 Dr. Noel holds a PhD from Penn State University, a master's of science from MIT, B. Arc from Howard University and a diploma in civil engineering from Trinidad and Tobago. She's been a researcher and educator at Georgia Tech, Penn State, the Singapore University of Technology and Design and MIT and has practiced as an architect in the U.S., India and Trinidad and Tobago. So without further ado, I'd love to give Vernal Noel a warm welcome and we'll sit back and enjoy her talk, The Mathematics of Wirebending. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction, Sabita. All right, let me share my screen now so I can see my screen, right? Good. Yeah. All right. Nice. So because of the program, I was excited to use it with mathematics, right? In my presentation and I look forward to hearing from you all and the wonderful discussions that we'll have after this, right? So this is what I want to share with you today. As Sabita mentioned in my research, my work, I look into traditional craft, ways of making as well as digital and automated practices and how these things intersect with society, right? And so just I always ask the question or lay it on the table so that we're all clear when I talk about computational design. All it means is I'll using algorithms, systems, rule-based approaches to analyzing design, creating design or making design, right? It might include or it might not include digital technologies and the computer. And so I started off with the question of shape and what we call shapes and I say we as designers. So you all as mathematicians, you all are going to tell me something different, right? So I look forward to that discussion. But how we think of shapes as these elements in space, they could be points, lines, solids, et cetera. But they have size, they have position and we can speak to or describe them around coordinate systems. So we know what shapes are, right? And in computational design, we may add shapes, subtract, transform shapes. And within the language of geometry and how we use geometry and design, there's translations, there's rotation, reflection, glide reflection, and many more might learn from your scaling, et cetera, as two-dimensional, not to mention three-dimensional transformations that we might carry out on shapes, right? And one of the sort of foundation computational methods in my field is that of shape grammars developed by George Steini and James Gibbs, both mathematicians. No, Steini was a mathematician, Gibbs was, I think, a computer scientist. And it's a way of calculating design with shapes. Like I mentioned, you can use it to analyze design, describe design, create design. And what I will share with you today is how I'm using an approach to the mathematics of shapes to document a particular dying craft practice, which you will know is wire bending, right? And shape grammars consist of rules and steps. So rules that describe operations with left hand, right hand side, and computations, meaning documenting of one's steps. So before going into wire bending, I must give you the context in which this craft sits because without the context, the importance of the craft does not hit home, right? And so it starts here with the Trinidad Carnival. Many of you might be familiar with Carnival. If you're not, I hope to introduce you to it. But the Trinidad Carnival is about creativity and innovation. So French planters introduced Carnival to Trinidad in the 1780s. And although Africans, because we had slavery in Trinidad. And so although Africans engaged in Carnival festivities during their enslavement, after slavery was abolished in 1834, they reinvented the Carnival to express their creativity, their freedom, their aesthetic sensibilities, and to claim their humanity in the face of a system that considered them less than human, right? While for Europeans, Carnival was about fun and frolic. For those of African descent, it was religion. It was a form of psychological release of tensions and from domination, segregation, these violent systems of control. This is an engraving from 1888 of Carnival celebrations in the capital city of Port of Spain. And when I use the term Trinidad Carnival, it doesn't define this geographic location, but instead its origin and the main elements that define the Carnival. The three elements defining the Trinidad Carnival are one, mass or masquerade, that's a design part, calypso or soca, which is all music or rhythms, and the steel pan, which was invented in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1930s by the African working class from discarded oil drummers. And this Carnival has spread to more than 70 countries, regions around the world, in the US, the UK, Canada, to name a few, and other Caribbean islands. So Carnival is a space of joy, creativity, celebration, education. I often think of or Carnival, especially in the past as our internet of the time. This is an image of George Bailey's presentation he called Back to Africa in 1957. And this sort of public engagement in making and designing these costumes, public education by spectators being part of this presentation, storytelling of biblical futures, real past, real histories, imagined futures, all of this took place in Carnival. We also have innovations, additional innovations, I should say, happening in Carnival. This is in 1984, Peter Menchel and his band Kallelu, where here he introduced the use of fiberglass rods inserted into fabric to create what we will call textile hybrid costuming. But in addition to creativity, it has a form of the site of innovation. It's also about community. It's about making together, expressing creativity together and celebrating together. At mass camps, which are the places that people make costuming, perform, test how these costumes behave, choreographed dances, etc. Sing. People come together to make, there are feelings of interactions and family closeness, feelings of family bonding and friendship, while people