Daina Taimnia Lecture in The Science Gallery, Dublin

Daina Taimnia comes to Dublin!!

Date: 2nd June 2010

Time: 6.30pm - 8.00pm

Venue: Paccar Theatre, Science Gallery, Pearse Street, Dublin 2

Cost: €5 (Free for students and MEMBERS + with card) 

BOOK HERE: http://sciencegallery.com/events/2010/06/daina-taimina-mathematics-art

OFFICIAL BOOK SIGNING of Daina's award winning book - Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes - will follow lecture. Now available in Science Gallery shop.

From The Science Gallery Website: 

Cornell University mathematician began making mathematical models in crochet in 1997 as tools to explain the basics of hyperbolic geometry (in particular, properties of surfaces with negative curvature) to her students. These fiber creations became guides for her explorations in fiber arts - experimenting with different materials, different colors, and becoming involved in collaborative art projects - for a mathematician it was stepping into different world.

Her idea about crocheting hyperbolic plane was picked up by The Institute For Figuring which they turned into worldwide project 'Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef', that now has involved many hundreds of crocheters and is currently on exhibition at Science Gallery.

Daina Taimina was born in Riga, Latvia, where she received her formal education, including completing PhD in mathematics (1990) for her work in Theoretical Computer Science. For 20 years Daina taught different mathematics courses in the University of Latvia and for more than 10years taught in Cornell University, NY, USA. She crocheted her first hyperbolic plane for a non-euclidean geometry class in 1997. Since then, she has crocheted more than a hundred more, turning geometric models into art pieces. In addition, Daina has written several books in mathematics, the most recent  for a general audience about exploring  hyperbolic geometry through crochet 'Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes', AKPeters, 2009.

Taimina's work has been featured in numerous radio features on NPR (listen here) and on TV (view here). For more articles about Daina and her work please see following: Cabinet, Discover, New York Times and The Times.

Girli Concrete ?!

Girli Concrete.
Cover of Textiles, The Quarterly magazine of The Textile Institute, Feb 2009 No 1

Every now and then you come across something incredible, some amazing textile design/innovation/work, that is happening in Ireland, and it has escaped your attention, until now.

Two women, Trish Belford (textile designer) and Ruth Morrow (architect) have created a storm in the interiors industry by developed a technique of combining concrete and textiles, Girli Concrete. Yes, that's right Girli Concrete.

Based at the University of Ulster, Tactility Factory, is now in full swing in research, development and testing of a variety of tactile concrete products.

Trish Belford has run a successful print company Belford Prints in London, a unique textile company supplying to high-end fashion market. (eg Vivienne Westwood, Jasper Conran). Ruth Morrow works as an architect and academic. Her profile is framed by an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach and she has been Professor of Architecture firstly at the University of Ulster and more recently at Queens University Belfast.

Girli Concrete is a backlash to the harsh, coldness of concrete buildings. If you read the publicity page on their website, you will see it has already had an amazing impact in the world of architecture and interiors.

"Morrow states: ‘Girli Concrete comes out of an inclusive feminist agenda' which is not just about the product itself, but also the process of developing it. It involves drawing on local textile traditions of lace-making, linen manufacture and Aran knitwear, alongside other more modern textile technologies such as flocking, and fusing these essentially ‘soft' materials and qualities with the structure and depth of concrete. Belford describes it as an ‘alchemy of processes', stressing that it goes beyond decoration and aesthetics to interface with the integrity of the material itself and its performance, specifically in the area of acoustics. It is she says about establishing a ‘balance of masculinity and femininity', where the process is cast in terms of a ‘recipe', and the notion of ‘performance' itself is extended to embrace human response as well as technical efficiency."

Taken from a case study by Clare Melhuish on www.gendersite.org


Tactility Factory
1 Cregagh Park
Belfast,
BT6 9LF
Northern Ireland

T: +44 (0)787 982 8305 or +44 (0)779 306 1233
W:www.tactilityfactory.com
B:www.girliconcrete.blogspot.com

Yarn Theory; an exhibition in New York

Knitting, Crochet, Math and Science

“Yarn Theory highlights the vibrant and deep interrelationship between the sciences, mathematics, crocheting and knitting. From mathematicians looking for clear and visual ways to model their theorem to home-knitters and artists looking to create unique sculptural objects, the world of contemporary yarn work is rife with cross-pollination between the disciplines. The explosion in the popularity of knitting and crochet has yielded an interest in using the medium to go far beyond sweaters, socks, and wearables, moving into the worlds of geometry, biology, natural sciences, pushing the medium’s sculptural boundaries."

