Knotting~Works

Knotting~Works is a collection of social, cultural, material and scientific expressions of knotting, knots, knot-works, and knot-making. The project started as an exploration into the materiality of knots – I am curious about knots as networks that have movement, tension, and are entangled (and not just networks as nodes and edges).

“…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. The theory of assemblage, then, will not help us. It is too static, and it fails to answer the question of how entities of which it is composed actually fasten to each other. The principle of the line, by contrast, allows us to bring the social back to life. In the life of lines, parts are not components; they are movements” The life of Lines, Tim Ingold (2015)

The exploration into knots lead to a collaboration with computational molecular dynamics group at Bristol University. We mapped knotting processes in a VR system of molecules, exploring how the time-old, intuitive mechanism of knotting could be a way to approach dynamics on a nanoscale.