has filmFiT Craft and Mathematics
Stephanie Bunn
(University of St Andrews)
Ricardo Nemirovsky
(MMU)
Contribution description:
We would like to contribute our experience of research into craft and mathematics in whatever way would suit the studio. We could participate in a conversation, lead a mini-studio for participants, or simple present material about our research so far. Please let us know which is best.
Paper long abstract:
Forces in Translation has been exploring the relationship between anthropology, craft and mathematics through participants from these disciplines working together in studio trials since 2019. We have made lines through braiding, weaving and twisting; explored curvature through plaiting bodily forms; and by working in three dimensions we have critiqued dimensional assumptions in topological theory. The aim is to show how working within convergences between mathematics and craft enables a more holistic and realisable way of understanding these disciplines. An anthropological input enables participants to take an emergent and exploratory approach in understanding mathematics and craft, and also to consider scale, vitality and community in exploring aspects of learning, such as skill, patterning, geometry, space and number.
For us, the investigative process is an important aspect of how we come to learn. In our research, that investigative process is qualitative and open, a kind of anthropological intuition or following a Malinowskian 'foreshadowed problem'. In this regard, for our research, anthropology, like art, is a particular approach to education and learning which follows experience.
Our concern with scale and community means that we challenge any notion of mathematics as an abstract, hidden, more truthful version of the world, of which lived practices such as craft or dance are less than perfect exemplars. Rather, we follow thinkers such as James Gibson and Robin Wall-Kimmerer, who show how scale, whether spatial or temporal, has implications for how things are experienced and understood. In similar vein, we do not see our research as a study of craft and mathematical practitioners, nor that our different disciplines are part of a hierarchy where one is in the service of the other. We are exploring our concerns together.
Finally, our approach to investigation is one where practice is key. So we may read papers, write, discuss, film, but we also make things and engage with materials. We find that the act of engagement brings forth new ideas, resonance, and enables a synthesizing approach (rather than an analytical one). This perhaps shows parallels with Arthur Koestler's notions of analogy and bi-sociation, or Charles Peirce's approach to abduction (quite different to that of Alfred Gell!).
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
Forces in Translation has been exploring the relationship between anthropology, craft and mathematics through participants from these disciplines working together in studio trials since 2019. We have made lines through braiding, weaving and twisting; explored curvature through plaiting bodily forms; and by working in three dimensions we have critiqued dimensional assumptions in topological theory. The aim is to show how working within convergences between mathematics and craft enables a more holistic and realisable way of understanding these disciplines. An anthropological input enables participants to take an emergent and exploratory approach in understanding mathematics and craft, and also to consider scale, vitality and community in exploring aspects of learning, such as skill, patterning, geometry, space and number.
For us, the investigative process is an important aspect of how we come to learn. In our research, that investigative process is qualitative and open, a kind of anthropological intuition or following a Malinowskian 'foreshadowed problem'. In this regard, for our research, anthropology, like art, is a particular approach to education and learning which follows experience.
Our concern with scale and community means that we challenge any notion of mathematics as an abstract, hidden, more truthful version of the world, of which lived practices such as craft or dance are less than perfect exemplars. Rather, we follow thinkers such as James Gibson and Robin Wall-Kimmerer, who show how scale, whether spatial or temporal, has implications for how things are experienced and understood. In similar vein, we do not see our research as a study of craft and mathematical practitioners, nor that our different disciplines are part of a hierarchy where one is in the service of the other. We are exploring our concerns together.
Finally, our approach to investigation is one where practice is key. So we may read papers, write, discuss, film, but we also make things and engage with materials. We find that the act of engagement brings forth new ideas, resonance, and enables a synthesizing approach (rather than an analytical one). This perhaps shows parallels with Arthur Koestler's notions of analogy and bi-sociation, or Charles Peirce's approach to abduction (quite different to that of Alfred Gell!).
Anthropology as education
Session 1