Melissa Silk is co-director of STEAMpop, creative workshop facilitators presenting playful and unique making activities suitable for a variety of audiences including community, education and corporate. We design and provide unique hands on, transdisciplinary experiences demonstrating innovative methods of engaging with STEAM. Our experiences cater for all people interested in exploring new ways of integrating the Arts with STEM. We collaborate with exciting creators to develop high quality, imaginative STEAM experiences incorporating STEM concepts with the beauty of the handmade. Our projects are primarily paper-based and grounded in simple mathematical concepts. In this way we contribute to current research aligned with transdisciplinary learning and transformative experiences.
Looks
Marvellous Möbius - paper hats with a twist!
Model: Sasa Luboviz
Marvellous Möbius - paper hats with a twist!
Model: Ana Kypreos
Marvellous Möbius - paper hats with a twist!
Model: Asher Emdur
Marvellous Möbius - Momath 2023
Model: Cindy Lawrence
Marvellous Möbius - group of makers at Momath 2023
About the look
Marvellous Möbius
Paper
2023 onwards
Alluding to Serena Alagappan’s 2021 statement ‘an artist’s reverie and a mathematician’s feat’, these hats are made with the mysterious Möbius Strip. It’s that well-known mathematical object comprised of a looped surface with a single side and single edge. Here, many patterned paper strips with their odd number of half-twists, rejoined to form a loop, are combined to produce a marvellous collection of curves. Applied to an adjustable sculptural paper form that is worn as a hat, the curves are reminiscent of the Renaissance or a dandy day at the races!
The work is underpinned by plenty of rich explorations into broad ranging ideas encompassing both mathematics and art, architecture and design:
Non- Orientability – the property that distinguishes a Möbius strip from a two-sided loop.
The trihexaflexagon and its relationship with the trefoil Knot.
The ‘Turnover’ conveyor belt system.
Development of the ‘recycle’ symbol.
The unmistakable art of M.C. Escher and his 1963 woodblock print titled Mobius Strip 11, depicting eight red ants crawling along a three-dimensional figure eight representing a trellis like structure which is in fact Möbius.
The 1949 art essay of Max Bill in which Bill describes Möbius in terms of “the inexplicability of space - space that can stagger us by beginning on one side and ending in a completely changed aspect on the other, which somehow manages to remain that selfsame side”.
Danish designer Georg Jenson’s elegant and timeless MÖBIUS sterling silver bangle.
Highly prestigious A’ Design Award winners Kejun Li, Zhang Jiahua and Nitesh Narappa Re and their Mobius Lamp from 2019.
In Antony Gibbons Mobius House the Hempcrete Mobius strip forms part of the roof, exterior staircase and wall and sits over and adjacent to a circular glass structure.
Three or more hats will be made in various sizes to accommodate a range of models participating in the show. I suggest models simply wear black garments so as not to detract from the hats.
