Hyperbolic crochet coral reef
-
Crochet reef contributors
- Ernst Haeckel, Patron Saint
- Daina Taimina, Inventor of Hyperbolic Crochet
- Christine Wertheim, Crochet Reef Co-Creator
- Margaret Wertheim, Crochet Reef Co-Creator
- Evelyn Hardin
- Sarah Simons
- Ildiko Szabo
- Kathleen Greco
- Dr. Axt's Reefer Madness
- Aviva Alter
- Sue Von Ohlsen
- Nadia Severns
- Helle Jorgensen
- Inga Hamilton
- Helen Bernasconi
- Rebecca Peapples
- Marianne Midelburg
- Eleanor Kent
- Other Crochet Reefs
OTHER WEB RESOURCES
- Crochet Reef Press Archive
- Crochet Reef Bulletins Archive
//
About the Crochet Coral Reef
The Institute For Figuring is crocheting a coral reef: a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world.
Designed and curated by IFF co-directors:
Christine and Margaret Wertheim
"Crochet Coral and Anemone Garden" with sea slug by Marianne Midelburg.
Photos by Alyssa Gorelick.
One of the acknowledged wonders of the natural world, the Great Barrier Reef stretches along the coast of Queensland like a psychadelic serpent, a riotous profusion of color and form unparalleled on our planet. But global warming and pollutants so threaten this fragile monster that scientists now believe the reef will be devastated in coming years. As a homage to the Great One, IFF co-directors Margaret and Christine Wertheim - who grew up in Queensland - have instigated a project to crochet a woolen reef. Using the techniques of hyperbolic crochet discovered by mathematician Dr. Daina Taimina, the Institute has been evolving a wide taxonomy of reef-life forms - loopy "kelps", fringed "anemones", and curlicued "corals." While the process that brings these models into being is algorithmic, endless permutations of the underlying formulae result in a constantly surprising panoply of shapes. The quality of yarn, style of stitch and tightness of the crochet all affect the finished model so that each is as individual as a living organism. As a whole, the Crochet Reef is made up of various different “sub-reefs,” each with its own colors and styling: there is the Red Reef, the Blue Reef, the Bleached Reef, the Branched Anemone Garden, and our largest work, The Ladies’ Silurian Atoll, a ring-shaped installation with close to 1000 individual crochet forms made by dozens of contributors from around the world. In addition to these woolen sub-reefs is the massive Toxic Reef, crocheted from yarn and plastic trash.
Crochet Hyperbolic Reef Gallery
Large scale anemone with brain coral head.
Each model results from the application of an iterative recipe repeated over and over. Like fractals such as the Mandelbrot Set, these forms come into being only through the process of doing some “boring” step again and again and again. Though experience often serves as a guide, there is no way to know in advance what a specific algorithm will achieve and we have many times been surprised when seemingly insignificant changes in the underlying pattern have led to fundamentally new results. This is, in a very real sense, a kind of experimental mathematics and we invite crocheters everywhere to join us in exploring the myriad possibilities inherent in these techniques.
For more indepth information, see the Institute's book A Field Guide to Hyperbolic Space.
Orange brain coral with urchins.
Getting started on your own hyperbolic models is easy. The basic insight is to understand that these forms result from the simple process of increasing the number of stitches in every row. The more often you increase stitches the faster the model will grow and the more crenellated will be finished form. Models can begin with a simple line, resulting in a hyperbolic plane; or from a single point with the crochet spiraling around to gradually fan out like a cone, resulting in what is known as a pseudosphere. You may also begin from a circle, which will produce a tubular, bell shaped, or trumpeted configuration. Once you start to experiment, the variety is endless. We recommend that beginners read the IFF’s online exhibit on Hyperbolic Space and study the introductory gallery for helpful tips.
Crochet coral and anemone garden.
As you explore, be playful – don’t worry about sticking too closely to the formal rules, though it’s interesting and important to understand what the rules do. Try things out for fun. Experiment with different types of yarn. Try mixing yarns together, say a thick worsted and a fine mohair. Try varying the rate of increase in a single model. Consider using string, plastic and wire or anything else that takes your fancy. Try felting – throw the finished model in a washing machine with really hot water and let it churn for half an hour. This only works with pure wool (acrylics and cotton will not felt) but the results are wild! Finally – send us photos of your models and we will put them online in our People’s Hyperbolic Gallery.
Get involved
We invite crocheters everywhere to contribute models to the reef. This is a collective project and all contributors will be fully acknowledged online and in future exhibitions. If you want to send a model please contact us by email .
