The Crochet Coral Reef Project
The geometry of coral is hyperbolic. Mathematicians long believed it was impossible to construct physical models of hyperbolic space; yet nature had been doing just that for hundreds of millions of years. Coral is not the only natural form with this geometry. Kelps, sponges, sea slugs, nudibranchs, lettuce, kale, and other life forms share this structure. In 1997 a mathematician at Cornell, Dr Taimina, discovered how to make models of hyperbolic space geometry using the art of crochet.
The fine folks at the Institute for Figuring‘s crocheted coral reef project is a “woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world.” The exhibit has been traveling for a while, and has some remaining dates in the US this summer.
Created by Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim, the institute’s activities include lectures, publications and exhibitions.
The Institute For Figuring is an organization dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science, mathematics and the technical arts.
The Institute’s interests are twofold: the manifestation of figures in the world around us and the figurative technologies that humans have developed through the ages. From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding, the tiling patterns of Islamic mosaics and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring.
See the video Margaret Wertheim on the beautiful math of coral at the 2009 TED conference, in which she talks about the Coral Reef Project, Mathematics, and Womens’ Craft.