Assistant Professor Andrew Sageman-Furnas was part of a team organizing InterweaveFest during the week of October 6th-11th. This week-long series of events at the intersection of the arts, sciences, design, math, and engineering culminated in a dance performance in Stewart Theatre hosted by NC State LIVE. The aerial dance performance choreographed by Rebecca Lazier, NOLI TIMERE, takes place on a net sculpture by artist Janet Echelman. Many other artists, dancers, engineers, and mathematicians were involved in creating the work, including Dr. Sageman-Furnas.

Dr. Sageman-Furnas is a long time collaborator of artist Janet Echelman whose large scale net sculptures involve advanced engineering and mathematical modelling to achieve. A post-show talk about the unique interdisciplinarity of the work featured Dr. Sageman-Furnas discussing the mathematical and geometric aspects of the project.

Dr. Sageman-Furnas’ work involves studying the geometry of nets. He was involved in the research to determine the shape changes and implications of dancing on the nets and has been building custom interactive design software for Studio Echelman to explore the shape-space of possible net geometries. A Study of one of Janet Echelman’s sculptures is on display at NC State’s Gregg Museum of Art and Design until October 18th.