© 2008 The Institute for Figuring
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
micheal morley year 3
well have realised that the the anti matter space is 80 percecnt and the matter space is 20 percent so am wondering abit how to incorporate this in my artwork
possibly wont though kindof like the idea of working on one for 80 percent of the time and the other 20...also thinking of the negative space side of anti-matter like a film negative or something i guess anyway i dont need to be a scientist so i guess accuracy is not completely necessarybut it would be good to be mainly accurate... though portraying quantum physics with a piece of wool is a bit of a conundrum in itself....the crochet coral reef is very interesting... parallelling the process and evolution of the crochet pieces coming in, to the process and evolution of DNA... nice... from www.inhabitat.com/2008/03/15/crochet-coral-reef/
possibly wont though kindof like the idea of working on one for 80 percent of the time and the other 20...also thinking of the negative space side of anti-matter like a film negative or something i guess anyway i dont need to be a scientist so i guess accuracy is not completely necessarybut it would be good to be mainly accurate... though portraying quantum physics with a piece of wool is a bit of a conundrum in itself....the crochet coral reef is very interesting... parallelling the process and evolution of the crochet pieces coming in, to the process and evolution of DNA... nice... from www.inhabitat.com/2008/03/15/crochet-coral-reef/
Own This City tme out new york issue /653 April 2 -8 2008
Coral fixation
Reef madness strikes the World Financial Center.
By Adam Rathe
WHO NEEDS ANEMONES? Crocheted coral raises awareness and eyebrows.
Photograph: Aaron and Cassandra Ott/Institute for Figuring
Some people help the environment by reusing grocery bags or driving a Prius; Margaret Wertheim uses crocheting needles. Along with her twin sister, Christine, the 49-year-old Los Angeleno helms the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project, a handicraft-science hybrid that raises awareness about the world’s disappearing reefs through weird, woolly simulacra. Starting Monday 7, the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden will showcase thousands of feet of the project’s crocheted coral, sea urchins, kelp and the like. (A smaller display unfurls at NYU’s Broadway Windows on Sunday 6.)
Born in Queensland, Australia, the Wertheim sisters have long been concerned with the future of their homeland wonder, the 135,000-square-mile Great Barrier Reef, which is under constant threat from pollution and rising temperatures. But “hyperbolic crochet”—a method of re-creating, through knitting, the natural surface patterns found in coral and other crenelated organisms—was only discovered in 1997 by Cornell researcher Daina Taimina. “Mathematicians thought you couldn’t reproduce hyperbolic geometry, but Daina showed you could do it with crocheting—if you increased your stitch at a steady rate,” explains Margaret, a science writer by trade. Along with Christine, she’s also a founder of the Institute for Figuring (theiff.org), which explores artistic applications for science and math.
The twins used Taimina’s formula for some time, but monotony took its toll. “One day Christine shouts, ‘I’m sick of mathematical perfection!’ and started making her stitches more random, which made the pieces look a lot more organic,” says Margaret. “Nothing in nature is ever perfect.”
In 2005, the pair started training a core group of 15—mostly conservationists who learned to crochet—and a hobby blossomed into activism. Then it became something of an obsession: “These little fluffy things have taken over our lives; it’s like something out of ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’!” jokes Margaret. “We’ve got probably 3,000 models now.” The smaller, one-inch pieces can be completed in as little as 30 minutes, but larger models take substantially longer. (Christine has been working on one for three years.)
Both the art and preservation worlds have taken notice of the project, with institutions like Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center hosting exhibitions. A reef made of textile coral sewn by Windy City activists will be on display at the World Financial Center show, as will one crocheted by a group of 100 New Yorkers (some seasoned crafters, others new to the trade) and a yarn-and-trash model called the Toxic Reef. “People ask if this is art-and-crafts or science or consciousness-raising or a feminist statement. It’s all of that—that’s the beauty,” says Margaret.
Also on view in the Winter Garden is Helle Jorgensen’s Rubbish Vortex, a crocheted-plastic-bag representation of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a floating garbage dump that’s been accumulating man-made detritus in the middle of the Pacific Ocean since the 1950s. (It’s currently twice the size of Texas.) “Coral reefs are under stress—we’ve got to get the message of conservation out there,” says American Museum of Natural History marine biologist Kate Holmes, who will join Margaret at a lecture at the AMNH on Tuesday 8. “The crochet project takes a new and interesting twist by looking at the mathematics of coral. It’s another entrance point…and it allows us to involve craftspeople who might not be into conservation.”
Margaret is confident that with two New York shows and an upcoming exhibit in London, her and her sister’s efforts are resonating with an increasingly eco-conscious public. “The crocheted reef will have a long lifespan,” she predicts. “But let’s hope not longer than the reefs themselves.”
The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is on display at the World Financial Center Mon 7–Aug 31, 2008
.www.timeout.com/.../28221/coral-fixation
Reef madness strikes the World Financial Center.
