Duston Wetzel

Artists

Duston Wetzel

Research Assistant, Ph.D. Candidate in Applied Physics

Southern Illinois University

Carbondale, Illinois, USA

https://www.instagram.com/wetzelsweaves/

Statement

I am a PhD. candidate at SIU in Carbondale IL, where Alan Schoen, discoverer of the gyroid, taught and lives. One day before class, my professor introduced us to the gyroid and asked us to consider how to build a large model. My initial thought was to build a skeleton out of its geodesics, which turn out to be very nearly perfect round helices. I twisted some wire and started tinkering with different methods of attaching spirals when I realized that I could wind three of one chirality together into a surprisingly stable trefoil knot. I wound more together and noticed that they repeat. I believe this method of construction is novel. I call this type of triply periodic helix linkage "wiroid" from wire and gyroid.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Minimally Entwined' — Minimally Entwined
46.0 x 46.0 x 46.0 cm
slinkies
2023

“Minimally Entwined" is a symmetric 3D arrangement of woven spirals. It is made of three slinkies, in metallic cyan, magenta, and yellow, each stretched and cut into 18 three wavelength springs, which were wound into place within a lattice of trefoil knots following a Laves graph. No two springs of one color intersect. The weave represents one chiral half of a double lattice which may be derived by rotating the helical geodesics of an approximated gyroid halfway about their axes and expanding their radii. Consider the possibilities for making a 3D material out of a 1D medium, like fabric and chain link fences are 2D materials made of 1D media. It could be a thick uniformly dense fabric or an easily constructed stiff building material.