Take a look at this blog, and read about this great exhibition in the PS122 Gallery in New York,

April 25-May 17 2009
Curated by Martha Lewis, it includes artists: Ted Ashton, Emily Barletta, Sarah-Marie Belcastro, Nancy Cohen, Rita Cohen, and Anschel Schaffer-Cohen, Christine Domanic, Kate Fenker, Amanda Gale, Miyuki Kawamura, Martha Lewis, Margaret Oomen, Gail Rothschild, Daina Taimina, Daniel Yuhas.

PS122 Gallery
150 First Avenue
New York, NY 10009
T: 212.228.4249


Also, take a few minutes to listen to Margaret Wertheim: The beautiful math that links coral, crochet and hyperbolic geometry

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/519

Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String

The IG Nobel Prize honours achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. This years PHYSICS PRIZE went to Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.

Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string
It is well known that a jostled string tends to become knotted; yet the factors governing the “spontaneous” formation of various knots are unclear. We performed experiments in which a string was tumbled inside a box and found that complex knots often form within seconds. We used

Another article on something similar is The Tangled Web of Self-Tying Knots

Mathematician Leopold Kronecker stated “God created the integers, all else is the work of man,” alluding to the fact that the natural numbers most likely arose from physical counting, as in one's fingers or goats in the pasture. Topology, however, is arguably a different creature altogether and may have had its own independent origins from the physical world in the ubiquitous knot—something that cannot be undone without using the free ends because the individual strands cannot move through each other

Fibre Art and Maths?!?!

The Joint Mathematics Meetings is on from January 5-9 2009 in Washington DC, USA. They are held for the purpose of advancing mathematical achievement, encouraging research, and to provide the communication necessary to progress in the field. These meetings serve to preserve, supplement, and utilize the results of the research of mathematicians the world over. Keeping abreast of the progress in mathematics results in the furtherance of the interest of mathematical scholarship and research.

What’s this got to do with Textiles?

This year there is a Special Session on Mathematics and Mathematics Education in Fibre Arts being organized by Sarah-Marie Belcastro (Co-Director, Hamshire College Summer Studies in mathematics and Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Smith College) and Carolyn Yackel. (Mathematics Instructor, Mercer University).

These two women recently compiled and edited the book: Making Mathematics with Needlework: Ten Papers and Ten Projects". This book successfully connects the worlds of mathematics and the fiber arts. Each chapter covers a different mathematical paper and corresponding needlework project and includes mathematical explanations, needlework instructions, educational material, and specific projects to demonstrate the principles discussed.

They have arranged a series of talks on a variety of textile and mathematical links, along with a juried exhibition of Mathematical Fibre Arts, where you can see the maths at work.

There are now numerous websites and blogs dedicated to the fusion of Science and Fibre arts, and as the Woolly Way expands its search of interesting textile happenings from around the world, we will be posting articles and links, If you cant wait, and are excited about these developments as we are, then email us and we will give you any information we have gathered to date.

More information on the Joint Mathematics Meetings can be hound here

http://www.ams.org/amsmtgs/2110_intro.html

More info on the Session can be found here

http://www.toroidalsnark.net/mkss2.html

Here is a breakdown of their schedule:

Carolyn Yackel (Mercer University): Temari Math and Geometry on the Sphere.

Mary Shepherd (Southwest Missouri State): Visualizing Groups and Subgroups in Counted Cross Stitch.

Diane Herrmann (University of Chicago): Diaper Pattern in Needlepoint.

Irena Swanson (Reed College): Semiregular tessellations

Mathematical Fiber Arts Exhibit (juried)

Ted Ashton (USG Applied Math Researcher): Don’t Blow a Gasket!

Daina Taimina (Cornell University): Exploring two-dimensional manifolds with crochet hook.

Joshua Holden (Rose-Hulman IT): Braids, Cables, and Cells: An intersection of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Fiber Arts.

sarah-marie belcastro (HCSSiM and Sarah Lawrence College): Braid words in generalized helix stripe patterns

Amy Szczepanski (University of Tennessee, Knoxville): Calculating Patterns for Knitted Surfaces.