Week 4 - Activity Reflection

This week I selected Infinite Loop, Thread on Mobius Frame by Skylar Cheung from University of Toronto from the 2020 Bridges Joint Mathematics Meetings . I was drawn to this as I have found myself with mobius strips on the mind recently and with this weeks video of  Vi Harts, Mobius Music Box. I was drawn to the colours and the continuous flow from one to the next, there is no start, end, or break which complimented the mobius frames continuous side in a way I found very visually and mathematically satisfying to look at.

When it came to my recreation it was not as seamless. I wanted to ensure I kept the visual flow with the colours so I spent time selecting embroidery thread to use. However, all of my colours were seperate threads, I tried to glue them to the frame I was using but had little success and ultimately had to tie all the different coloured thread together to create a long thread that would have the colourful progression I wanted. 

When I finished wrapping my mobius frame with the thread, I felt something was off. I kept going back to the original piece by Cheung, and wondered if it was the ends of the threads tied together poking out that gave me that off feeling. It wasn't until the next day that I realized... it was not a mobius strip. I had twisted the frame too much and so there were two sides. Tried to brainstorm what the best way to fix this was, ultimately I unraveled my thread and adjusted the cardstock I used as a frame to become a TRUE mobius strip. I felt the ends of the threads were poking out even more after rewrapping it, tried to use some liquid glue to keep them down as much as possible, but am happy with the colour progression and properly structured frame.

In learning about the Bridges conferences and how transdisciplinary they are I was very intrigued to look at the art, I wondered from my experience as a knitter about if you could create a mobius strip when knitting in the round. When learning to knit, I recalled always being told to make sure your stitches were not twisted before joining in the round. I wondered if there was a twist to your stitches and you join in the round if that would create a mobius strip (this was after my first attempt at the mobius strip activity). I got some scrap yarn and cast on enough stitches to join my work and knit a few rows to see what would happen. 

Unfortunately I made the same orientable strip I had when I first tried to make the activity for this week. I am still curious if there is a way to set up knitting or crochet to actively make a mobius strip, but that is for future exploration. 

Bridges work of inviting in a diverse group and creating community to produce and engage with transdisciplinary works felt healing and tied to sustainability education, it remind me of the following quote from last weeks reading. 

"The whole is more than the sum of its parts: The essential properties of a

living system are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have; these

properties arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts.

Therefore, properties of the parts can be understood when the whole is

understood." (Williams, 2008, p. 42)

A bit of a random tangent:

My go to hobbies have generally engaged with fiber arts, I have crocheted for multiple years and got into knitting last year, found myself quickly hooked as it felt very logical and mathematical to me and throughout the year I enjoyed progressing with learning increases, decreases, lace detailing, double knitting, and most recently cabling. One of my friends husbands and I call each other "Math friends" as most the time we are together we get on some math topic and talk about whatever cool math thing we have seen, heard, or done recently. I started talking to him about knitting and how much it felt math-y to me and showed him the patterns I had been working on and discussed the movement and construction of the garments, he was intrigued and has since started knitting as well! Now our chats cover a lot of math, knitting, and knitting math. The coming together of math and art that Bridges highlights has also been present in my life and friendships and I enjoyed the connections.

Some pictures of my knitting projects that made my math brain excited.

(I call the scarf the inverse operations scarf)

Williams, D. (2008). Sustainability education’s gift: Learning patterns and relationships. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 2(1), 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820800200110 

Cheung, S. (n.d.). Skylar Cheung. The Bridges Organization. https://gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/2020-joint-mathematics-meetings/cherylskylar