Past and Present in Mathematical Weaving
Zoom Conference on 25 September 2020
The event is organized by Michael Friedman as a collaboration between Symbolic Material and Weaving.
Weaving, braiding and plaiting can be counted as one of the oldest cultural techniques belonging to human culture, much older than agriculture or writing. While an obvious connection between weaving and mathematics – or more precisely, computer sciences – arose during the 19th century, with the Jacquard loom and Charles Babbage’s reference to it, a comprehensive mathematical theory of braids did not appear before 1926. But does this mean that weaving techniques and practices were not considered mathematically before the 19th century, or were not considered as being able to prompt and deliver, explicitly or implicitly, any mathematical knowledge?
While the historical research, starting already from ancient Greece, shows an abundance of approaches towards the mathematics of weaving and braiding, contemporary research points that this interweaving between the two domains is still far from being completely understood. How did (and do) weaving practices and artisanal knowledge of weaving lead to the rise of arithmetical and geometrical thinking during the centuries? How can ethnomathematics and new design techniques help us uncover implicitly mathematical structures within woven and string figures? In what way does the novel geometry of three-dimensional periodic entanglements, developed only in the recent years, give rise to new mathematical domains? How can wrinkled and buckled textiles be mathematically modeled, and which function would such a model have?
The conference aims to address these questions, to show that there is an intricate and complicated relationship between mathematics and weaving and woven textiles, braiding or string figures, starting already in antiquity and continuing till today. It will take not only consider antiquity, but also the novel approaches to mathematics of weaving of the 21st century, in order to shed new light on ancient traditions, but also to inquire about the emergence of new epistemic techniques in mathematics.
Format
This conference will take place online, using a mix of specially pre-recorded presentations and live discussions via Zoom. The pre-recorded presentations will be uploaded two to three days before the conference. The links to the presentations will be sent to *registered participants* on September 23rd. Links for live Q&A sessions will be sent to registered participants also on the September 23rd.
Registration
Please register to the conference by sending an email to michael.friedman [at] hu-berlin.de.
Program
First Session (pre-recorded talks):
1. Michael Friedman (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Introduction: »On Weaving Practices and Geometry«
2. Ellen Harlizius-Klück (ERC Grant PENELOPE, Research Institute for the History of Technology and Science, Deutsches Museum, Munich)
»On the Relation of Arithmetic and Geometry in Ancient Weaving«
3. Sophie Desrosiers (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
»Practical Weaving in Numbers: A Long Story from the Early 2000s to the 3rd Century BCE«
10:00–11:00 am (CEST)
Zoom Live Q&A with Michael, Ellen and Sophie
Moderation: Laurence Douny
Second Session (pre-recorded talks):
4.Eric Vandendriessche (Laboratory SPHERE: University Paris Diderot & CNRS)
»Mathematics of String Figures«
5. Myf Evans (Potsdam University, Potsdam)
»Geometric Modelling of Tangled Structures«
1:00–2:00 pm (CEST)
Zoom Live Q&A with Eric and Myf
Moderation: Aurélie Mossé
Third session (pre-recorded talks):
6. Konrad Polthier (Freie Universität, Berlin)
»Islamic Art and Beyond – Tilings and Weavings in 3D«
7. Lorenzo Guiducci (Humboldt University, Berlin) and Agata Kycia (Weißensee School of Art and Design, Berlin)
»Self-Shaping Textiles: How Geometric Design Weaves in 3D Shapes into Textiles«
4:00–5:00 pm (CEST)
Live Q&A with Konrad, Agata and Lorenzo
Moderation: Mareike Stoll
Conclusion
8. Wolfgang Schäffner (Humboldt University, Berlin)
»Turning Points and Angles of Weaving«
5:00–5:45pm (CEST)
Zoom Live Q&A + Conclusion with Wolfgang and all the participants
Moderation: Michael Friedman