role in many dynamic changes in human development and continues to be an important subject for scientific exploration in the areas of brain development, body patterning, and variation across species.
 
The audience’s silhouette is generated from a video capture and connected to an abstract rendition of a hox gene. The participant influences the transformation into different creatures that emerge and respond to different movements. The animals correspond to the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac that morph into new creatures and mirror the movement of the person captured. Sounds attached to the animals are composed by Gil Kuno who created a parallel “Scopic” world to the creatures with visual sound waves on the opposing wall.


AudioScopic: 
The space will be immersed with the resonant frequencies from cells of the respective animals that appear in the Hox piece. The audio will be panned such that they seem to resonate from where the animal has appeared.



VisioScopic: 
The wall opposite of Victoria Vesna's piece will display the visualizations of the above frequencies. These images will be presented opposite the animal projections - displacing audio perceptions into visual, and their physicality to another location.