Margaret Wertheim

Margaret Wertheim is one of the founders of the Institute for Figuring.
Here's a short note from their site,

"The Institute For Figuring is an educational organization dedicated to enhancing the public understanding of figures and figuring techniques. From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring."


The Institute for Figuring website


I believe that I've encountered her work before, but what compelled me to blog about her that the fact that I've been on the search for creative crossovers with science. Her project of crocheting a coral reef is a great example. It's as she puts it; a feminist perspective, environmental activism, and also a mathematical theorum put to the test. Hyperbolic geometry was proven by crocheting. Here's a great TED talk about it.

Our Coming Sixth Sense

As I've been thinking about perception (thanks a lot Robert Irwin!)(He's had a good and bad effect on me, I have to say) and experience and the ways in which art can effect those things in us, I came upon this fantastic TED talk introducing an interface that could truly alter and transform the world around us. It's quite astounding as to the possibilities, and without the real thing unleashed on the world, we can only speculate.

I always think about Facebook or Twitter and the revolutionary impacts they created, though no one could have predicted how they might have been used at their inception. With that in mind, the technology demonstrated in this talk might not even make a mark on our culture after all, but my mind spins at the potential. Our flaccid and analog could be way more interactive, letting a wireless camera and projector serve to do what we could only attempt to rig up through RFID chips. Why wire the world? Why not wire ourselves? Are we not already? I am consistently marveled by the output of the MIT Media Lab. If only we were all so brilliant; if only schools were all so well funded and contemporary in mindset. Keep an eye on this Fluid Interfaces Group and the things coming out of MIT, they may just change our world without us even noticing. Also, if you haven't, check out TED. Since being turned on to them, I have learned a lot about the world, and much of it is optimistic.

http://www.ted.com/

http://fluid.media.mit.edu/


http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/index.htm

http://web.media.mit.edu/~pattie/