My Avatar is Not a Weakling - Mon avatar n'est pas un gringalet

Performance and Raw Data
Experimentation « 200 grams of DNA »

salivette party #1

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genome_albertine_meunier_Full_20100114.zip

Salivette Party #1 raw data

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Salivette Party #1
screen captures inside 23andme website

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record Mac/Val C.Boltanski . 14.01.2010

Albertine, who is interested in digital identity and online social networks, carried out the experiment « 200 grams of DNA » in order to more closely examine decoded DNA and how it is shared on the Web 2.0 by the online service 23andme.
23andme.comcom is an American company financed by Google, which analyzes anyone’s DNA for about 300 euros and introduces them to a network of DNA’ed people.

Albertine was curious: What does DNA look like? What is its form? How much does it weigh? She decided to use the results of this experiment to make an artwork.

Saliva Parties can be organized to get some “real DNA”. It’s quite simple. Just order a kit from 23andme (350 euros) and get some aseptic test tubes. Guests spit into a test tube, which then collects their saliva. In the end, only one test tube is randomly selected and sent to 23andme to decode the DNA.

A first Saliva Party took place during Nuitnumérique#7 in October 2009 at the Saint Exupéry Cultural Center in Reims. As a result from this party, and from the  “selected” saliva, the raw data of the person’s genome is accessible online and can be downloaded at 23andme.com in the form of a text file (genome_albertine_meunier_Full_20091230004950.txt).

Here is an excerpt of this very long list:
# This data file generated by 23andMe at: Wed Dec 30 00:49:50 2009
#
# Below is a text version of your data. Fields are TAB-separated
# Each line corresponds to a single SNP.  For each SNP, we provide its identifier 
# (an rsid or an internal id), its location on the reference human genome, and the 
# genotype call oriented with respect to the plus strand on the human reference 
# sequence.     We are using reference human assembly build 36.  Note that it is possible 
# that data downloaded at different times may be different due to ongoing improvements 
# in our ability to call genotypes. More information about these changes can be found at:
# https://www.23andme.com/you/download/revisions/
# 
# More information on reference human assembly build 36:
# http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/mapview/map_search.cgi?taxid=9606&build=36
#
# 
rsid              chromosome     position     genotype
rs3094315        1                     742429          AA
rs12562034      1                     758311          GG
rs3934834         1                     995669          CC
rs9442372         1                     1008567        GG
rs3737728         1                     1011278        GG
rs11260588       1                     1011521        GG

etc ... there are many lines in this file!

My Avatar is not a Weakling is not a project to reconstitute an avatar from this raw data.

The first avatar could be modeled in 2D, 3D, photography, text, etc, but would find its graphic representation and specific behavior… why not in a bot?

Other avatars, resulting from other Saliva Parties, could be created in order to generate a real community.

Salivette Party #1, few pictures

24 october 2009
7.30 pm at Centre Culturel Saint Exupéry, Reims

Kit 23andme received

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