Plastic-bag crochet workshop at the IFF.
Plastic lies at the heart of modern life, but its ubiquity threatens our ocean’s ecological balance. Throughout the world’s seas, vast gyres are accumulating plastic in great swirling eddies. Recently scientists have discovered that new microorganisms are evolving which feed on this plastic trash. Responding to this unexpected turn, at the IFF our Science and Art Resident Christine Wertheim is building giant plastic sculptures that call our attention to the teratoma-like transformations taking place in our seas.
On Saturday August 17, join us for a workshop to learn how to crochet plastic bags. First we’ll teach techniques for making plastic-bag yarn, or plarn, then we’ll explore how to crochet plarn into whimsical forms.
Pieces made in the workshop will be used in construction of a giant plastic-Silurian sculpture. All makers will be credited in the resulting work and exhibition which will be on-show in September. Come and be part of this evolutionary art-work.
Christine Wertheim crochet’s orange plastic bags.
- The IFF’s 2013 Science and Art Residency extends the Institute’s interest in hands-on practices inspired by scientific themes by hosting thinker-makers who work at the boundary of the theoretical and material. During summer and fall, our two residents – Christine Wertheim and Jake Dotson – will take over the Institute to use it as a studio laboratory and space for public engagement. This year’s theme Being Formed, focuses around the question of how form arises in the natural world, a subject that has inspired philosophers and scientists from Aristotle and Kant to Darwin and Einstein.