Life on Earth begins with the simple seed of DNA, then after billions of years giraffes and peacocks appear.
So also the Crochet Reef is an exercise in evolutionary practice, slowly bringing into being an evolving ecology of handcrafted forms. Every crochet coral ‘reefer’ learns an initial seed – the simple algorithm “crochet ’n’ stitches, increase one; repeat….” designed by Dr. Taimina. Then, from this beginning, reef practitioners are encouraged to explore.
What if one changes the rate of increase? Going faster at first, then slower. Or vise versa: slow first, then fast? What kind of forms result from these no-longer-geometrically-pure algorithms? What if we crochet a form that’s more frilly on one side and less so on another? What if we change our rate of increase wildly; or don’t increase at all for a while? Each ‘genotype’ variation leads to new ‘phenotypes’ in the final models – often with surprising results. In effect we are collectively creating a taxonomy of woolen crochet ‘species.’
The Crochet Coral Reef is thus an on-going experiment – an exploration of what happens as we complexity the underlying code of stitch patterns that serves as the DNA of each form. As we generate new woolen ‘genes’, new morphologies ensue.
Over the course of the project, as new participants have joined, a rich taxonomy of crochet species has been brought into being, and this ever-evolving ecology parallels the process of Darwinian evolution. By branching out from Dr. Taimina’s mathematically pure surfaces, we crochet reefers “queer the code” charting a path out of pure geometry into a landscape of almost organic possibility.
