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Textile Geometries: a speculation on stretchy space

Textile Geometries: a speculation on stretchy space


Al Munro
Abstract:
Textile-based materials and practices engage with a range of spatial concepts. This presentation will explore the
work of a number of artists, arts collectives and vernacular practitioners whose work has engaged with
Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries in order to develop a speculative spatiality of textile practice.
Examples ranging from Marcel Duchamps Three Standard Stoppages to the world-wide environmental
craftivism project The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, and the temporal maps embodied by Jeanette Sendlers
knitted work Finding your way Home, will be examined in relation to their connections to space and to the
stretchy geometries imaginable via textile visual practice. The paper will also relate these textile works to the
notions of smooth/striated space proposed by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, in order
to extend upon Delueze and Guattaris understanding of space and propose the idea of smooth/striated/stretchy
space as a more comprehesive way to describe the spatial possibilities of textiles. Throughout this analysis, a
case will be made for textiles as a mode of visual practice which can embrace a complex range of spatial
understandings within artistic, philosophical and mathematical discourses.
Keywords: textiles, spatiality, geometry, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, smooth/striated space,
smooth/striated/stretchy space, Euclidean Space, non-Euclidean space, visual art, craft, visual practice
*****
Textile-based materials and practices engage with a space in specific ways. This paper draws on recent
research I undertook as part of a practice-led PhD in textiles. Today I will explore a number textile objects
which engage with Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries in order to develop a speculative spatiality of
textile practice. I will consider Marcel Duchamps Three Standard Stoppages, the world-wide environmental
craftivism project The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, Jeanette Sendlers knitted artwork, Finding Your Way
Home and an example of contemporary medical textiles.
Euclids fundamental concepts of space include point, line and plane, ideas which are paralleled respectively
by various qualities of textile media. A single stitch or knot can be equated to Euclids concept of point. Thread
and yarn can easily be seen to relate to the concept of line. And through textile forms such as knit, crochet,
netting and weave, surfaces from simple planes to complex curves can be realised. Writer and curator Victoria
Mitchell has likened thread to a drawn line, and examined the associations between thread, drawing and three
dimensional space. Mitchell poses the idea that the use of thread as a drawing medium, and I would add, as a
stitched line, can mark the edges of a space which is illusory and material, visible and invisible. She notes that
the etymology of the word line even relating to textiles in that it is derived from the Latin linea, for linen
thread or string. i
The relationship of thread-as-line to measurement and to forms of space beyond those of Euclidean
geometry was explored by Marcel Duchamp in his work of 1913-1914 titled Three Standard Stoppages.
Duchamp was fascinated by theories of the fourth dimension and the complex mathematical discoveries of his
era. These theories brought the certainties of Euclidean space into question and formed the starting point for
Three Standard Stoppages.
In this work Duchamp dropped three pieces of string, each measuring a metre in length, onto three pieces of
canvas. He attached them in the position in which they had landed and then used the contours of their curves to
trace and cut three curved wooden rulers. The title refers to the French metric system, and its allusion to a
universally stable, standardised system of measurement. It also refers to a process of invisible mending used by
tailors, called stoppages. This simultaneity highlights Duchamps interest in questioning the classical
rationalism of Euclidean space and the certainties of modern science. It also clearly implicates textiles in this
process.
The space mapped by the Three Standard Stoppages begins with the Euclidean certainties of the straight
line, and references the time-honoured method of using a string line to measure length. However, Duchamps
act of dropping of the string so that it landed in a more or less random curve, makes clear the potential for a line
to measure a space that is curved and unpredictable. Line here is closer to the non-Euclidean geometries of
topological space, knot theory and the fractal spaces of chaos. Duchamps work indicates that via textiles we can

Textile Geometries: a speculation on stretchy space

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

Textile Geometries: a speculation on stretchy space

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.

The Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com, (accessed 2 December 2012).


Jeanette Sendler Finding your way Home in ed. Jessica Hemmings In the Loop: Knitting Now, (London: Black Dog,
2010), 56.
iii
Jeanette Sendler Finding your way Home in ed. Jessica Hemmings In the Loop: Knitting Now, ( London: Black Dog
2010), 56.
iv
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London:
Athlon Press, 1988).
v
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London:
Athlon Press, 1988), 474.
vi
See Free Patents Online, Method of manufacturing a cardiac harness, United States Patent 7124493, 2006,
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7124493.html (accessed 12 May 2013) for illustration of the cardiac harness.
vii
Free Patents Online,Method of manufacturing a cardiac harness, United States Patent 7124493, 2006,
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7124493.html (accessed 12 May 2013).
ii

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