Turret Road

Turret Road started as a conversation with my 4 year old son regarding the cyclical nature of life and how our heavier atoms were/are created in the supernova deaths of giant stars.

Conversations such as this remind me of a passage in Gattaca where Vincent, who finally has attained his dream of reaching the stars realises that he now has much to leave behind.

‘For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess I’m suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course, they say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe I’m not leaving… maybe I’m going home.’ (Nicol, 1997)

That I’m reminded of Gattaca when talking with my son is salient. In the world framed by Gattaca he would be a natural born, an ‘In-Valid’ (Nicol, 1997). His a life dictated by the dice roll of genetic combinations rather than by the careful selection and edition towards a eugenically ideal ‘valid’ which supposedly represent the best features of their parents.

The genetic dice roll for my son involved a chance of inheriting Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), a genetic heart condition where the hearts ventricular septum thickens abnormally. Most people with this condition lead normal lives (The Cardiac Inherited Disease Group, 2017). However, on his Mothers side of the family, HCM or in her case Hypertrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy (HOCM) has required medical intervention and has had a significant impact on quality of life.

Faced with this chance, would have I chosen to edit this gene out if technology allowed it? Building towards the world depicted in Gattaca? At the time of his conception, technology such as CRISPR/Cas9 was in embryonic development, but has matured rapidly since. Coupled with genetic studies such as the HCM gene mapping project run by the Cardiac Inherited Disease Group (CIDG) here in New Zealand the ability to edit this gene out of a parents gene pool will become available.

Technology such as gene editing is now outpacing ethics (Lunshof, 2017) on meta societal levels and on personal levels. Tracing back to the dice roll. If I could have influenced the roll, would have I? Yes.

Formal language

Turret Road’s design language is based around the use of hard angles and rigid regular stoke widths as a denotative reference to the machine, order and rationality. Connotatively the typeface references, cold hard space, voices of the void and future dystopia’s.

Turret Road is rendered as a sans serif typeface with a relatively high x-height, relatively wide glyph widths, open bowls, low contrast stems and is primarily intended for usage at larger point sizes.

Western, Central and South Eastern European languages are supported.

Bibliography

Nicol, A. (1997). Gattaca. Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures Corporation.

The Cardiac Inherited Disease Group. (2017). Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). Retrieved from http://www.cidg.org.nz/patients-families/cardiac-inherited-diseases/hypertrophic-cardiomyopathy-hcm/

Iqbal, M. (2018, March). Free Image on Pixabay - Astronomy, Travel, Man, Spaceship. Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/astronomy-travel-man-spaceship-3161858/

OpenStreetMap contributors. (n.d.). OpenStreetMap. Retrieved from https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map= 17/-37.71877/176.16657

Space X. (2018, February 23). PAZ Mission. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacex/39718494114/

The Digital Artist. (2015, April 8). Free Image on Pixabay - Spaceship, Sci-Fi, Science, Fiction. Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/spaceship-sci-fi-science-fiction-711347/

WikiImages. (2012, January 9). Free Image on Pixabay - Sun, Fireball, Solar Flare. Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/sun-fireball-solar-flare-sunlight-11582/