design, make, cook, eat, drink, listen to music, all of these things happening in shared spaces and within competitions, because it's highly competitive, but all of this takes place within that frame of competition. There's mentoring and cooperation with people mentioning feeling wanted and secure in these spaces, being taught how to respect the arts and respect the artists, having the ability to ask for advice with problems that they may be having. And it's also about engagement. Although design and making incarnate world is of itself a form of community engagement, all of the wirebenders I spoke with, including designers, they, most if not all, initiated and organized events in their communities. So mothers day events, fathers day events, football competitions, as they said, to keep their community together. So all of these elements are intertwined in the history and practices of making in the culture of Trinidad Carnival. In addition to costumes that I showed earlier, we also have these large structures that are decorated and performed in the carnival. We call them kings and queens of carnival. I call them dancing sculptures so that I could define them, right? And one of the craft practices integral to the design and fabrication of these artifacts, these large architectures you see here is the craft of wirebending. Wirebending began in the 1930s in Carnival and then it wire fiberglass rods, cane, linear rod materials are bent and shaped to create these large structures for performance. These large structures often express they may tell stories of society, politics, the environment, you name it, and there are expressions of creativity, innovation, and technical skill. This is an image of Stephen Derrick, a wirebender who has since passed away, but this is an image of him performing that craft of wirebending. Historically, this is a photo from 1969. Historically, wirebending is a male dominated practice, which figures in the way I treat entree into the practice, let's say, right? And so my interrogation into carnival began because I was noticing these aesthetic changes happening in our carnival and one of the things I found out during this time was the disappearance or the impending disappearance of this particular craft. And this disappearance, if it were to disappear, then it is a sign of all that I've shown before disappearing. So a loss of history, heritage, community engagement, mentoring, and cooperation. All of this is tied to the craft and tied to people's creativity, their innovation, and their fight for freedom. Some of the issues occurring in the craft and other crafts around the world include little to no documentation of the practice, as many times craft is tacit and unwritten and taught by these lengthy apprenticeships, to a slow transmission of these knowledges, three dying practitioners, I so far lost four of my informants since I've started this study, and changing practices happening due to, you know, global and technological changes. But this is important because this craft is embedded in historical, social, and political frames. It's disappearance signals the erasure of histories of celebration, resistance against oppression and more. Two, because this knowledge is tied to practitioners, so that when they pass away, they take that knowledge with them, making it even more difficult, more challenging to pass this culture and pass this knowledge on to others. And three, because research has shown a strong link between the quality of one's craftsmanship and its relationship to one's ties to society, so good craftsmanship, strong ties to a community. We craftsmanship, weaker ties to a community. So now when it comes to how I use, let's say shape grammars, what I showed you before to attempt to unpack this mathematics of wirebending, I developed the Bailey-Derek grammar. It's a computational tool to document, to aid in documenting and transmitting wirebending knowledge. I'll show you how I'm using shapes to document this dying practice. So this is another image of Stephen Derek performing wirebending. And part of this process involved working with them, observing what they were doing, taking many photos, sketches, etc. But these are beginning drawings of my documenting of the ways that they were connecting materials, the materials that were being used. And I would use these things to ask questions of why certain moves were being made, right? And further development of it included sort of finding a vocabulary, categorizing the materials that were being used, categorizing or using symbols, operations, and rules to describe what was happening, spatial relations that was happening within this craft, to make this tacit embodied knowledge in wirebending explicit. On the left is Stephen Derek. On the right, my sort of analytical categorizing representations of the technical, nature, technical knowledge of the practice. And so this involved developing a vocabulary for the practice based on what I saw at the side, what was being used, and developing rules for how certain connections were to be made, the materials that were being used, parameters that would be involved in the practice. So the grammar has about 50 something steps and it continues to grow. So there is no stopping to it because as I learn and change and test certain things, it continues to grow. These are more images of some of the rules describing the craft of wirebending and I'll show you some more of it. It also describes steps, so how one goes about making certain connections within the craft, this way by it being explicit, this could be shared with others. This is an example of a particular rule, the steps involved in making that rule, and here I show an onsite image of that particular connection that wirebenders made. This is another image showing a particular step in that craft, him hammering the end of an aluminum rod and above the step which shows how that happens, the beginning shape, what we start with, and