Affinity Group Meeting
Textiles x Science
Saturday, April 3rd
12:00 PM ET/ 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM ET/ 11:30 PM PT
We will open our session with a talk entitled “Reflections on Textiles and Science, a personal search through fibers” from Maria Davila and Eduardo Portillo, textile artists who live and work in Merida,Venezuela and have been devoted for 38 years to textiles especially silk. Their work explores the relationship between people and landscape and in recent years they have approached the human geography of Merida by developing a body of work about an imagined Cosmos they found in this mountainous region of Venezuela. Eduardo and Maria studied silk processing, weaving, and silkworm breeding and genetics in China and India, and have established a silk farm alongside their weaving studio. Their expertise has led them to conduct extension teaching, and advising work about sericulture development projects in India and Andean countries.
We will also hear from three scientists on how they understand complex interactions through different lenses. Gustavo Facio-Silva, an epidemiologist-geneticist based at the University of Chicago is going to describe the technique of aligning threads in genome sequencing. Cindy Joe, an engineering physicist from Fermilab studies neutrinos, those really tiny particles thought to hold the key to mysteries of the universe and Matt Nelson, an evolutionary biologist, will talk about one of our favorite themes; collaboration, as he studies one of nature’s most prolific collaborators – lichens. These will be brief talks with a slide or two, just enough to keep us curious.
If you plan to attend, please contact group co-leader Maggie D’Aversa (margaret.daversa@gmail.com) for the Zoom link.
