Little Quadric Lights
Designers: Amanda Taylor Lipnicki and Megan Martinez
Artist: Amanda Taylor Lipnicki
Materials and Methods: Crocheted wool yarn, copper wire bent with jewelry tools, and string lights
Year of Creation: 2022
Little Quadric Lights was created by discretizing equations for quadric surfaces into crochet patterns. The mathematics involved calculations using level curves and arc length. We used arc length for determining the row number and circumference for determining the number of stitches in each row. The one exception is the hyperbolic paraboloid. For the hyperbolic paraboloid, we anchored the pattern around the \(\times\)-shaped linear level curves. We still used arc length along central parabolic curves to determine the row number, but the number of stitches was determined by arc length in addition to the scale of the part of the surface we wished to crochet. The crocheted surfaces were then reinforced and stuffed with string lights using copper wire and tools. The mathematics and patterns behind this art are joint work with Megan Martinez at Ithaca College.