Eva Knoll
Eva Knoll has always had an interest in both mathematics and the visual arts, including crafts. The manifest intention of her research-based art practice is to educate the audience about the accessibility of mathematical ideas through creation and aesthetic appreciation. Her work involves exploring and learning the techniques inherent to specific art or craft practices, using an experiential approach with a reflective-crafting methodology focusing on mathematical aspects of the practice: Eva finds and poses mathematical problems emerging from the constraints of the craft practice and presents the solutions through artwork, in a way that makes them an explicit, integral part of the results.
"7-8 Interference Pattern on 3-1-1-3 Twill" is made of mercerised cotton. It was created using a 3-1-1-3 pointed twill pattern in both directions. The pattern has a repeat of 8 threads in the straight twill structure [3+1+1+3]. In pointed twill, the repeat is of 14 [2x(3+1+1+3-1)] since the last thread of a set is the same as the first of the next. The piece shows the optical illusion produced when the color respects the period of the straight twill and the tie-up respects the pointed twill: the coloring repeats as 8 black-8 yellow. As 8 and 7 are coprime, the diagonal effect of the pointed twill falls on the color change in a different way at each repeat, creating the elusive diagonal-square pattern that appears to hover above the cloth.