the ending shape. Another example here of another connection and the steps involved in making that particular collection using aluminum rods. And so the Bailey Derek grammar which I named after Albert Bailey and Stephen Derek, it computationally describes technical knowledge in wirebending, it's a series of drawings that describe the materials, the steps and the techniques in wirebending, allowing for analysis, transmission of these expertise for education and practice. This is Albert Bailey and Stephen Derek who I named the grammar after. This is an example of how it can be used to externalize knowledge so that these rules are less tied to practitioners, seeing that they are passing away and retiring from the practice, it facilitates documentation and the recording of the design and making process and shed light on the computational dimensions of the practice, opening it up for further inquiry. So after developing the grammar, yes I made this thing that I could hypothesize that this is how it might work but we want to test it. So I conducted workshops to test on the ground really what happens when this grammar is deployed. So I had workshops and in the workshop there would be in teams of three or four, it was done with art students and art teachers and in the first round of it they would make something using wirebending materials and they would have to communicate that to another team without them seeing the artifact. And in the second round I would teach them the grammar and then we would do it again so that we could compare the before and after. So this involved teaching them sort of the theory or the technical knowledge behind the craft, how the materials were used, why connections were made, etc. Then I would spend time teaching them the practical, so how to bend, how to hold tools, etc. to make their connections with practice for a bit. This is them using the grammar and before using the grammar there were conflicting standards and instructions so this is their reporting on what was happening before. They felt a lack of knowledge or understanding what was happening, there was poor craftsmanship as you can see in the images missing information and feelings have a lack of confidence of what they might do. However after learning the grammar there was now an agreed standard for communication, craftsmanship improved, they were able to replicate artifacts and there was an increased confidence in what they might do using wire bending. In these images the artifact on the left is the original, the artifact on the right a copy using only the grammar or the notes and we see that replication is happening so that was great. But one of the coolest things happening from this was this new collaborative approach to the craft. So currently wire bending because we don't have many wire benders it's one person to one or many artifacts right but because we now have the grammar multiple people could participate in making this artifact or artifact but they could collaborate in this particular craft. It reinforces the thoughts of mentoring and cooperation with people being able to engage by documentation, analysis, fabrication, assembly. This collaborative approach to the craft was very very appealing to participants. So now in addition to the grammar develop ways that we might introduce computers and other forms of technology into the craft. The craft is male dominated like I mentioned and currently there's no space or place for those who might be techno conscious or interested in digital fabrication to participate. So I wanted to open up a space for women, children, physically informed, those who are missing from their practice to be able to engage. So I developed three ways including the Billy Derek grammar way that others might participate. So the second way of crafting fabrication uses a CNC wire bender and digital design software. Digital crafting involves digital design and fabrication software that I developed 3D printing as well as all that they could before right. So these new ways of engaging and these are images of so I did this as a class at Georgia Tech. These are images of some of the artifacts that students were able to make. So this is using the Billy Derek grammar and hand tools. Here using a CNC machine, the grammar and hand tools and here using speculative software for design fabrication and everything that I showed you before right. So these different ways of making artifacts using linear rod materials. More images of some of the works that students were able to make. And so through this project, it was important that demonstrate that students could learn computation, mathematical thinking, computational thinking, designing with shapes, calculating shapes through this craft of wire bending and vice versa. They could learn wire bending through these computational approaches to the craft. As an architect, have to test this at the architectural scale. And so we wanted to, we built up a brilliant because we wanted to find out what wire bending techniques might be able to tell us about architecture and vice versa. So based on that grammar that I showed previously because we now had this abstract description, we could play with different spatial relations of possible connections and tectonics and test them structurally. So test their performance, how they would behave and the compression and the tension, etc. But new languages became possible because of this grammar. This is an image of the pavilion that we made. This is another image of it. And here are some images of some drawings of new rules that resulted from that experiment. From building that pavilion, you were able to learn new things to create additional rules for the grammar. So it continues to grow, like I mentioned. And then we also explored using it in active bending structures. And active bending structures are structures that use the behavior of materials to make design. This, the image I showed on the left, that's an example