Losing My Wings Main Menu Yagharek Longs to Fly Yagharek, from China Mieville's, _Perdido Street Station_, gives up the dream of flight Diptera: Insects with two wings Flies and humans Fallen Angels: Loss as Transformation David Bowie explores themes of space existence in his songs from the 1970s through 1980s From Sensory Bristles to the Spots on a Butterfly's Wing Evolution through co-option Gothic Biology Limb Development in the Human Embryo A description of early human limb development Popular Culture and Extraordinary Bodies

How I Lost My Wings

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This is a remarkable time in the history of biological thought. Experiments during the past few decades have changed scientist’s views of how genes contribute to evolution and development. Genes were once thought to carry the instructions for building an organism, much like a blueprint carries instructions for building a house. Now genes are considered more like exquisitely sensitive switches that initiate and refine sequences of events. 

Humans possess all the molecular machinery needed to develop wings. The fact that they do not has haunted stories of personal and social transformation for millennia. The project will be built from a database of Gothic Moments where stories of transformation will remain haunted by the outcomes of developmental paths not taken. These gothic moments will be images taken from literature, art, and the history of evolutionary and developmental biology on the human, or humanoid, loss of wings. What I offer is the capacity to create a series of gothic fables that question easy assumptions of what has come to pass by imaginatively exploring what may come to pass under a different set of circumstances.

Each of these starting points are just that, points where different fables can begin to be created. Each starting point has its own path as well as connections to other possible paths. Here are the starting points:

Gothic Fables of Losing My Wings
Credits
Author/Director - Phillip Thurtle
Programmer/Designer - Michael Beach
Aesthetic Consultant/Designer - Hannah Patterson
Programmer - John Morrow