By Adam Rathe
WHO NEEDS ANEMONES? Crocheted coral raises awareness and eyebrows.
Photograph: Aaron and Cassandra Ott/Institute for Figuring
Some people help the environment by reusing grocery bags or driving a Prius; Margaret Wertheim uses crocheting needles. Along with her twin sister, Christine, the 49-year-old Los Angeleno helms the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project, a handicraft-science hybrid that raises awareness about the world’s disappearing reefs through weird, woolly simulacra. Starting Monday 7, the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden will showcase thousands of feet of the project’s crocheted coral, sea urchins, kelp and the like. (A smaller display unfurls at NYU’s Broadway Windows on Sunday 6.)
Born in Queensland, Australia, the Wertheim sisters have long been concerned with the future of their homeland wonder, the 135,000-square-mile Great Barrier Reef, which is under constant threat from pollution and rising temperatures. But “hyperbolic crochet”—a method of re-creating, through knitting, the natural surface patterns found in coral and other crenelated organisms—was only discovered in 1997 by Cornell researcher Daina Taimina. “Mathematicians thought you couldn’t reproduce hyperbolic geometry, but Daina showed you could do it with crocheting—if you increased your stitch at a steady rate,” explains Margaret, a science writer by trade. Along with Christine, she’s also a founder of the Institute for Figuring (theiff.org), which explores artistic applications for science and math.
The twins used Taimina’s formula for some time, but monotony took its toll. “One day Christine shouts, ‘I’m sick of mathematical perfection!’ and started making her stitches more random, which made the pieces look a lot more organic,” says Margaret. “Nothing in nature is ever perfect.”
In 2005, the pair started training a core group of 15—mostly conservationists who learned to crochet—and a hobby blossomed into activism. Then it became something of an obsession: “These little fluffy things have taken over our lives; it’s like something out of ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’!” jokes Margaret. “We’ve got probably 3,000 models now.” The smaller, one-inch pieces can be completed in as little as 30 minutes, but larger models take substantially longer. (Christine has been working on one for three years.)
Both the art and preservation worlds have taken notice of the project, with institutions like Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center hosting exhibitions. A reef made of textile coral sewn by Windy City activists will be on display at the World Financial Center show, as will one crocheted by a group of 100 New Yorkers (some seasoned crafters, others new to the trade) and a yarn-and-trash model called the Toxic Reef. “People ask if this is art-and-crafts or science or consciousness-raising or a feminist statement. It’s all of that—that’s the beauty,” says Margaret.
Also on view in the Winter Garden is Helle Jorgensen’s Rubbish Vortex, a crocheted-plastic-bag representation of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a floating garbage dump that’s been accumulating man-made detritus in the middle of the Pacific Ocean since the 1950s. (It’s currently twice the size of Texas.) “Coral reefs are under stress—we’ve got to get the message of conservation out there,” says American Museum of Natural History marine biologist Kate Holmes, who will join Margaret at a lecture at the AMNH on Tuesday 8. “The crochet project takes a new and interesting twist by looking at the mathematics of coral. It’s another entrance point…and it allows us to involve craftspeople who might not be into conservation.”
Margaret is confident that with two New York shows and an upcoming exhibit in London, her and her sister’s efforts are resonating with an increasingly eco-conscious public. “The crocheted reef will have a long lifespan,” she predicts. “But let’s hope not longer than the reefs themselves.”
The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is on display at the World Financial Center Mon 7–Aug 31, 2008
.www.timeout.com/.../28221/coral-fixation
drawing project with micheal morley year 3
Crocheters Gone Wild
Craftivists join forces for an homage to the Great Barrier Reef.
The Institute for Figuring’s crochet coral and anemone garden
The Institute for Figuring/Alyssa Gorelick
By Tasneem Paghdiwala
October 4, 2007
Last year an LA gallery exhibited a paper model of the Menger sponge, a curiosity of geometry that resembles a Rubik’s Cube eating itself from the inside out. It took 66,048 business cards, nine years, and hundreds of folders to make. The show was set up by the Institute for Figuring, an organization tickled by big, brainy concepts expressed through everyday objects. On October 13 the IFF brings its latest exhibit to the Cultural Center: a 40-foot-long (and growing) crocheted model of the Great Barrier Reef that doubles as a model of hyperbolic space. The Chicago reef’s colors are as shocking as the ones in undersea photos of the real thing—hot pink, Bakelite orange, ice blue, and white in spots to show how the reef “bleaches” and dies. The project has been likened to the AIDS Memorial Quilt—both a form of collective protest and a tribute to life that’s being destroyed.