of an active bending structure fiberglass rods and how they behave with with textiles. They are able to shape and form themselves. And so pulling from that and the structure of the previous pavilion, we made another one because we had to enter lightweight structures competition in Barcelona, Spain. So here my students and I making we made several scale the prototypes of these fiberglass structures that were made out of large circles that we folded and twisted. On the right that there we are installing our pavilion in Barcelona. On the left, that's our entire pavilion coiled up in a drum case, which made it convenient for transport because we had to fly from the US to Spain with our structure. This is a picture of of our finished sort of experiment of the structure. And what we wanted to achieve with this project was bringing traditional crafts, cultural practices, visual computation, how we can broaden the design space, how we could uplift low tech, tell cultural practices and open up all field for participation by people, cultures and knowledges that are currently missing. So our project sought to integrate structure, material and culture so that they're all considered concurrently. And when it comes to my personal explorations with the craft as I continue to practice it, these are images of some of the artifacts that I've made, sharing this one, these with you, a few of them with you. And I love lines in every way. And so apart from the artifact, what I really love are the interactions with light and shadow, right? So on the right, on the left is the artifact and the right my exploration of their interactions with light and shadow. More images here. This is the structure for a boat that's a better we'll know well, that we made for an exhibition on the left, the structure for the boat and the right it after it's been sort of the skin has been placed on it. This is a sculpture that I did recently for an exhibition. I call this we are invisible. It was, it's supposed to speak to sort of violence and gender based violence in our society. And in addition to making these artifacts, I made speculative software that allows me to engage with the craft in different ways. And these are drawings that have been produced based on using that software which re-describes surfaces using lines. These are a few images of that. And I think that's it pretty much just sharing with you how this one in investigation into this dying practice, different ways of creating multiple representations and ways of engaging with it, not only for practice, but for education and how we educate multiple publics with this craft. All right, so I thank you very much. Absolutely beautiful talk for now. I guess we should open the floor up to questions. There's so much to think about. So I guess if you have your hand raised, please, or please just unmute yourself and jump right in. So you're an anthropologist too. Sorry, my wife who is sick of math talks is an anthropologist. So she would have loved this in addition to me loving it obviously. Okay, good. Yes. I have a quick question which is I think, first of all, I just want to say thank you for a spectacular talk. It was really amazing, really inspiring. I wonder if you could sort of, your discussion reminded me of the context of various practices of making being dismissed as technological or as innovative because of various either raced or gendered norms, right? They're being done by people who don't look like the people we associate with creating technology or creating. And I was just wondering if you wanted to speak to that context. I know Sabeta has done work in these contexts as well, thinking about different practices that are not recognized as mathematics or not recognized as computation because of this. And so I was just wondering, you know, that seemed like a thread running through this and I wonder, do you want to just elaborate on that? Sure, absolutely. So the name of my lab is after a framework I developed in particular for my field, but I, you know, I believe its application runs beyond my field and generally for research, which is around, you know what, let me pull it up. Hold on. Hold on. I'll answer your question. Let me just pull this up for you. Good thing about having a million different slides in your slide there. All right, here we go. Let me just share quickly. All right, you're seeing this? Yeah. Yeah, okay. And I call what I call this situated computations. Let me just pull the entire screen. And it's an approach to my field, which definitely privileges certain people and knowledges, but it asks that we ground our tools or technologies or methods, etc. in the social world by acknowledging the historical, cultural, and material context of our field of designing and making that would include mathematics. And it responds to our settings, social and technological infrastructures, and refuses to remain ignorant of social and political structures that shape them. And currently it involves eight principles, right? But that has been a guiding sort of framework that has resulted from the works that I've done and to situate my future approaches to how I engage with my field and the communities that I engage with. Does that answer your question, Chad? It does, and it leads to a lot of different thinking. Thank you for those slides. And will it be possible to share these slides with us? I think so. