A while ago PSFK wrote about Melbourne’s recent rebirth of craft via the Craft Cartel. The Sydney Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project is another such example that craft is back. The collaborative installation is run by the Stitches collective and the Institute For Figuring as a “testimony to the disappearing wonders of the modern world.” The project draws on a hyperbolic crochet technique originally developed in 1997, by Cornell mathematician Dr Daina Taimina.
The IFF explains the technique:
In 1997 Dr Taimina discovered how to make models of the geometry known as “hyperbolic space” using the art of crochet. Until that time many mathematicians believed it was impossible to construct physical models of hyperbolic forms; yet nature had been doing just that for hundreds of millions of years. It turns out that many marine organisms embody hyperbolic geometry in their anatomies – among them kelps, corals, sponges, sea slugs and nudibranchs. Thus the Crochet Reef not only looks like a coral reef, it draws on the same underlying geometry endemic in the oceanic realm.
The group have been taking crocheted reef contributions from Australia-wide, pooling together pieces to create one massive crochet reef. There are various sub-reefs within the mass; including;
the Bleached Reef, the Beaded Reef, the Branched Anemone Garden, and their largest work, The Ladies’ Silurian Atoll, a ring-shaped installation with close to 1000 individual crochet pieces made by dozens of contributors around the world. In addition to these woolen reefs is the massive Toxic Reef crocheted from yarn and plastic trash – a part of the project that responds to the escalating problem of plastic trash that is innundating our oceans and choking marine life.
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