The IFF was founded in 2003 by Margaret and Christine Wertheim—twin sisters from Queensland, Australia—and according to its Web site is “dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science, mathematics and the technical arts.” It organizes exhibits and lectures (recent talks were on “the mathematics of paper folding” and “the physics of snowflakes”) around LA, where Margaret, a science writer, and Christine, a professor of critical studies at CalArts, are now based. In 2005 Margaret Wertheim heard about a breakthrough in geometry involving crochet; the sisters immediately wanted to make an IFF project out of it.
The discovery concerned non-Euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry has been around since about 300 BC, when the Greek mathematician Euclid wrote what remains the best-selling math textbook of all time, Elements. It includes five short statements about basic geometry. The first four, which concern the nature of straight lines, circles, and right angles, are easy to swallow and universally considered mathematically sound. But the fifth, “parallel” postulate is trickier. It says that if you’ve got a straight line and a point outside that line, you can draw exactly one straight line through that point that won’t ever collide with the first line—no more, no fewer. Mathematicians realized that number five held up only if you stayed on the Euclidean playing field—that is, as long as the plane on which the lines were drawn was flat. If space itself was curved, there might be zero or hundreds of lines through a given point parallel to another line.
By the 19th century mathematicians were imagining space that grows exponentially; they called it hyperbolic space. An infinite number of lines could be drawn through a point in hyperbolic space that would never touch the first line, since the space between them was always growing.
Catherine Chandler and Julie Smith at the Hull-House Museum
Jon Randolph
Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef
Sat 10/13 through Sun 12/16, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630, free
It’s a complicated theory to ask someone to envision, like trying to explain an Escher print without having one handy. In the 1970s mathematicians starting using 3-D paper models folded like origami to show hyperbolic space, but the models were difficult to make and too delicate to be practical.
In 1997 a Cornell math researcher named Daina Taimina made the connection between hyperbolic space and one of her hobbies, crochet. Taimina grew up in Latvia in a family full of crafty women and has been an avid crocheter all her life. She knew that hyperbolic space is supposed to “ruffle up” along its outer edge—the edge constantly grows from a given point and crinkles as it spreads, like the edge of a lettuce leaf. Taimina crocheted a tight circle of loops using a simple chain stitch. She added a longer row around it, and then a longer one around that. When the circle got wide enough, its edge started to ruffle. There was nothing special about the method she used; it’s an old crochet technique called “increasing.” Crocheters know they can get a tight ruffle by adding lots of stitches with each new row, or a loose wave with just one or two extra stitches each go-round.
If you took one of Taimina’s crochet models of hyperbolic space and stitched onto it the components of Euclid’s fifth postulate—a straight line and a point outside of it—you could stitch any number of lines through the point that would never intersect with the original line; you need just two such lines to disprove the postulate. The secondary lines look curved when viewed from above, but folding along them proves they’re perfectly straight. Taimina’s discovery is what mathematicians had been hunting—a physical model of hyperbolic space, one that could be folded this way and that without falling apart.
When the Wertheims learned about Taimina’s work, they immediately thought of the reef forms off the coast of Queensland where they grew up. In Taimina’s geometric shapes, they saw wispy kelp, columnlike sea anemones, and bunchy corals. Thanks to global warming and pollution, scientists had predicted the Great Barrier Reef would be gone in another 30 years. On the IFF’s Web site, the Wertheims posted instructions on how to crochet a model of hyperbolic space and invited crafters everywhere to send in their own pieces in homage to the reef.
In the spring the Wertheims contacted the organizers of the Chicago Humanities Festival about exhibiting the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef. Over the last several months, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has organized locals to crochet small pieces to be added to contributions the IFF has already received and is still soliciting from people around the world for upcoming shows. All summer there were gatherings—at the museum, yarn shops, schools, and in crocheters’ living rooms—where (mostly) women stitched their individual pieces into a subreef. The Hull-House Museum sits on the UIC campus in the former home of Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, founders of the Hull House settlement for working-class women. “Addams believed that every member of society needed to vote, but that it was also important for every member to contribute to the ‘cultural capital’ of society,” says Catherine Chandler, a museum staffer. She says the subreef includes the work of more than 100 crocheters and expects that when it’s joined with the IFF’s reef, the exhibit won’t even fit in the Cultural Center’s Chicago Rooms. If there’s overflow, the museum will host a smaller exhibit.
Arcadia Knitting, run by sisters Kathy and Sharon Kelly in Edgewater, donated yarn and hosted a crochet circle. Kathy Kelly says the project relieved many crocheters’ closets of the “pound of love,” or heap of too-bright or too-weird yarn remnants that never fit into new projects. “On the coral reef, it turns out, shocking pink is a natural color,” she says. “And, I don’t want to sound like a yarn snob, but these hyperbolic forms respond better to the cheap, squeaky acrylic. People were able to use up all the crazy stuff they had.”
