Conference Organized by Cluster Members Myfanwy Evans and Rhoslyn Coles
This week–long conference from 12-16 September 2022 brought together scientists from various backgrounds who spend a reasonable amount of time thinking about tangles, tubes, knots, filaments, fibers and other entangled structures, from the perspective of physics, material science, mathematics, chemistry or biology. Tangling is a key structural motif of a multitude of natural systems, from molecules to polymers, and has a distinctive relationship to functionality. Understanding tangling itself and the role that it plays in material properties is a complicated web of different disciplines and perspectives, and we hope to create a deep scientific exchange on this topic.
MoA Members Maxie Schneider, Jojo Shone and Lorenzo Guiducci Contributed to Bauwende Festival 2022
On May 27th, the FriBriX team (Lorenzo Guiducci, Christiane Sauer, Maxie Schneider, Jojo Shone) organised the Structural Paper workshop @ Bauwende Festival. Here participants have explored playfully the potential of paper as building material for constructing interwoven structures, simply holding together through friction. We understand paper as a contemporary urban resource and use waste paper to design a bottom up building process. Aftre two intense days of collective work a large pergola has been erected. The structure can still be freely visited at the premises of the Atelier Gardens, BUFA.
A Zoom Lecture on 20 October 2020, 5.00 pm
The interdisciplinary lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity. Image Space Material«, which was continued on October 20th, presented scientific positions from the Cluster, starting the next chapter with Myfanwy Evans, Professor at the Institute for Mathematics, University of Potsdam.
Zoom Conference on 25 September 2020
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?