Category / Knotting Works

knotting~works Goldsmiths design festival was part of London Design week (which it turns out is London Design -fortnight- not week, but that is great because it means more cool events!). We (MA students) curated and installed a show for the festival, which was a chance to share the work we have been exploring over the…

Oh me oh my….I’m still knotting things! So, ok its not the worst thing to be doing (and clearly I am really enjoying the process). This time I wanted to explore the space that effects knotting. Dave and I had some conversations about this when knotting molecules, and I thought I should make some experiments…

Dave’s research is all about molecular dynamics -how molecule “wiggle and jiggle” as he often says. When I started the knotting project I really wanted to explore knotting on a molecular level. And Dave and I discussed what this would mean. Dave’s group have just developed a virtual reality (VR) molecular simulation that transports you…

Working on the Materialities module has been a fascinating process. For the course we were asked to: …consider the historical conditions, contexts of use, “socio-technical” networks of “entanglement” (Hodder, 2012) or “biography” of a “material” of your own choice. It might be a “material” that you have previously worked with as a designer, or simply…

Experiments in tensions of knot making: “whether the parts add up to a whole or not, what is missing from the additive logic is the tension and friction that make it possible for persons and things to cling. There is no movement. In the assemblage, it is as though the dancers had turned to stone.…

Exploring knot happening over time and in different spaces or contexts. I made a few strands like the above and situated them in various places for 5 days. Outside. In the studio with my beady hands. In the studio with other folks’ beady hands. In my bag. And here they are all in a row.

Judith Scott knotted things. She was an artist from the Oakland based Creative Growth Studio, but she also spent a lot of her life instituted (she was Downs, and also deaf). She didn’t start making work until joining the studio, and was deaf and mute all her life. Knots were one of the few conversations…

Quipu is a process of mnemonic knot making made by Inca cultures. Inca cultures had no written text or money, and through the process of knot-making they recorded things such as transfer of property, or powers. Strings are tied in certain ways using colour, distance, direction, and knot formation as signifiers. The coded system of…

Thumb Knot Granny Knot The Bowline Bend The Carrick Bend

To start my inquiry into the life of knots I’m going to make some knots. Sounds obvious huh? I got a book out of the library called “The Art of Knotting and Splicing” by Cyrus Lawrence Day. It was originally published in 1947 as a follow up to his 1935 book “Sailors’ Knots”. The book…

(I fear that the knot pun will never get tiring) Our project for the Materialities module is to explore a material through any of the following activities: conducting hands-on experiments with your “material” or “thing”; proposing speculative designs for its alternative use or “re-use”; public performances or interventions that deals with its exploitation, consumption, or…

This week I attended a talk on crowd-sourced science platforms at my (part time) job, Interactive Scientific (iSci). David, a specialist in molecular dynamics, talked about the problems of protein folding, and about several crowd-sourcing platform where users collect and input data with machines to get better data (as opposed to just humans or just…