In some places Jewel and Dominick’s bags were used instead of yarn, both to recycle and to protest the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—roughly three million tons of trash, much of it nonbiodegradable plastic, trapped at the center of the North Pacific Gyre.
Cheryl Rogers, a life coach, grandmother, and lifelong Stony Island resident, was leading a summer-camp crochet circle made up of fourth- to seventh-grade girls from Phoebe A. Hearst Elementary, near Midway, when she found out about the Chicago Reef Project. “The first day of camp, they were literally crying. They wanted to quit. They threw their needles across the room. And they kind of segregated themselves, into blacks, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans. Somewhere around the third or fourth week, they started sharing stitches. They started laughing. Then they started sitting in one big group.”
Rogers took them to a Chicago Reef Project workshop at the Cultural Center in August, where Margaret Wertheim showed slides of the work in progress. “The girls had brought their hooks and they were sitting there duplicating what they were seeing in the PowerPoint presentation. On the bus back to school they all sat in the back, starting their contributions for the reef. They called me to the back because they really wanted to talk about the environment. One girl said she had been proud that her family recycles, but now that she thought about it, if they stopped using plastic altogether, there wouldn’t be a need to recycle. By this time, camp was over. So I said, ‘Let’s meet one more time.’ I bought yarn from Wal-Mart one afternoon the next week and headed to the school. There was no one there but the cleaning crew, getting ready for school to open. The whole building was empty. Then the girls came in and they were all carrying bags of contributions they had made at home. When we put them all on the table, it was stacks and stacks and stacks. These were girls who had never heard the words ‘crochet’ or ‘coral reef’ in their lives.”
Send a letter to the editor.
Craftivists join forces for an homage to the Great Barrier Reef.
The Institute for Figuring’s crochet coral and anemone garden
The Institute for Figuring/Alyssa Gorelick
By Tasneem Paghdiwala
October 4, 2007
Last year an LA gallery exhibited a paper model of the Menger sponge, a curiosity of geometry that resembles a Rubik’s Cube eating itself from the inside out. It took 66,048 business cards, nine years, and hundreds of folders to make. The show was set up by the Institute for Figuring, an organization tickled by big, brainy concepts expressed through everyday objects. On October 13 the IFF brings its latest exhibit to the Cultural Center: a 40-foot-long (and growing) crocheted model of the Great Barrier Reef that doubles as a model of hyperbolic space. The Chicago reef’s colors are as shocking as the ones in undersea photos of the real thing—hot pink, Bakelite orange, ice blue, and white in spots to show how the reef “bleaches” and dies. The project has been likened to the AIDS Memorial Quilt—both a form of collective protest and a tribute to life that’s being destroyed.
The IFF was founded in 2003 by Margaret and Christine Wertheim—twin sisters from Queensland, Australia—and according to its Web site is “dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science, mathematics and the technical arts.” It organizes exhibits and lectures (recent talks were on “the mathematics of paper folding” and “the physics of snowflakes”) around LA, where Margaret, a science writer, and Christine, a professor of critical studies at CalArts, are now based. In 2005 Margaret Wertheim heard about a breakthrough in geometry involving crochet; the sisters immediately wanted to make an IFF project out of it.
The discovery concerned non-Euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry has been around since about 300 BC, when the Greek mathematician Euclid wrote what remains the best-selling math textbook of all time, Elements. It includes five short statements about basic geometry. The first four, which concern the nature of straight lines, circles, and right angles, are easy to swallow and universally considered mathematically sound. But the fifth, “parallel” postulate is trickier. It says that if you’ve got a straight line and a point outside that line, you can draw exactly one straight line through that point that won’t ever collide with the first line—no more, no fewer. Mathematicians realized that number five held up only if you stayed on the Euclidean playing field—that is, as long as the plane on which the lines were drawn was flat. If space itself was curved, there might be zero or hundreds of lines through a given point parallel to another line.
By the 19th century mathematicians were imagining space that grows exponentially; they called it hyperbolic space. An infinite number of lines could be drawn through a point in hyperbolic space that would never touch the first line, since the space between them was always growing.
Catherine Chandler and Julie Smith at the Hull-House Museum
Jon Randolph
Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef
Sat 10/13 through Sun 12/16, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630, free
It’s a complicated theory to ask someone to envision, like trying to explain an Escher print without having one handy. In the 1970s mathematicians starting using 3-D paper models folded like origami to show hyperbolic space, but the models were difficult to make and too delicate to be practical.
