NODES—Net tOpologies and Dance Explorations

In 2019 Sigrid Adriaenssens, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Form Finding Lab, visual artist Janet Echelman and I began collaborating on what has become a multifaceted, multidisciplinary project intersecting many forms of engineering, dance, sculpture, geometry, topology, rigging, performance, and circus. With funding support from the Office of the Dean of Research at Princeton for Collaborations between Artists and Engineers we launched “NODES—Net tOpologies and Dance Explorations,” a research intensive of dance and engineering experiments to generate new understandings of how different net topologies rigidify when loaded and soften when unloaded. We were joined by William Baker, consulting partner at SOM; Tian Yu Princeton Post-Doctoral student; Andrew Sageman-Furnas, a mathematician with speciality in geometry/topology and mechanics of textile/polymer networks; Canadian dancers Gillian Seaward Boone, Leah Skerry, and Lydia Zimmer; James Leonard, rigger and producer; Jessie Wayburn, documentation and stage management; and Mark DeChiazza, advisor to Creative X, a new group of faculty working to foster collaboration between artists, scientists and engineers. The week was a remarkable coming together of questions and experiences, where each disciplinary perspective informed, supported and inspired new approaches in art and engineering. It was invigorating and restorative.

Photos: Jessie Wayburn