The Institute For Figuring // Exhibition: Machine Project, July 2005



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	Exhibitions CURRENT: The Crochet Coral Reef is constantly on display. See here for current, future, and past exhibitions of the Crochet Coral Reef. PAST: PLASTIC ENTANGLEMENTS: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials @ Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison September 13, 2019 – January 5, 2020 @ Smith College Museum of Art, New Hampshire February 8 – July 28, 2019 @ Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon September 22 – December 30, 2018 @ Palmer Art Museum, University of Pennsylvania February 13 – June 17th, 2018 TRADE MARKINGS: Frontier Imaginaries Ed. No. 5 @ Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands April 7 – July 1, 2018 EXPLODE EVERY DAY: An Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Wonder @ MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA May 28, 2016 – February 28, 2017 Crochet Coral Reef @ the University of California, Santa Cruz February 10 – May 6, 2017 Crochet Coral Reef @ Museum of Arts and Design, New York September 15, 2016 – January 22, 2017 Night Begins the Day @ the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco June 18 – Sept 20, 2015 Crochet Coral Reef @ Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX February 12 – April 26, 2015 Crochet Coral Reef @ New York University Abu Dhabi Institute, UAE September 28 – December 5, 2014 making space @ Google Venice Offices, Los Angeles October 2013 – February 2014 Science + Art Residency: Being Formed @ Institute For Figuring, Los Angeles July – December, 2013 An Alternative Guide to the Universe @ Hayward Gallery, London June 11 – August 26, 2013 Out of Fashion @ GL Holtegaard Museum, Copenhagen April 2013 – Jan 2014 making space @ Institute For Figuring, Los Angeles December 15, 2012 – June 29, 2013 Physics on the Fringe @ Institute For Figuring, Los Angeles April 14 – November 10, 2012 Mosely Snowflake Sponge Exhibition @ The USC Libraries September 20, 2012 – January 30, 2013 Midden Project @ The New Children's Museum, San Diego, CA October 15, 2011 –September 15, 2013 The Logic Alphabet of Shea Zellweger @ The Museum of Jurassic Technology Opening reception March 3, 2007 – March 3, 2012 IFF @ The Walker Art Center April 24 – September 29, 2009 Inventing Kindergarten @ Art Center College of Design, Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery October 13, 2006 – January 7, 2007 Hyperbolic Cactus Garden + Hyperbolic Kelp Garden @ Fair Exhange, during the LA County Fair, Pomona Fairgrounds September 8 – October 1, 2006 The Business Card Menger Sponge @ Machine Project, Los Angeles Los Angeles – August 26 – September 24, 2006 Crocheting the Hyperbolic Plane @ Machine Project, Los Angeles Los Angeles – July 2005 Philosophical Toys @ Apex Art, New York June/July 2005 Lithium Legs and Apocalyptic Photons @ The Santa Monica Museum of Art April 20 – June 9, 2002 Crochet Coral Reef Exhibitions Hyperbolic: Reefs, Rubbish, and Reason @ The Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA June 6 – August 21, 2011 Crochet Reef @ The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC October 16, 2010 – April 24, 2011 Crochet Reef @ The Science Gallery, Dublin March 20, 2010 – June 11, 2010 The IFF "Bleached Reef" @ The National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, NYC May 14, 2010 – January 9, 2011 Crochet Cactus Garden Jackson Hole, WY June 26 – September 28, 2009 Crochet Reef Scottsdale, AZ April 11 – July 11, 2009 Crochet Reef Show @ Track 16 in Los Angeles Jan 10 – Feb 28, 2009 New York and Chicago Reefs Staten Island Sept 27 – Dec 20, 2008 UK Reef Tour Autumn 2008 Plastic Exploding Inevitable Reef San Francisco Sept 7 – Oct 3, 2008 Crochet Reef Symposium @ Southbank Center Friday June 13, 2008 Crochet Reef London June 11 – August 17, 2008 Crochet Reef New York April 6 – May 18, 2008 The Crochet Cactus Garden @ The Wignall Museum, Chaffey College January 29 – March 1, 2008 The Crochet Cactus Garden @ The David Weinberg Gallery October 26 – December 29, 2007 The Crochet Coral Reef @ The Chicago Cultural Center October 13 – December 16, 2007 The Crochet Coral Reef @ The Andy Warhol Museum March 11 – June 17, 2007	THE BUSINESS CARD MENGER SPONGE by Dr Jeannine Mosely August 26 – September 24 Machine Project (Los Angeles) A collaboration between the Institute For Figuring and Machine Project Curated by Margaret Wertheim Machine Project Gallery Opening: Saturday, August 26 @ 7-10pm Lecture: Structural Considerations of the Business Card Sponge Sunday, September 10 @ 8pm The Institute's third book is now available: A Field Guide to the Business Card Menger Sponge See Here for the Flickr Photo Set of the Business Card Menger Sponge

		All 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. The Business Card Menger Sponge is being presented by the Institute For Figuring and Machine Project in its first appearance to the general public. On Sunday Sept 10, 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.

		The exhibition coincides with OSME 4, the fourth international conference on Origami in Science, Mathematics and Education, being held at Caltech. [Link] 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 exhibition was assisted by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and by the Annenberg Foundation.
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