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, you're welcome. One question from Chad, that is, can you please explain what visual computation is? Thanks, Chad. Really, all it is is computing, computing with shapes. And it is, it does privilege the visual, all right, because as designers, like we're looking for, we're creating shapes, we're looking for embedding, what we perceive, and how we use, how shapes intersect, etc. So it's really computing with the things that we see, really, that's what it is. And it doesn't need computers, pen and paper, you could do visual computing. I hope that answered your question. Just calculating the shapes. I had a question. You showed somebody reproducing a work from the instructions, the grammar that you developed. And you showed sort of the individual steps. Do you, do you have like, you know, the whole, what does it look like, the instructions to produce one of those works? I'm imagining something like instructions for making origami or something. Can you share something like that? Good question. So they're usually consists of shapes and words, right? So it's not just shapes, like we could make another round, and probably it'd be all around shapes, but usually it's shapes and words to make things clearer. I didn't did not have any of that in my slides. What I did show you was my computations for making an object. And for parts that are pretty repetitive, you know, just use dot, dot, dot, we kind of get the point. But yeah, for me, the, that description, those instructions, I find the beautiful, but they take so much time. But I do, I do love them, I do love them. Yeah, but they do take time. Just there's one quick follow on from the previous question that didn't make it in chat before the second question got asked. So she's also asking, what is speculative software? Okay, good question. So the speculative software, which I didn't really get to, it's a tool that I scripted, right? Using Python in Rhino, so in Rhino script, to explore from Rhino new ways that we might represent lines and use lines in designs. All it is, it's a tool that I developed. And that, in addition to being used for design and fabrication, the output of that is what I also play with to produce the drawing. So it's speculative in that it's not, it's something I'm playing with and creating on the fly. Remy has a stand up. Hi, thank you very much for the talk. I had a question. So you describe the set of rules and you explain us how it can be used to transmit knowledge. But sometimes also you can use rules to create new patterns like when you use serial automaton or certain fractals like L system was kind of things. So if that's something you explored from your rules, try to generate new shapes that people would not have thought of. Absolutely. Yes, Remy. So if I had more time today, what I wanted to do was sort of explore those scale, rotate all of these different operations and what different spatial relations would occur for you all. I didn't get along to that. However, in the pavilion, those new tectonics I showed you, all of those were because we had these new rules. How might we change these rules using different operations to test what some possibilities for tectonics might be? So yes, you are right. There's another question in chat. Would there be any way to incorporate the use of fabrics in the grammar as well? So my answer would be yes, because the answer is only yes, right? But I think it would be something different because the grammar is specific to let's say the state of the grammar is specific to linear rod connections. And when it comes to using fabric and planes, right, that is an entirely different sort of structural description, right? So structurally, in my mind, there are two different things that can emerge from the wire bending part of it. It would just be different. I hope you know what I mean, right? It's different materials, they perform differently, planes behave differently from lines. So that's the thought that's happening in the mind around the use of fabric. I would say additional geometry could be an entirely different parameter, whether you're using planes and lines, you're using planes alone, you're using planes and planes, you're using planes and solids, like all of those explorations could be had, for sure. Another question in chat. You spoke about how Trinidad Carnival has spread to other parts of the world. Have you looked at if and how wire bending has spread and or evolved with the spreading? So there are other types of wire bending. So I've seen wire bending from Mexico and I see just seen, meaning I saw an artifact. Then another friend bought for me wire bent artifacts from Uganda, I believe they make these amazing toys, helicopters and cars using wire and their descriptions are different. My description is specific to the Trinidad Carnival. I've only had the resources to explore that because research costs money. And so I have not had the resources to explore wire bending in these other regions, honestly. There's a question from Glenn Whitney as well, if he's still around. Yeah, I'm here. Yes, thank you so much for sharing so much food for thought and so much beauty. I was specifically wondering when I saw the pieces that you had done where you incorporated some 3D printing. I saw, for example, it looked like a hexagonal or a six way junction where wires could come in and be held in place by the 3D printed components. I was curious whether you'd had the opportunity to take some of these items, some of these, the new components and show them, share them with traditional practitioners of the craft to get the reaction like, oh, what have you done? This is not wire bending or oh, wow, I wish I had that 30, like have you gotten that kind of back and forth? Yeah, so yes and no. So the grammar I took back, like it's really important of repatriating these knowledges, right? So the grammar I've been able to take back to the wire benders and the reception has been, oh, this is great. Some have even said, oh, I know how I could use this, like this could help me even in my practice, right? And they understood it, right? I haven't had the opportunity to test it with them. I tested it with students and teachers and this is just time and everything as the realities of underground research, right? But regard to the 3D printed parts, I haven't gotten, again, resources to be able to test that in the context of Trinidad and Tobago. However, that particular way of engaging with the practice was the least favorite