In 1997 a Cornell math researcher named Daina Taimina made the connection between hyperbolic space and one of her hobbies, crochet. Taimina grew up in Latvia in a family full of crafty women and has been an avid crocheter all her life. She knew that hyperbolic space is supposed to “ruffle up” along its outer edge—the edge constantly grows from a given point and crinkles as it spreads, like the edge of a lettuce leaf. Taimina crocheted a tight circle of loops using a simple chain stitch. She added a longer row around it, and then a longer one around that. When the circle got wide enough, its edge started to ruffle. There was nothing special about the method she used; it’s an old crochet technique called “increasing.” Crocheters know they can get a tight ruffle by adding lots of stitches with each new row, or a loose wave with just one or two extra stitches each go-round.
If you took one of Taimina’s crochet models of hyperbolic space and stitched onto it the components of Euclid’s fifth postulate—a straight line and a point outside of it—you could stitch any number of lines through the point that would never intersect with the original line; you need just two such lines to disprove the postulate. The secondary lines look curved when viewed from above, but folding along them proves they’re perfectly straight. Taimina’s discovery is what mathematicians had been hunting—a physical model of hyperbolic space, one that could be folded this way and that without falling apart.
When the Wertheims learned about Taimina’s work, they immediately thought of the reef forms off the coast of Queensland where they grew up. In Taimina’s geometric shapes, they saw wispy kelp, columnlike sea anemones, and bunchy corals. Thanks to global warming and pollution, scientists had predicted the Great Barrier Reef would be gone in another 30 years. On the IFF’s Web site, the Wertheims posted instructions on how to crochet a model of hyperbolic space and invited crafters everywhere to send in their own pieces in homage to the reef.
In the spring the Wertheims contacted the organizers of the Chicago Humanities Festival about exhibiting the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef. Over the last several months, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has organized locals to crochet small pieces to be added to contributions the IFF has already received and is still soliciting from people around the world for upcoming shows. All summer there were gatherings—at the museum, yarn shops, schools, and in crocheters’ living rooms—where (mostly) women stitched their individual pieces into a subreef. The Hull-House Museum sits on the UIC campus in the former home of Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, founders of the Hull House settlement for working-class women. “Addams believed that every member of society needed to vote, but that it was also important for every member to contribute to the ‘cultural capital’ of society,” says Catherine Chandler, a museum staffer. She says the subreef includes the work of more than 100 crocheters and expects that when it’s joined with the IFF’s reef, the exhibit won’t even fit in the Cultural Center’s Chicago Rooms. If there’s overflow, the museum will host a smaller exhibit.
Arcadia Knitting, run by sisters Kathy and Sharon Kelly in Edgewater, donated yarn and hosted a crochet circle. Kathy Kelly says the project relieved many crocheters’ closets of the “pound of love,” or heap of too-bright or too-weird yarn remnants that never fit into new projects. “On the coral reef, it turns out, shocking pink is a natural color,” she says. “And, I don’t want to sound like a yarn snob, but these hyperbolic forms respond better to the cheap, squeaky acrylic. People were able to use up all the crazy stuff they had.”
In some places Jewel and Dominick’s bags were used instead of yarn, both to recycle and to protest the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—roughly three million tons of trash, much of it nonbiodegradable plastic, trapped at the center of the North Pacific Gyre.
Cheryl Rogers, a life coach, grandmother, and lifelong Stony Island resident, was leading a summer-camp crochet circle made up of fourth- to seventh-grade girls from Phoebe A. Hearst Elementary, near Midway, when she found out about the Chicago Reef Project. “The first day of camp, they were literally crying. They wanted to quit. They threw their needles across the room. And they kind of segregated themselves, into blacks, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans. Somewhere around the third or fourth week, they started sharing stitches. They started laughing. Then they started sitting in one big group.”
Rogers took them to a Chicago Reef Project workshop at the Cultural Center in August, where Margaret Wertheim showed slides of the work in progress. “The girls had brought their hooks and they were sitting there duplicating what they were seeing in the PowerPoint presentation. On the bus back to school they all sat in the back, starting their contributions for the reef. They called me to the back because they really wanted to talk about the environment. One girl said she had been proud that her family recycles, but now that she thought about it, if they stopped using plastic altogether, there wouldn’t be a need to recycle. By this time, camp was over. So I said, ‘Let’s meet one more time.’ I bought yarn from Wal-Mart one afternoon the next week and headed to the school. There was no one there but the cleaning crew, getting ready for school to open. The whole building was empty. Then the girls came in and they were all carrying bags of contributions they had made at home. When we put them all on the table, it was stacks and stacks and stacks. These were girls who had never heard the words ‘crochet’ or ‘coral reef’ in their lives.”
Send a letter to the editor.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
year 3 sculpture proposal
My work was inspired by a conversation with a student …young max … about `intuitive’ art.
I thought deep and hard about the word `intuition’ , what it means and what it infers, and decided that intuition is merely an ability to read patterns.
Pattern reading is a tool used by us humans for as long as we have existed, and in fact by all living creatures on this planet.
