For this week’s activity I used the outdoor space at the barn where my daughters have riding lessons. Some items took a few attempts for me to sketch, like the paver stone pattern, so I ended up cutting out the best representations and photographing them together at the end.
Sketching forced me to break apart the visual whole and figure out how the pattern worked, where it started and how the shapes fit together to progress it. This aligns with Sam Milner’s thoughts about dancing proofs in our video this week, “the proof takes time, dancing goes step-by-step rather than seeing it all at once. (Gerofsky, Milner, & Duque, 2019) I think this gave me greater understanding and greater appreciation. In the video Duque also mentions that by learning with patterns outside, on and with the land, "knowledge really comes with you; it doesn’t just stay in the classroom.” Noticing recently that transference of skills between subject areas and contexts (like using math in science) is an aspect that could be strengthened, I wonder if this (learning with the land and experiencing parts of the whole) could be key.
I found myself wanting a ruler when trying to draw the human-made objects - like I needed to measure, to get an exactness to the pattern. It is stark how much the grid that I read about this week in Gerofsky & Ostertag (2018) is very visually present in the human-made patterns. I think that my want of a ruler to get the visual grids “exact” links to the authors’ mention that “the grid is also intimately connected with a sensory bias toward the visual.” (p178) It looks “good” when it is exact and in-line. Knowing that grids are a colonial structure, I wonder if this is culturally embedded?
The natural patterns that I found and sketched were much more rotational rather than linear. The moss made a star pattern on top, that looked to rotate in layers underneath. The pine branch ended in 2 tips, and had bunches of paired needles that went around the branch. Both patterns still held linear aspects (the arms of the stars and the length on the needles) but rather than gridding they spinned. The oyster shell was interesting, because you could see ridges of growth outwards, but not in a radial symmetry, rather it was elongated on one axis. It also had the least linear lines - moving out in waves or ripples.
Another thing that occurred to me while making and observing, was that it would be fun to explore these patterns through print-making. Except for the shell, there is a basic unit to each pattern. In the paver walkway it is one rectangular shape that it used. In the chair wave it is a rectangle and a square. In the dog ball, a pentagon and a hexagon. In the moss a star, and in the pine branch a pairing of needles. If one were to design a stamp in these shapes, they could make patterns by repeating and reorienting the stamped shapes.
Wonderful! What interesting patterns you chose to sketch -- I wouldn't have thought of the radial pattern at the end of a pine branch, or the tiny, beautiful patterns of moss. Inspiring! I love your observations of the geometry of oyster shells. It's great that you are making connections with the viewing of Dancing Euclidean Proofs too!
ReplyDeleteI hope that the thinking about grids and colonial systems is something that raises awareness, rather than posing a good/ bad binary. Grids are very useful as organizational and thinking tools, and carry interesting cultural values too. But -- they are not the only way to think and be, far from it! I hope that this awareness will carry with it an opening to working with both grid and non-grid structures, in some kind of harmonic relationship with each other. I think of the Reconciliation Pole at UBC, where the carvers have two canoes in parallel (an Indigenous and a mainstream manufactured one). They move forward together, in communication with one another.