Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef
June 4, 2008
The Great Barrier Reef lovingly recreated in a giant piece of crochet? Science attempting to explain complex geometry – to a group of women wielding crochet hooks.
The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef came about by accident after its creator Margaret Wertheim read about a discovery by a mathematician called Daina Taimina: that you could model hyperbolic space using crochet, simply by increasing the number of stitches in each row until the fabric warps. Mathematicians had previously struggled to demonstrate hyperbolic surfaces, despite the fact that they appear throughout the natural world – in lettuce leaves, for example.
The reef has developed along evolutionary and art-historical lines. The sisters are now in their “postmodern phase”, working on a “toxic reef”, crocheted using plastic carrier bags sliced into ribbons and reels of videotape – a comment on the environmental damage being wreaked on the real Barrier Reef by pollution and waste. “People ask: is it art or science?” says Wertheim. “But I don’t believe in those classifications. This project is feminine handicrafts, it’s mathematics, it’s ecology – it crosses those boundaries.”
From the Guaradian.co.uk: Read more