Everything works in pattern…talked to young Al and he put me onto the Chaos Theory, which I have looked into online but haven’t yet read the book.
Sharks and reptiles are the oldest living creatures on the planet and shark people have also been around since our beginning. Shark people are very good at reading people and using the information they receive to their advantage.
Genetic mapping is a new weapon using an old system.
They are our blueprint. And bring up the common argument for and against , nature versus nurture.
So from all of this and my past influences with work I came up with a few works that I would like to meld together.
1. Make up to 500 sharks and have them hanging from the ceiling, different lengths. They will kinetically set each other off, made out of plaster of paris referencing the museum and their ancientness, with sound underneath…white noise, because hammerheads have very highly sensitive electro-magnetic charges that emanate from the ends of their hammers.
2. 4 girls, `real girls’ using archetypes of female sexuality and gender, life size, 1940`s pin-up(damned whores) , nun (Gods police), girl/boy (androgene), Madonna ( the new Madonna coming second)
3. Video footage of the Dna map that I have bought back.
4. Possibly a feast, with the new Madonna in the background with a halo of blood (DNA) called Dolores; lady of sorrows from the virgin mary: Nora; the bright one, honor light: Araceli; alter of heaven, based on Leonardo da Vinci`s; Man. And a human corpse made from vegetable matter as the main feast ( the Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; Peter Greenaway)
5. A whole heap of little vials full of white stuff labelled with different animals etc called Noah`s Ark.
Looked up the General Agreement on Trades and Tariff, 1993, Intellectual Property Act, legalising the selling of patent rights on all genes of all living things including, fauna and human.
All statues will be made out of plaster of paris referencing museums, outdated archetypes and the old. Douglas Crimps book On the Museum `s Ruins was a definite influence on this work especially his chapter about Maplethorpe and homosexuality and gender which also is as old as we.also the white of the plaster infers purity and sterilty.
Len Lye has also been a major influence and while working in the Ak Art Gallery last year I was lucky enough to see his `universe' for extended periods of time, which reeally is the only way to look at art, the only way you can really get to appreciate the work.
and yes i shall be articulating this all a lot better soon,these are the ideas that have been running through my head and work over the last three months or more...no wonder i cant sleep
I thought deep and hard about the word `intuition’ , what it means and what it infers, and decided that intuition is merely an ability to read patterns.
Pattern reading is a tool used by us humans for as long as we have existed, and in fact by all living creatures on this planet.
Everything works in pattern…talked to young Al and he put me onto the Chaos Theory, which I have looked into online but haven’t yet read the book.
Sharks and reptiles are the oldest living creatures on the planet and shark people have also been around since our beginning. Shark people are very good at reading people and using the information they receive to their advantage.
Genetic mapping is a new weapon using an old system.
They are our blueprint. And bring up the common argument for and against , nature versus nurture.
So from all of this and my past influences with work I came up with a few works that I would like to meld together.
1. Make up to 500 sharks and have them hanging from the ceiling, different lengths. They will kinetically set each other off, made out of plaster of paris referencing the museum and their ancientness, with sound underneath…white noise, because hammerheads have very highly sensitive electro-magnetic charges that emanate from the ends of their hammers.
2. 4 girls, `real girls’ using archetypes of female sexuality and gender, life size, 1940`s pin-up(damned whores) , nun (Gods police), girl/boy (androgene), Madonna ( the new Madonna coming second)
3. Video footage of the Dna map that I have bought back.
4. Possibly a feast, with the new Madonna in the background with a halo of blood (DNA) called Dolores; lady of sorrows from the virgin mary: Nora; the bright one, honor light: Araceli; alter of heaven, based on Leonardo da Vinci`s; Man. And a human corpse made from vegetable matter as the main feast ( the Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; Peter Greenaway)
5. A whole heap of little vials full of white stuff labelled with different animals etc called Noah`s Ark.
Looked up the General Agreement on Trades and Tariff, 1993, Intellectual Property Act, legalising the selling of patent rights on all genes of all living things including, fauna and human.
All statues will be made out of plaster of paris referencing museums, outdated archetypes and the old. Douglas Crimps book On the Museum `s Ruins was a definite influence on this work especially his chapter about Maplethorpe and homosexuality and gender which also is as old as we.also the white of the plaster infers purity and sterilty.
Len Lye has also been a major influence and while working in the Ak Art Gallery last year I was lucky enough to see his `universe' for extended periods of time, which reeally is the only way to look at art, the only way you can really get to appreciate the work.
and yes i shall be articulating this all a lot better soon,these are the ideas that have been running through my head and work over the last three months or more...no wonder i cant sleep
drawing project with micheal morley 3rd year 2009
Project Drawing Proposal
My proposal idea is based in the String Theory and Cold Fusion.