of my students and they said that it was because they no longer had the opportunity to manipulate material and improvise with the materials and how they behaved, it felt like I made this thing, I put them together and that's it. So it took away from the experiential nature of the practice. How I do intend to use them though, I want to have another experiment with that when things open up, hopefully I'm able to do that. But I do have an idea for how I want to use those 3D printed parts when it comes to tectonics and wire bending. We have another question in chat. Actually, we've got a couple, but the first one was did wire bending evolve from basket weaving? I don't think so. Maybe answers I do not know, but I don't think so because it's not necessarily woven. It's more creating a framework for decoration, etc. So my answer would be no, but crowd people see things and get ideas. There's another question. Did you have any issues with people using the grammar? Could the use of this grammar be a replacement for the traditional apprenticeships to get into the craft? I love this question. I get it all the time and I love this question every time. So my answering of it depends on its value and what is valued. So the main problem at this time is that this craft is dying. With this dying craft, the important things that are being lost are communities coming to make together, histories being lost, these opportunities for mentoring and cooperation. So it's beyond the actual thing that's being made. It's not about the thing, it's about what the thing facilitates. It's not about the product, it's about what the grammar and being able to work together facilitates. So someone else might make an artifact, but it's not about the artifact as the point. If communities are becoming defragmented and these rich social things are disappearing, that's the important part. And so that's my answer to the question. It's not about the thing, but what the thing facilitates, which are these social interactions and sharing of histories and knowledges and community. Rebecca has her hand up. Hi, I was wondering, seeing the pictures of the dancing sculptures and then the wire bending, would it be fair to call a lot of the wire bending sort of armatures that other things get attached to? Yes, I would say yes. Armatures that things get attached to movement, right, depending on how they attach, they allow movement, rotation of certain parts, etc. And another part of my desire for the practice is that we are able to have different aesthetics where the craft itself is the thing that can stand out. So if we were to remove the decorations, like there is an opportunity to showcase those beautiful tectonics that are happening in the craft. But I would say yes. Armature to some degree, although in the lightweight pavilion that I showed, right, we had no skin on that, that in of itself to answer the fabric question, that was a whole, that's a time to figure out that we just couldn't figure it out. So, but how that material behaves with textiles, like that's another question, right, continued figuring out. I just want to mention Jayadev, I saw, you know, Brian Lara, yes, he's one of my favorite cricketers. My favorite cricketer of all time. Artists in technical disciplines, right, I mean. Yes, yes, yes. Right, we've got a couple more questions in chat. So one is a follow up to the previous questions. Have you followed how your tools have impacted the wire bending crafting community? Have you seen more women becoming involved? Have you noticed a bit of a revival in the community? Thanks for that question. So there is no real community because of the dying of practitioners and we don't have a system for passing on the knowledge in schools or anything, right? However, in the course, in actually the two workshops I had and the class that I taught, it was majority women participants, right, women and females. And so I think that's a good sign for how it opens up different ways of participating and who participates. So I can't speak to Trinidad itself because that culture is the thing I'm trying to address that we are losing that culture. We have people who bend, but we don't have a system for creating a culture of wire bending. So that's my answer to your question. There's another question. Have wire and fiber glass always been used since the beginning or did the practice start with other materials? Good question. So fiberglass was a new introduction I feel in the 1980s because fiberglass is like an industrial made material. So before we would use wire, we would use cane or reeds, right, because kind of all is all about using affordable, easy at hand materials. And in the 1980s, Peter Minchell introduced fiberglass rods in his costuming and that was used by other wire benders as, oh, this is another linear rod material that has behavior. How might we use this in wire bending? So I have sort of a two part question for you. So I guess the first part is about, I guess, like the sort of commutivity of the steps in your grammar, like how much is there like a time component to it? And then I guess the second question is, I guess, so Glenn often leads these large scale builds, which require oftentimes people to make like small units and then join them together into something big. So I guess the question then would be if there isn't too much time dependence to the process, can you build sort of community out of making like large sculptures where everyone participates? I think that sounds like a great idea. Yeah, because, you know, we have these rules and whether we choose rules or people choose rules and materials, we could communicate how or what we're making. I think for sure that could be done. So your first question about time when it comes to documenting the rules or the steps that it takes for, I think some steps could be made shorter, right? If they are repetitive. But that speaks to how we document our heritage because we do not do