Energy

Hello again! Our team has been working for the past week on getting our January MIT session finalized and loaded into the system, and also on contemplating light, colour, a foolproof Kaleidocycle, and the nature of energy. We are in the course catalogue now, and I think I’ve at least finally (after six years) solved the foolproof part of the cycle, so that’s what I call progress.

Here is a peek at our poster – this year the focus is on energy and light, and our academic beadwork team will be present to discuss geometric surfaces, cycles, linkages, edges, and tension. So much of attracting or repelling energy and information is bound up in these real-world parameters, and we have a suite of findings to present that we feel are relevant.

Also while we are MIT (both during our science session and elsewhere on campus) we will be exhibiting and discussing Sam Norgard’s incredible Black & White Together community composition; this is a huge morphing surface, a topological eggbox that makes a portrait of bead pioneer Joyce Scott. It’s been incredible to watch it come together and I can’t wait to share it with that community.

I’ll be back later this week with a post about the Foolproof Kaleidocycle, and I look forward to the conversation. We will be working with three pattern faces for this build, and the fourth can easily drop in later if you like.

If you would like to play along, get out three pattern faces with the same edge counts and lay them out in hexagons. With triangles that are not the same at each corner, there are a lot of layout options to consider. The simple Magic Triangle we showed in a recent post has a variety of ways it can arrange in a hexagon, and these are three possible choices (and each of these will have a second look on rotation).

For my demo cycle, I am going to use three sets of Magic Triangles (total 18 triangles) and I will choose these three starting designs for my pattern faces. Each of these triangles was beaded to I’ll be back with you when I’m finished assembling, and taking the photos. Thanks again to Dara Ollman for bringing this simple illusory triangle pattern to my attention, I’ve had a lot of fun playing with it.

About katemckinnon

Kate McKinnon has devoted herself to the study of how things are done, and how they could be done better.

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