Short Abstract:

This laboratory explores knottiness as a series of journeys and rhythms encountered through handwork, travel, drawing, and mathematics. Is knottiness a creative movement, or is its stasis within flow simply frustrating? The lab includes lectures, discussions, and practical sessions.

Long Abstract:

This laboratory explores knottiness as a series of journeys and rhythms which are encountered across a range of human experiences, from handwork, to travel, to drawing, to mathematics. It draws on the ongoing research of the Forces in Translation group who have been working together since 2019 across the disciplines of basketry, related textile skills and mathematics. Within this interdisciplinary area, through knottiness we consider the relationships between diverse methods of investigation, from ‘how to make’ to ‘how to prove’; between concretion and abstraction; and between narrative and story, and sound and rhythm.

During the laboratory, we explore how different approaches to knottiness can enrich social, ecological and mathematical senses of patterning. When is a knot following a path, and does it matter whether you just think about the path or traverse it? What happens when the path converges or meets a confluence, or a tangle? – Is this a creative movement, or is the lack of movement that emerges through some forms of knottiness simply frustrating?? Is knottiness embodied? We draw on examples from knot-tyers, topologists, sand-drawers and string-figure makers, and on the writings of William James, Anna Tsing, Uri Wilensky, Marcia Ascher, Ricardo Nemirovsky and Helen Verran.

Activities will include an introduction to our methodologies which cut across craft practice, geometry, topology, and ethnomathematics. The laboratory will be delivered through a mixture of lectures and open discussions, participatory practical sessions, and case studies, with members of the Forces in Translation group delivering sessions, along with several invited speakers.