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imagine line in three ways: as something which is straight and measures length from point to point; as
something with infinite length, as a dimensionless length; and also as something more mutable, as the flexing
curves of non-Euclidean space which map the natural world in an entirely different way.
Until the late 1990s, the physical modeling of the form known in non-Euclidean geometry as a hyperbolic
pseudosphere troubled scientists. It was not until Cornell University mathematician and avid knitter Dr Daina
Taimina watched a colleague struggle with an ineffective paper model of the spatial form, and decided to try it
in crochet, that a physical model of this space could be realised. Taimina discovered that crochet was the perfect
method for visualising the complex exponential folds of hyperbolic space. It allows surfaces to continuously
expand and curve away from themselves and provides a mathematical models of the growth patterns of natural
forms such as coral, kelp, and curly lettuce.
The notion of hyperbolic space confounds Euclids fifth or Parallel Postulate, and, while on paper this is a
complex mathematical proof, in crochet, this is a relatively simple proof to demonstrate and visualise.
The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project was initiated by Australia-born, US academics Professors Margaret
and Christine Wertheim in 2004. Margaret and Christine Wertheim, respectively a philosopher of mathematics,
and an art historian, share an interest in environmental activism, maths, and, equally significantly, they shared a
passion for crochet.
The first Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef was exhibited in 2005 and drew on Daina Taiminas hyperbolic
crochet technique to create large museum installations of coral beds. The project connects a diverse range of
concerns: pure and applied mathematics, textiles, marine biology, environmental activism and community art
practices. Crochet hyperbolic reefs have been shown at major exhibition venues in the US and UK, including
the Hayward Gallery in London and the Science Museum, Trinity College, Dublin, as well as at the Powerhouse
Museum, Sydney, Australia. The non-Euclidean geometry of the hyperbolic crochet have gone viral and
become a world-wide community arts and environmental movement. In a way it has grown exponentially and
mimics its specific geometric foundations These in turn clearly identify the connection of textile-practice to
spatial understandings.
The capacity for the textile line to embody spaces beyond those proposed by Euclid those of space/time
is also evident in the poetic textile works of UK-based German artist Jeanette Sendler. The connections of a
textile line to the measurement of time are explored by Sendler, in the knitted work Finding your way home,
which draws on the history of knitting in Scottish fishing communities. Sendler refers to the long-held practice
of the wives of Shetland fishermen who would measure the length of time their husbands were away at sea, and
estimate their return, by the quantity of yarn they had knitted since the fishing boats departureii. In a statement
discussing Finding your way home, Sendler also notes the Shetland term moder dy or mother wave, the strong
incoming currents which brought fishing boats safely to shore.iii The work employs the capacity for knit to
capture the fractal forms and movements of rolling waves, as well as its capacity to measure time in the form of
yarn/line. The knitted forms, large kelp-like lengths of textile have rippling edges reminiscent of waves beating
on the shore, or tidal currents creating swirling eddies in the sea. In documentary photographs of the work,
Sendler has placed the works along the gallery floor as well as on models standing on plinths. The weight of the
flowing and rippling knitted form is obvious, like, the weight of the sea, pulling the men out to seek their
familys income, season after season, generation after generation, and the weight of the tide, the weight of the
wives loneliness and worry as they chart the mens absence in knitted loop and line. On the gallery floor, the
undulating surfaces trail off to thin, knitted tubes, an anchor line to the shore and to the connections of yarn to
line and yarn to time.
So, how can we relate this to the notion of smooth and/or striated space posited by Giles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari in A Thousand Plateausiv. In this text Deleuze and Guattari refer specifically to a number of textile
materials and techniques as examples of their model of space which suggests an understanding of space in terms
of the smooth and/or the striated forms. They discuss the relationship of textiles to space at some length; for
example - felt and patchwork are used as examples of smooth space as they have no centre, and may continue
indefinitely in all directions, while woven textiles, built from a finite warp and weft exemplify the striated.
These spatial arrays have different characteristics and associations: striated space acts to organise and regulate,
while smooth space acts to mobilise and multiply. Deleuze and Guattari propose that this conceptualisation is
not a reinstatement of the binary opposites of Cartesian space, but rather a simultaneous state of being, two parts
of the same entity - a Mobius strip or a continuum. They note that the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture:
smooth space is constantly being translated, traversed into striated space; striated space is constantly being
reversed, returned to a smooth space.v
It is easy to see in Duchamps Three Standard Stoppages, the smooth space of the curve and the striated
space of a string-line. In Sendlers knitted waves and in the crocheted coral psuedospheres we see striated
linear rows of stitches as well as smooth curving surfaces. However these works also indicate spatial
possibilities not captured by Deleuze and Guattaris theory. The qualities of elasticity, of time, of chance are
embodied by the work of Duchamp, Sendler and the various iterations of the crochet reef. These however seem
to fall outside those described by Deleuze and Guattari and allude to an extra category of stretchy. The stretchy
category of space relates to the ebb and flow of time, of elastic knits which expand and contract to fit ones
body, of the constantly moving structures of submerged fishing nets which admit as much as they contain.
The category of stretchy space can coexist with those of smooth and striated an entity can be both smooth and
stretchy such as a lace doiley,- and can be striated and stretchy the measurement of hours, days and months
via a ball of yarn and its knitted outputs.
And possibly, via textile media we can see a supplementary existence of the three spatial states of smooth
and/or stretchy and/or striated. An example is knitting with its capacity to use a linear structure to create the
smooth spaces of complex curves, and also to stretch to conform to forms which move and alter, only to return
to their original state. This is a cardiac harness for treating congestive heart failure, or as I like to think of it, a
beanie for a broken heart vi. The harness applies elastic, compressive reinforcement to the left ventricle to
support the heart during the cardiac cycle. According to its patent document, the knitted bandage not impose a
limit to the movement of the heart but rather it allows the heart to pump freely, following its expansions and
contractions throughout the diastole vii.
Textile-based practices have a distinct spatiality with which to understand and explore the spaces of
Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry. They provides a mode of making which embodies simple Euclidean
notions of point, line and plane as well as highly complex and stretchy spaces such as those imagined in
hyperbolic geometry, topology, and knot theory. The spatial specifics of textiles also allow an expansion to
Deleuze and Guattaris model of space to create an understanding of space as having smooth and/or stretchy and
/or striated forms.
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