Week 2

I visited the Science museum which was beneficial to my research. ‘Who Am I?’ was a floor in the museum that related to my project as I learnt about DNA, youth development and genes. ‘You are your own family history, your ancestry lives through genes’ this inspired me to trace back into my family ancestry and to analyse what strong genes are still living through my family and what features, characteristics or appearance traits I have inherited and who from. There was an activity that included spinning a ‘genetic dice’ to see the dominance of eye colour (Blue eyes + Brown eyes = Brown eyes) brown eyes is a trait my family carry as mostly we all have brown eyes, my cousin however has blue eyes, which means she must’ve got blue eye gene from her mums side. I responded to this by putting all my family’s eyes in a contact a sheet, comparing and seeing for myself what similarities we share, from looking into all our eyes at the same time I have noticed from my grandads side we all share a small eye shape.  I will now document the initial research I have learnt about traits, and combine it with my own research.

I will also be documenting the initial research about genetic inheritance, genes and DNA. I will be looking at Gregory Mendel and how the discovery of genetics, DNA and inheritance became known. I will then be collaging pictures of members in my family to see who is similar and to identify the genes. I will also print on tracing paper to overlap photos and see what features are similar, and how this shows traits. I will respond to this research with drawings, collages, material experimentation and extraction of shapes, this will help me to have a clear understanding to the start of my project and how I choose to take it further.

I also visited the History museum a part of the museum ‘Human Biology’ taught me more in depth on how DNA affects you and what you take from each parent and how traits can crop up from my ancestry, this inspired me to look on my ancestry, using primary imagery and identifying any traits my family now may share with generations before us all. I took many photos from this museum, I put them into a contact sheet and highlighted the most influential to me, I started to create mark makings from what I saw in the museum, this can help me to create prints and designs from what I find, it is also teaching me to respond to what I like in different ways, for example I took the mark makings I drew from the DNA structure and played with it in photoshop, made a pattern and repeated it. I’m just responding to my research briefly then will further develop my favourite outcomes from all the research I will do over the project.

In the history museum there was a part about familiar faces, telling me the observable human characteristics that can be carried through genes, for example attached/detached earlobes, tongue rolling, freckles, curly/straight hair, dimples and hand clasping. I have been doing little tests with my family to investigate these areas. Moving forward and relating this research to my family I responded to my first mind map and made one suited to my family, defining the traits and characteristics we share, for example, epilepsy, brown eyes, attached earlobes, swimmers shaped body and being muscular are all things that run in my family, however only a few of us have freckles and dimples, so I can identify the dominant genes and the ones that aren’t, or that may come from another side of the family. I can see these characteristics visibly and with help from my older generations telling me information about further into my ancestry. The mind map will help me define the parts to traits I can look further into.