First Game

Bacteria Name: Pathogen

Origin: India

Start Date: October 16, 2015

100 People Infected: December 1, 2015 (around 1.5 months)

1,000,000 People Infected: February 2016 (around 4 months)

First Death: August 8, 2016 in East Africa (around 10 months)

Destroyed Human Race: Yes

For my first game, I chose India because it is a rural country with a large population. When I first started playing, I tried earning as much DNA points as possible so I can evolve the transmission traits especially water, air and mosquito. I believed that these particular  traits can help spread the disease faster to other countries through plane and ship transmission. As I gained more points, I distributed them evenly between the symptoms and abilities. I tried making the symptoms as worse as possible so that the bacteria can infect more people. I made sure to invest most of my points in Drug Resistance so that a cure can never be completed. I used any extra points I had to max out the rest of the traits. I believed that because I invested my DNA points on Drug Resistance early in the game, I was able to stop the cure from being made which caused the plague to destroy the entire human race. However, I wasn’t able to conquer Greenland.

2nd Game 

Bacteria Name: Bacillus

Origin: USA

Start Date: October 16, 2015

100 People Infected: January 3, 2016 (around 2.5 months)

1,000,000 People Infected: April 26, 2016 (around 6 months)

First Death: March 3, 2016 (around 4.5 months)

Destroyed Human Race: Yes

Conquered Greenland: Yes

Since I was able to destroy the human race in my first game, I played the second game using the same tactics. I made sure to distribute my DNA points evenly among the three categories especially Drug Resistance. This time it definitely took longer for the bacteria to spread and to infect people but that was expected since the USA is a more wealthy nation. Surprisingly, it took longer for the first death to occur when I started out in India than when I started out in the USA. I thought it would be the opposite since India is a poor country compared to the USA. Another thing that I thought was interesting was that after I maxed out Drug Resistance in my first game, the game ended instantly when the cure dropped down to 63%. However, when I maxed out Drug Resistance in my second game, the cure drop down to 72% and the game was still running for a very long time. During this time, all the countries turned brown on the map and there announcements for every country that was fallen. After 15+ announcements, the game finally ended.

The game definitely helped me understand pandemic transmission better. I was able to see visually how pandemics spread from country to country and how certain transmission and/or symptom traits aided the process. It was a very fun experience creating the bacteria and spreading it all over the world.

After seeing the collection of photographs from Carrie Mae Weems’ series, “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” I saw how she used appropriation to transform the photos into a whole new meaning. When J.T. Zealy took these photos, it was for a scientific purpose, to prove the theory of racial inferiority of Africans. Weems appropriated the photos by applying a red filter over the original images and adding text on top. From watching the video, I learned that she placed circular mats on the prints to put more focus on the men and women in the photos. She organized the photos in a timeline format to convey a message that blacks were treated as lowly beings and dehumanized over the time. I believe she added the text to create more awareness of the photos’ original intention which will then give the subjects the level of dignity and respect that they never received. Without the text, the audience may not know the stories behind each photo and the level of mistreatment these people received. When I first saw these photos and read the texts, I felt saddened by the way these people were treated. Some of them were forced to take semi-nude photographs and were labeled as a subject in a scientific experiment. Their eyes show how uncomfortable they must have felt.  I think that Weems’ photos are very successful in a way that it reveals the level of racism in America and that she gives the subjects a voice that they never had.

The image that I chose from Wellcome Images is called “A Chinese lady (Lo Wanshun) from Canton (Guangzhou) sitting on a couch with a tumor on her left cheek.” This portrait was painted by Lam Qua in 1836.

This image captured my attention because the size of the tumor on the woman’s left cheek stood out to me. The tumor is situated beneath her left ear and it extends forward to her cheeks and nose and goes down to her neck. The woman is sitting gracefully on the wooden bench with both hands on her lap and her legs crossed. She is wearing a blue robe with black collars and a purple skirt. Her foot seems to be bound based on the shape and the type of shoe she was wearing. Her hair is put up into a simple hairdo with two hair ornaments sticking out from the back. She is wearing a jade bangle on both her wrists and a dangle earring on her right ear. Based on her appearance, it seems like she is in her late 30s to early 40s and she should be married and has children.

To me, the striking part of this image is the woman’s expression. Although the left side of her face is disfigured, she doesn’t seem all that sad. Her eyes show tiredness but she has a slight smile for the portrait. Perhaps she has hope that she will receive the right treatment for her tumor at Canton Hospital. This image is very similar to the image we saw in class where two sisters has a deformity in their left eye. Both images depict a physical deformity as a result of some disease or medical condition.

L0037319 Credit: Wellcome Library, London
A Chinese lady (Lo Wanshun) from Canton (Guangzhou) sitting on a couch with a tumour on her left cheek.