Friday, August 20, 2010

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

In my daily trawling of art and science related news I came accross an article featuring the latest exhibition from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

As usual, click on the photos to open a new tab or be redirected to the original flickr photo stream.


Smithsonian Community | Two Coral Polyps | All rights reserved by aporanee
The brain child of Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring and titled Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, each work incorporates the colours and hyperbolic mathematical form of their real life counterparts: corals, sponges and sea slugs.


Smithsonian Community | Coral Group 1 | All rights reserved by aporanee

Smithsonian Community | Coral Mosaic | All rights reserved by aporanee
The rest of the Smithsonian community coral reef photos can be found here

However the exhibition is yet just a small taste of the project behind the show. As Margaret explains in the following video, the work started in 2005 and has since grown to involve thousands of models with contributions from the worlds various communities. If you feel like you'd like to contribute, then you need to read this page.



The original instigation for the work came from the Wertheim sisters appreciation of the Coral Reefs in their native home of Queensland and the imminent threat of global warming that is raising surface temperatures and acidifying the seas.


Margaret Wertheim | crochet anemones and sea urchins | copywrite Institute For Figuring
Through their work, Margaret and Christine create a platform that engages communities, raising awareness of the problems faced by climate allowing a the skills of hyperbolic crochet to be passed on.


Margaret Wertheim | crochet sea urchins | copywrite Institute For Figuring
You can even purchase their online how-to if your inspired enough to want to create your own reef.

An amazing example of art, craft, domestic feminism and maths: An epic tale of where art meets science if you ask me.

Check out the Crochet Coral Reef blog, website & flickr.

1 comment:

  1. What a good blog you have here. Please update it more often. This topics is my interest. Thank you. . . coral reef

    ReplyDelete

 
copyrighted