N = 1
reconstructing synaptic mutations
We all see depictions of mutants in the movies and in popular culture as superheroes or monsters, but what do they look like in real life? In preparation for this piece I had been studying the effect of certain genetic mutations on the structure of synaptic connections and wanted to see what these mutant synapses looked like outside of the computer screen. So I decided to make two pieces side-by-side one from a normal cell and one from a mutant cell. The mutant is on the right. It looks kind of weird, but it’s impossible to really know since it’s just an n=1.
About the build
I got the wood for this project from a sustainable sawmill outside San Diego and they sliced it up for me. The tricky thing about slicing cookies is that you are cutting through the grain of the wood, which puts variable pressure on the saw blade and causes it to deflect as it cuts through. In this case, the result was more along the lines of wedges rather than cookies as each slice had variable thickness to it. This altered my ability to properly scale the piece, which was kind of a bummer. But I still think they turned out pretty cool!