UTS-ISF-Workshop Invite

Hyperbolic surface made from paper, constructed from an original pattern by Keith Henderson. Photo: IFF Archive.

On Thursday March 21, 2013, the IFF teams up with the Institute For Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney. Margaret will present a workshop from the IFF’s Making Space series looking at the foundations of Geometry and Topology. During the workshop, participants will collectively build a hyperbolic surface out of paper.

The Institute for Sustainable Futures is a flagship research institute of the University of Technology, Sydney. Established in 1996, the ISF’s mission is to create change towards sustainable futures through independent, project-based research.

WORKSHOP PHOTO

Students and staff at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, at UTS, with their hyperbolic surfaces. Photo by Tania Leimbach. March 2013.

We invite young people between the ages of 4 and 17 years old to make some space with us at the IFF. During this playful workshop we will explore  fractals and origami, deconstruct a Business Card Cube and attempt to put it back together, test the strength of folded paper using the weight of stacked books, work in a team to construct a modular origami sculpture, and experiment with methods of folding and connecting business cards on our own.

This workshop is $15 each for children and the adults accompanying them; however, no one will be turned away due to lack of funds. Get your ticket here: http://makingspaceforchildren.eventbrite.com/#.

All workshop materials will be supplied by the IFF. Direct any questions to mail@theiff.org.

Workshop facilitator Christina Simons is a recent BFA graduate of the California Institute of the Arts, a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar, and a burgeoning native of Los Angeles County. Before pursuing art and photography in California, Christina spent over ten years working in the fields of education and community outreach in New York and Illinois. She has worked with several organizations whose focus is on community development and youth empowerment, including: Cornell University Cooperative Extension, AmeriCorps, the YMCA, Brehm School, and the CalArts Community Arts Partnership. She’s taught programming for at-risk youth, community building and youth leadership, early agricultural education, photography workshops, rock climbing, swimming, kayaking AND gymnastics… just to name a few. If you get a chance to chat with her, you might be tempted to ask: Which farm animal is the most difficult to bring to a library? How do you make homemade stereo cards? And, how do you turn a pizza box into a solar oven?

Crochet Coral Reef

On Monday March 18, IFF Director Margaret Wertheim will present the 2013 Templeton Lecture at the University of Sydney. Hosted by the Center for the Human Aspects of Science and Technology (CHAST), the Templeton Lecture was endowed by Professor Charles Birch, the influential Australian biologist who pioneered the subject of environmental philosophy, for which he was the awarded the 1990 Templeton Prize. Margaret’s lecture – “We Are All Corals Now” – will discuss the IFF’s Crochet Coral Reef project as a metaphor for thinking about human action in the age of global warming.

Crochet Coral Reef

 

                In an age of climate-change denial, humanity urgently needs positive ways to help us face up to global warming.  No ecosystems are more vulnerable than coral reefs, and in these fragile marvels we may find a metaphor for hope. Coral reefs are made up from millions of tiny coral polyps. Each polyp is insignificant on its own, yet when acting together these minute creatures collectively produce the spectacle of the Great Barrier Reef, the only organism that can be seen from outer space.

                 In 2005, sisters Christine and Margaret Wertheim began to crochet a coral reef. Inspired by the action of living reefs, they  envisioned their project as a collaborative endeavor that would fuse environmentalism, marine science, handicraft and community art practice. Today the Crochet Coral Reef is perhaps the largest art + science endeavor on the planet. More than 25 reefs have been made around the world, including in Chicago, New York, London, Melbourne, Latvia and Germany. Tens of thousands of people have helped to make these reefs. More than 3 million visitors have seen the resulting exhibitions. The project has been called, “the AIDS quilt of global warming.”

               Within the framework of the Crochet Reef project, people are invited into an endeavor that mimics the process of nature itself. Through participatory experience, a profound lesson is conveyed: While none of us as individuals can solve the problem of global warming, collectively we have the power to sustain a better, healthier world. In this talk Margaret will discuss the Crochet Reef project as a model for thinking through our relationship with nature as we face the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.

Event free and open to the public.

Crochet Coral Reef forest

Happy Year of the Snake! This weekend the Institute will be open our regular hours, Saturday 12noon – 6:30pm. Feel free to come by and check out making space and fold some business cards. Please note that due to the extensive neighborhood festivities planned for Saturday, several streets in Chinatown will be closed. Plan on parking a little further away than usual.

Visit the Golden Dragon Parade website for more information on the New Year celebration.

STREET CLOSURES
Parade Route: Saturday, February 16: The following streets will be closed starting from 11:00am to 3:30pm
• Hill Street from Bernard Street to Temple Street
• Ord Street from North Broadway to Hill Street
• Bernard Street from North Broadway to Hill Street
• North Broadway from Bernard Street to Cesar Chavez Avenue
• Cesar Chavez Avenue from North Broadway to Main Street

For the past several years Jake Dotson has been developing ways to make structural frames from simple materials in order to make architecture more accessible to individuals, more independent of industry, more open to the natural world, and more pleasurable to build and inhabit. He models these crystalline networks out of bamboo sticks tied together with twine and rubber bands. From these humble tools Dotson weaves matrixes of tetrahedrons, octahedrons, cubes, and other regular polyhedra into elegant lattice-like configurations that resemble three-dimensional spider webs. Join us for a one-off workshop to learn how to make these beautiful and surprising structures. Workshop participants have the opportunity to contribute to a sculpture that will hang in the IFF’s making space exhibition. All builders will be credited on the resulting piece.

A $10 donation at the door is encouraged; however, no one will be turned away. Construction materials will be supplied. RSVP to mail@theiff.org recommended.

Jake Dotson describes himself as a Liberation Geometer. His work is informed by a lifetime spent in humanistic education, as a student as well as a teacher. His design practice developed through his ten-year apprenticeship with Culver City architect Gregg Fleishman. Of his bamboo structures he writes: They are really like crystalline springs! They strongly resemble tensegrity structures, and could be considered as the grandchildren of tensegrities in the way that they define geometric load circuits and utilize tension to maintain a form, but they are different; tensegrities are traditionally made from two completely different kinds of parts – struts and cables- serving as compression and tension members respectively, and exclusively. In my structures, all the parts are composed of a uniform elastic material (ideally bamboo) which are woven into 3D circuits, with each serving to carry compression or tension loads as needed. Sometimes I think of this as similar to the difference between AC and DC electric current.