Spotted at the Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles, a piece from their Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef. About the process:
The inspiration for making crochet reef forms begins with the technique of “hyperbolic crochet” discovered in 1997 by Cornell University mathematician Dr. Daina Taimina. The Wertheim sisters adopted Dr Taimina’s techniques and elaborated upon them to develop a whole taxonomy of reef-life forms. Loopy “kelps”, fringed “anemones”, crenelated “sea slugs”, and curlicued “corals” have all been modeled with these methods. The basic process for making these forms is a simple pattern or algorithm, which on its own produces a mathematically pure shape, but by varying or mutating this algorithm, endless variations and permutations of shape and form can be produced.
And, yes, they have a how-to book if you’d like to try this on your own.
My crochet already looks like that on a bad day.
Nevertheless, that looks interesting and probably more uniform than mine.
That’s what I was just thinking! When I was first learning to crochet I did this completely by accident because I wasn’t paying attention to how many stitches I was putting in each row.
Watch the TED talk about this coral, very interesting:
http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_wertheim_crochets_the_coral_reef.html
I’m so bad at math but geometry has always made sense to me. Thanks for the link. Crochet is one of those hobbies that’s creativity intensive, recycles and is affordable. I live near Puget Sound and some of those really look like shore life. I sense a wild sun hat in the offing… Amazing. Go crocheting math mavens!
this TEDxtalk was just posted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1TBZhd-sN0
enjoy!
I do not know if it’s just me or if perhaps everybody else encountering issues with your blog. It appears like some of the written text within your posts are running off the screen. Can someone else please comment and let me know if this is happening to them too? This may be a problem with my browser because I’ve had this happen
before. Kudos