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IFF Directors Talks

IFF Directors Talks 2012
IFF Directors Talks 2011
IFF Directors Talks 2010
IFF Directors Talks 2009

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Previous IFF Lectures

THE MOSELY SNOWFLAKE SPONGE
Exhibition Opening and Fractal Unveiling
Doheny Library, University of Southern California
Thursday, September 20, 2012 @ 57pm

THE ART OF ITERATION
A Lecture by Ryan and Trevor Oakes
Sat. September 22, 2012 @ 68pm

MAKING SPACE
Theoretical and Practical Explorations of Space

@ Hayward Gallery, London
June 12–14, 2012

IFF Director Margaret Wertheim speaks at Art Center College of Design
June 22, 2011 @ 7pm
With Dr. Jerry Schubel, President and CEO, Aquarium of the Pacific

Captain Charles Moore Talks About Plastic Trash
[IFF-L22] Saturday Jan 17, 2009

IFF Director Margaret Wertheim
Neuroscience Discussions at the LA Public Library

[IFF-L21] October 2 + November 10, 2008

Seeing Anew [IFF-L20]
A lecture by Trevor and Ryan Oakes
at Machine Project Sunday, June 24 @ 7pm

The Logic Alphabet of Shea Zelleweger[IFF-L19]
A discussion with the IFF and Dr. Shea Zelleweger
at Foshay Masonic Lodge Saturday, March 3 @ 5pm

Structural Considerations of the Business Card Sponge[IFF-L17]
By Dr. Jeannine Mosely
Sunday, September 10 @ 8pm

The Insect Trilogy
@ Telic Arts Exchange
How Flies Fly [IFF-L14]
By Dr Michael Dickinson
The Ecology of a Termite's Gut [IFF-L15]
By Dr Jared Leadbetter
What is it Like to be a Spider? [IFF-L16]
By Dr Simon Pollard

Where the Wild Things Are 2:
A Talk About Knot Theory
[IFF-L13]
By Ken Millett
at The Drawing Center in NY.

Where the Wild Things Are 2
by Ken Millett
at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Things That Think:
A hands-on history of physical computation devices.

by Nick Gessler [IFF-L12]

Where the Wild Things Are:
A Talk about Knot Theory

by Ken Millett [IFF-L11]
at The Foshay Masonic Lodge (Culver City)

Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane:
A conversation on non-euclidean geometry and feminine handicraft

by Dr. Daina Taimina and IFF Director Margaret Wertheim [IFF-L10]

Darwinism on a Desktop:
Sodaplay and the Evolution of a Digital World

by Ed Burton [IFF-L9]

The Logic Alphabet
by Christine Wertheim [IFF-L8]

Why Things Don't Fall Down
A Talk About Tensegrities
by Robert Connelly [IFF-L7]

Kindergarten:
The Art and Science of Child’s Play

By Norman Brosterman [IFF-L6]

Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane [IFF-L5]
A Talk by David Henderson and Daina Taimina

The Mathematics of Paper Folding [IFF-L4]
by Robert Lang

The Physics of Snowflakes [IFF-L3]
by Kenneth Libbrecht

Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane [IFF-L2]
by Daina Taimina and David Henderson

The Figure That Stands Behind Figures:
Mosaics Of The Mind
[IFF-L1]
by Robert Kaplan

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Previous Events

Crochet Hyperbolic Workshop
Proteus Gowanus gallery, Brooklyn, NY

Hyperbolic Crochet Workshop:
a celebration of feminine handicraft and higher geometry and a homage to the disappearing wonder of coral reefs.

at The Institute For Figuring – Special Collections

KnitOne-PurlOne:
A workshop on crocheting the hyperbolic plane.
at the Velaslavasay Panorama in Los Angeles.

 

In conjunction with an exhibition at Machine Project gallery
the Institute for Figuring announces our first lecture for Fall 2006:

Structural Considerations of the Business Card Sponge
By Dr. Jeannine Mosely [IFF-17]
Sunday, September 10 @ 8pm

Location:
Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado
Los Angeles, CA 90026

For information about the exhibition. [Link]

Diagrams by Dr Jeannine Mosely.

Menger's Sponge - named for its inventor Karl Menger and sometimes wrongly called Sierpinski's Sponge – was the first three dimensional fractal that mathematicians became aware of. In 1995 Dr Jeannine Mosely, a software engineer, set out to build a Level 3 Menger Sponge from business cards. After 9 years of effort, involving hundreds of folders all over America, the Business Card Menger Sponge was completed. The resulting object is comprised of 66,048 cards folded into 8000 interlinked sub-cubes, with the entire surface paneled to reveal the Level 1 and Level 2 fractal iterations.

Recipe for a Menger Sponge: Take a cube, divide it into 27 (3 x 3 x 3) smaller cubes of the same size - now remove the cube in the center of each face plus the cube at the center of the whole. You are left with a structure consisting of the eight small corner cubes plus twelve small edge cubes holding them together. Now, imagine repeating this process on each of these remaining 20 cubes. Repeat again, and again, ad infinitum ... To make a Level 3 sponge, stop after 3 iterations.

In conjunction with an exhibition of the Business Card Menger Sponge at Machine Project gallery, Dr Mosely will present a lecture on the logical challenges of decomposing this fractal form into manufacturable subunits, and on the structural considerations of building such a large object out of business cards. The audience will be invited to make their own business card cubes and to collaborate in making a Level 1 sponge.

Dr Jeannine Mosely is one of the pioneers in the emerging field of computational origami, a branch of mathematics that explores the formal properties and potentialities of folded paper. An expert on the subfield of business card origami, she also conducts research on curved crease origami, investigating the forms that can result from non-linear foldings. Dr Moseley was trained as an electrical engineer at MIT and works in the computer graphics industry writing three-dimensional modeling software.

More information about the Business Card Menger Sponge and Dr Mosely’s work on curved crease folding may be seen at the Institute For Figuring’s Online Exhibit [Link]

This lecture and exhibition were assisted by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and by the Annenberg Foundation.