Join keynote speaker Margaret Wertheim in this 2-hour hands-on session. This workshop is a perfect follow-up to her Mathematics as Material Play speech and to the Conversation session with her held earlier, however it is not mandatory to have attended these two previous sessions to enjoy the workshop.

We have created a world of recti-linearity: The rooms we inhabit, the skyscrapers we work in, and the streets we drive on speak to us in straight lines. But outside our boxes, nature teems with swooping and crenellated forms. From the curling structures of corals and kelps to the frilled surfaces of lettuces and cacti, nature has a love affair with hyperbolic geometry – an alternative to the Euclidean variety we learn about in school. Yet while nature has been playing with hyperbolic forms for millions of years, human mathematicians spent centuries trying to prove they were impossible. The discovery of this "pathological" geometry ushered in a revolution that led to the mathematics underlying general relativity and thus the structure of spacetime. In this delightful interdisciplinary event, Margaret Wertheim will introduce hyperbolic mathematics and lead a hands-on workshop in which participants get to construct their own hyperbolic models out of paper. All materials supplied. No prior experience needed.

Similar workshops have been held at: Hayward Gallery (London), Art Center College of Design (Pasadena), Brown University (RI), University of Technology Sydney, Music Center (Los Angeles), Mount Wilson Observatory (Pasadena) and many other places.