a good job of documenting our heritage. And that's just a matter of resources that we have, space, time and all these things. But being able to document our heritage to learn from it, create new innovations from it and have those for passing knowledge on is important. And this is why that role of documentation is another way that people can participate in the craft. So I might not engage in wirebending, but I could be the one who documents the steps as we go along, right? So I can't speak to the exact time. I can't give you an estimate because it might vary on the connections and how things are done. But thank you. Are there more questions? I haven't seen anything come in chat in the last couple of minutes. But if there's anyone else who has a question, feel free to unmute yourself and ask. I heard that Linux doesn't have a hands up button. So please just jump right in. We've got about five minutes left. So if we have like one or two more questions, that'd be perfect. I'm curious a little bit about the role of sort of experimentation in the grammar and whether it sort of facilitates it. Because it seems like the kind of thing where very small changes at the local level could like really change the overall structure. And so it is like, is that sort of the kind of experimentation that this sort of speculative software allowed one to do? Or really, is it something that you want to build a bunch of different ways and see what happens? Yeah. So just having the grammar gave people the feeling of freedom to explore what possibilities might be. Because then they had a starting point and they could try different ways. The software, the way I'm thinking of using it, like I mentioned, I'll test that out. But the software students found constraining. It did not give them the freedom when it comes to the material part of the practice, the actual making. Like they enjoyed the act of manipulating materials and improvising. They felt that the tool constrained them. But I want to explore ways of breaking that up a little bit so that it feels or we test it being something that also gives freedom. So those are the 32 lessons, learning lessons a little bit so far. A couple more questions from chat. One, could you explain what the word tectonics means? Good question. The tectonics, let me say my architectural writing memory palace. When we say tectonics in architecture, what we mean are how materials come together. So a tectonic could be the different ways that people install bricks, right? And a sort of argument I'm making with this, the pavilion that I showed you is one of tectonics that celebrate specific contexts and regions. So when I say tectonics here, all I mean is how these different materials come together so that we could build structures. So that's what tectonics means. Thank you. The other question is, can you talk more about the boat? So the boat, so which part of the boat? So Beta who contacted me, this is regarding to Mathemalchemi, right? And an exhibition and they wanted a boat built for part of that exhibition. And it was the first time I built something that was not small or was not big. It was kind of a medium size. And bending with wire, it's quite a feat because it's aligned. It's not like a plane that gives you some structure. It's a line that could go out of alignment. It's interesting. But yeah, they are used CNC machine to bend certain curves the best way I can and using the materials in wire bending, which is primarily tape that's used to keep wires together and materials together. And then we had the skinny boat. So Beta and I spoke about it. Beta and I talked about leather. We picked what I think is the most beautiful color in the world to skin it. And it ended up being sort of weaving a leather skin around that structure. But that's the boat that's currently being exhibited. One last question. Is that CNC wire bender a commercial product or a homebrew? It's a commercial product. It's built by built by Pencilab, P-E-N-S-A Pencilab. Yeah. And they have two times. They have a cheaper one, which is 4,000 something and a more expensive one, which is 20 something thousand dollars. I guess I'll ask a quick follow on how much of your students work is the practice of them bending the wires with their hands since you said they really like the interaction and how much of it is using the computational tools, which you seem to say they didn't like so much? Yeah. So each process lasted about a week. So the first two processes, let's say included bending my hand because what the machine does, it helps with the thicker and harder wires. So it helps with the, when it comes to labor intensive part there. So that is still hands on. So two thirds of their learning process and the Pavilion was all, we had no 3D printing or anything for the Pavilion. It was all using hand or the CNC wire bender. So my students now have very strong wrists and hands. Yeah. This has been absolutely incredible. Thank you for your talk and all of your insight into the melding of these sort of technological grammar, like the construct of it with the culture of it. And I think that's a lesson that we in mathematics should not forget as well. So you've been a fantastic example for us and we should take more of your ideas to heart. Thank you, Bernal. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I guess for everyone else, we have a 15 minute break and then we have the next show and ask session. So I guess for those of you who don't know, it's basically a session where participants show an object and sort of ask questions about it or about their product process and the audience will also ask questions. So please join us for that. It is in Dave Bachman's workshop link, which hopefully someone will post in the chat. And if not, I can do that in a minute. But I guess everyone should get up, stretch, get a glass of water and then come back. But thank you so much, Bernal. That was fascinating. Thank you. I will love you.