I will knit one black and one white, metre wide and approx six metre long scarf. The scarves will be hung tightly between the floor and the ceiling. In front of each scarf, facing each other , will be two `walls’, with holes in them, where a string will come through from each scarf. The viewers job is to pull the strings together at the same time. By pulling the strings the scarves will unravel.
This work is referencing the concept of cold fusion which is based in one particle of matter and one particle of anti-matter meeting and fusing. They need to be `soul mates’ (or polar opposites,) for the fusion to work and create energy. The theory is that if this is worked out effectively the energy produced by the fusing of the particles will be able to give us power for electricity. However there is some problems possible with the outcome, namely the scientists are uncertain of the impact this will have on the anti-matter world and the matter world and according to the string theory this could be like pulling the thread from fabric and be the undoing of the anti-matter and matter world.
Anyway influences for my artwork are Len Lye, and his use of science and physics in his artwork. When I worked at the Auckland Art Gallery his work A Universe was up in the Making Worlds Exhibition. It was powered by electro- magnetic energy and worked on apparently random movement. *(the Chaos Theory) though with long periods of observation the movement did appear to have a pattern.
Other influences are Klaus (don’t know his last name) whom I met on Waiheke Island a few years back his work involved pendulums and the use of kinetic energy without using electricity. Klaus also worked at the Steiner school teaching the kids how to make their own instruments etc.
Other artists such as Sam Hamilton and James Mc Carthy , with their sound work and Annette Messager with her use of fabric and words in her artwork and Loris Geraud ` Topsy’ 2006 (telephone that talks 80`s arthouse songs to you) have influenced me.
Steven Jones, Ray Tomes
My proposal idea is based in the String Theory and Cold Fusion.
I will knit one black and one white, metre wide and approx six metre long scarf. The scarves will be hung tightly between the floor and the ceiling. In front of each scarf, facing each other , will be two `walls’, with holes in them, where a string will come through from each scarf. The viewers job is to pull the strings together at the same time. By pulling the strings the scarves will unravel.
This work is referencing the concept of cold fusion which is based in one particle of matter and one particle of anti-matter meeting and fusing. They need to be `soul mates’ (or polar opposites,) for the fusion to work and create energy. The theory is that if this is worked out effectively the energy produced by the fusing of the particles will be able to give us power for electricity. However there is some problems possible with the outcome, namely the scientists are uncertain of the impact this will have on the anti-matter world and the matter world and according to the string theory this could be like pulling the thread from fabric and be the undoing of the anti-matter and matter world.
Anyway influences for my artwork are Len Lye, and his use of science and physics in his artwork. When I worked at the Auckland Art Gallery his work A Universe was up in the Making Worlds Exhibition. It was powered by electro- magnetic energy and worked on apparently random movement. *(the Chaos Theory) though with long periods of observation the movement did appear to have a pattern.
Other influences are Klaus (don’t know his last name) whom I met on Waiheke Island a few years back his work involved pendulums and the use of kinetic energy without using electricity. Klaus also worked at the Steiner school teaching the kids how to make their own instruments etc.
Other artists such as Sam Hamilton and James Mc Carthy , with their sound work and Annette Messager with her use of fabric and words in her artwork and Loris Geraud ` Topsy’ 2006 (telephone that talks 80`s arthouse songs to you) have influenced me.
Steven Jones, Ray Tomes
Sunday, February 15, 2009
conflict
you speak to me in lazy meadows
where mild sunlight soothes daisies and pansies
and butterflies flit throught the air
verbal floral art
and tell me constantly...how you feel
when harsh sounds from stark and dry deserts move across your landscape
forming shadows in your mind
(loud colours and hot people)
you cower in your room
scared, defenceless, eclipsed
and then slide out sideways and shoot them down in righteousness(one hand on the bible and the other on the gun)and moral judgements
in the name of freedom wrapped in the colour of a bleeding heart and coated in the reflective paint of your dark, sticky fear and your armoured mirror of denial
nature IS a cruel and indiscriminate force
i move in primary colours, cover myself in black and bitter thorns
and swamp you in the darkness of my chosen silence
where mild sunlight soothes daisies and pansies
and butterflies flit throught the air
verbal floral art
and tell me constantly...how you feel
when harsh sounds from stark and dry deserts move across your landscape
forming shadows in your mind
(loud colours and hot people)
you cower in your room
scared, defenceless, eclipsed
and then slide out sideways and shoot them down in righteousness(one hand on the bible and the other on the gun)and moral judgements
in the name of freedom wrapped in the colour of a bleeding heart and coated in the reflective paint of your dark, sticky fear and your armoured mirror of denial
nature IS a cruel and indiscriminate force
i move in primary colours, cover myself in black and bitter thorns
and swamp you in the darkness of my chosen silence
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