Originally published on Medium:
=> https://medium.com/p/ff8def3f5223
2022-01-27
In September 2021, COVID19 surpassed the death toll of 675,000 of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic in the USA - becoming the deadliest disease in American history. COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Spike protein (S) on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus binds to human cells by recognizing the ACE2 protein receptor. This binding facilitates the fusion of the virus to human cells leading to the injection of the viral genetic material into the human cells. Once inside the human cells, viral genetic material utilizes host machinery to produce more copies of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This single copy of NFT (24 X 36-inch poster) commemorates the record-breaking deaths in the USA by rendering the spike protein in 675,001 (download & zoom) unique combinations of RGB (red, green, and blue) color codes. These 675,001 colors are randomly sampled from all the possible (16,777,216) computer-generated colors. It's a work of several weeks of computation that involved generating hex codes from all the possible combinations of RGB values, rendering individual spike protein structures into unique colors, stitching individual images into rows to cover the width of the poster, and then stacking rows to cover the height of the poster. All the steps were carried out programmatically in the R programming language.
text/gemini;lang=en-USThis content has been proxied by September (3851b).