Cummulus_1664 is a cashmilon crochet surface prototype conceived as a multiplicity of catenary structures that hang from one another in a cascade that escalates by following the progression of subdivisions 0001-0002-0004-0008-0016-0064-1024. Cummulus_1664 follows the principle by which a surface hanging from another introduces a geometrical asymmetry that is only neutralized by the dominance of the gravitational forces that are embedded in the system as an undivided whole. Cummulus_1664 attempts both at preserving and at exaggerating this asymmetry from the behavior of the whole, firstly by fixing and secondly by increasing local curvilinearity through the systematic introduction of points in a crochet.
Under such premise, a simple crochet proliferation technique is used, on the one hand, as a means through which an over-determined surface curvature is geometrically constructed and materially ensured. The technique consists of a series of local proliferations of points, going from one to two at those instances where the surface curvature changes beyond the stretching capability of a textile, using material excess to control curvature differentials with precision. Increments in the number of points at each line of the crochet enable an increase in the length of a line as it curves along its trajectory within a surface, in such a way that the textile is indirectly controlled in its global curvature via cumulative local proliferations.
On the other hand, the proliferation pattern is not only used as a means of geometric control but also as a seed to paradoxically lose control through the same means that enable control, thus engendering a consistent mechanism of expression and nonlinear behavior. The exaggeration of curvature via the excessive increment of points in turn produces the emergence of local wrinkles and their distribution across the surface in a consistently variable manner. Such increment is exploited to engender a variety of traits and to articulate an overall cloud-like effect through the control of density. Counter-intuitive rigidity to deformation is produced at a local level, working against any gravitational intuition.
Cummulus_1664 projects a number of resemblances to well-known natural formations – broccolis, cauliflowers, brains, wombs, intestines, turbulences, etc, but beyond this, it brings about an irreducible semblance of geometric exuberance, thus working as an abstract means of resonance and proliferation of meanings. Cummulus_1664 is designed to occupy the central space of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Denver, in the context of the exhibition ‘Energy Effects, Arts and Artifacts from the Landscape of Glorious Excess’. Its occupation reduces such abstract spectrum to a single slippery figure that, under the incidence of natural light, overwhelms the space from above with an intangible, warm, dense atmosphere.
