Duston Wetzel

Statement

I have been tinkering with stable arrangements of woven helices as a hobby since 2019. My initial inspiration was to model the approximately helical geodesics of Schoen’s gyroid. I have recently been inspired by Usineviciu, Gailiunas, and Martin. Including doubly periodic, triply periodic, and polyhedral variations, I am up to about fifty designs that I can physically model. My method involves winding wire around a rod and stretching the resulting helix to the correct pitch, cutting it into segments, and winding them into place. Here I display ten such arrangements in two series. The first series includes five new triply periodic helical weaves. The second series explores polyhedral variations on annular (ring-shaped) crossings.

Artworks

I am currently aware of at least twenty-five triply periodic helical weaves, and physical models of five I believe to be novel are displayed in this series. One has four axes and represents a Laves graph with double-link crossings. One has six axes and represents a diamond lattice with crossings which resemble Borromean rings (collaboration with Alexandru Usineviciu). One is like Strucwire but with three planar axes. One has repeated three-leaf clover crossings with one orientation. One has alternating layers with two axes. These are novel methods for creating three dimensional materials out of wire, exploiting screw symmetry and friction.

In addition to triply periodic helical weaves, I have explored arrangements of woven helices following the edges of polyhedra. This series of five corresponds to the Platonic solids, and features ring-shaped (annular) crossings on the vertices. Pieces similar to the cube and icosahedron here were displayed by Alexandru Usineviciu at Bridges in 2015, although I stumbled upon each of them independently. There is a simplicity to their construction and form that I find elegant.