# Wirebending

**URL:** <https://forum.patternclub.org/t/wirebending/405>\
**Category:** Catalog\
**Created:** [16 January 2022 14:05 UTC](https://forum.patternclub.org/t/wirebending/405 "2022-01-16T14:05:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![yaxu](https://forum.patternclub.org/user_avatar/forum.patternclub.org/yaxu/32/3_2.png) [@yaxu](https://forum.patternclub.org/u/yaxu)\
**Post date:** [16 January 2022 14:05 UTC](https://forum.patternclub.org/t/wirebending/405/1 "2022-01-16T14:05:06Z")

</div>

Here’s a really interesting talk that includes wirebending craft for Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival, captured as the Bailey-Derek grammar based on [Stiny’s approach to shape](https://forum.alpaca.lurk.org/t/shape-morphology/388).

[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/IOLvC4XZ8-w/maxresdefault.jpg "The Power of Making: Craft, Computation, and Carnival. | Vernelle Noel Noel | TEDxPortofSpain") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOLvC4XZ8-w)

A more recent and more in-depth talk that is really excellent (definitely worth staying for the q+a):

[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/VN1F00OGrEg/maxresdefault.jpg "The Mathematics of Wirebending - Vernelle Noel") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN1F00OGrEg)

and a paper:

Noel, Vernelle A. A. ‘The Bailey-Derek Grammar: Recording the Craft of Wire-Bending in the Trinidad Carnival’. In _ACM SIGGRAPH Art Papers_, 357–65. SIGGRAPH ’15. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2015. [https://doi.org/10/gn4dnj](https://doi.org/10/gn4dnj).

[Zotero group link](https://www.zotero.org/groups/2575560/alpaca/items/6GSZGPGA)

I think what makes this work so great is the multiple dimensions of rigour, the ethnographic approach, the grounding of shape grammar in foregrounding carnival as a cultural movement, the experimental approach to validating the usefulness of the grammar in communicating material culture, the blending of Noel’s practice (her artwork and speculative approach to software) in the research, and how she talks about making and her motivations are just super inspiring.