Empty cigarette packs, old magazines or plastic cups. But also a brightly colored sea and fantastic structures. All this is the ambitious project of the Institute for Figuring entitled "Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef", the coral reef with hyperbolic crochet, which has its roots in mathematics, marine biology, women's crafts and environmental activism.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Empty cigarette packs, old magazines or plastic cups. But also a brightly colored sea and fantastic structures. All this is the ambitious project of the Institute for Figuring entitled "Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef", the coral reef with hyperbolic crochet, which has its roots in mathematics, marine biology, female craftsmanship and environmental activism. And that will make crochet enthusiasts go crazy.
The goal of these fantastic handmade objects, inspired by the pioneering work of Daina Taimina, university professor of mathematics who coined the term “Hyperbolic Crochet”, is to show the particular seascape to sensitize people to its protection. And to teach the techniques to do it, with workshops and lessons. There is no shortage, in these creations made by covering scraps and waste with crochet, corals, sponges and jellyfish, shown with the effects of bleaching and pollution.
All thanks to the twins Margaret and Christine Wertheim, which since 2005 have begun to give life to what is now one of the greatest collective artistic creations ever made, thanks to the manual work of many women, and even some men, who all over the world have begun to create barriers satellites (here a list of the names of those who contributed to the project), to remember the immense value of biodiversity of every single coral reef in the world, threatened by pollution and global warming.
"My sister and I started this project in 2005 - explains Margaret at a conference - because in that year, at least in scientific journals, there was a lot of talk about global warming and the effect it was having on coral reefs. Corals are very delicate organisms and are destroyed by any increase in sea temperatures. This causes these extensive bleaching, which are the first symptoms of coral disease. And if the whitening doesn't stop, if the temperatures don't go down, thereand coral reefs will continue to die".
The best way to reproduce all this and make it clearly visible in exhibitions around the world is crochet: “there is a very valid reason - continues the twin - as to why we are carrying out the crochet project. Why do many organisms in coral reefs have a very particular type of structure. The rippling and undulating shapes you see in corals, algae, sponges and bare shoals, are reminiscent of a field of geometry known as hyperbolic geometry. And the only way mathematicians know how to make a model of this structure is by crocheting. This is a fact. It is almost impossible to model this structure in any other way. "
Roberta Ragni
Read also:
– Guerrilla Knitting made in USA: la Yarn Bombing di Magda Sayeg
- Guerrilla Knitting: fight the dullness of the city with… knitting!
- Pothole Knitting by Juliana Santacruz Herrera: putting a patch on the potholes in the streets of Paris
