<p>The map I've been making by tracking myself over GPS does not display scale, or landmarks, or street names. It doesn't show which way is north, south, east or west.The map I've been making by tracking myself over GPS does not display scale, or landmarks, or street names. It doesn't show which way is north, south, east or west. I use geographic information system software that allows me to accurately position all the .gpx files I upload from my GPS tracker app on my phone.</p>
<p>When zoomed out, the line appears to be curved, jagged, definitely not straight. However, when zooming in there are many straight lines, and they only bend at anchor points where each snapshot is taken. The line becomes knotted at places, representing social interactions, financial transactions, backtracking, and places where the GPS signal was obscured, or confused by bouncing off buildings.</p>
<p>In early modern physics, the AEther (or Ether) was believed to be an invisible space-filling substance or field that was a transmission medium for electromagnetic or gravitational forces.</p>
<h1>Tait's Tabulature of Knots</h1>
<h2>Tait's Tabulature of Knots</h2>
<p>Peter Guthrie Tait (1837-1901) was a Scottish mathematical physicist, whose investigations in knot theory contributed to the field of topology as a mathematical discipline. while conducting experiments with a machine that blew smoke-rings. Tait observed that the rings had a regular donut-like form, which he hypothesised was the result of atoms within them bonding through the Ether.</p>
<p>1867: A note from Peter Guthrie Tait scribbled on an envelope asks an unknown recipient "Can't you come on Monday the present at the performance? An elliptical hole gives the rings in a state of vibration!!!"</p>
<p>1867<br>
A note from Peter Guthrie Tait scribbled on an envelope asks an unknown recipient: "Can't you come on Monday the present at the performance? An elliptical hole gives the rings in a state of vibration!!!"</p>
<p>In a room, thick with smoke, Tait and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) are conducting an experiment to test the German scientist Helmholtz's theory, that closed vortex lines in a fluid remain stable forever. Tait is using a box that emits smoke made from a pungent mixture of ammonia solution, salt and sulfuric acid. He taps the back of his makeshift vortex cannon, and thick rings waft from a hole drilled in its front. Tait describes them "like solid rings of India rubber". His theory is that each smoke ring is structured around knots in the ether, a space-filling substance that was believed to transmit matter. Tait begins to tabulate possible forms of mathematical knots, contributing to the mathematical field of knot theory.</p>
<h1>Knots</h1>
<h2>Knots</h2>
<p>A knot is an entanglement, an intentional complication in cordage.</p>
<h1>Knot Theory</h1>
<h2>Knot Theory</h2>
<p>Knot theory is a field of mathematics that studies the topology of knots.</p>
<h1>Unknot</h1>
<h2>Unknot</h2>
<p>The unknot, or <i>torus</i>, is the first type of mathematical knot listed in knot theory. Intuitively, the unknot is a closed loop of rope without a knot in it.</p>
<p>Knotworks are visualisations of network topologies which use mathematical knots to represent a collapsing of the distinction between node and link. Just as a knot is a complication in which the tangle can conceal parts contained (as in <ahref="http://b-e-e-t.r-o-o-t.net/readings/cybernetic_guerilla_warfare.html"target="_blank">klein worm topologies</a>), unravelling the knot reveals that it is homeomorphic to a continuous link. The link and the node are the same, unravelled.</p>
<p>I'm making drawings by walking and tracking myself over GPS using an app on my phone. I walk door-to-door between homes containing a homeserver in our network. The app I'm using displays my path as a jagged line, alongside information about the distance, altitude, speed, pace and time elapsed. When I reach my destination I save the walk, export it as a .gpx file to my computer, and then load it into software for plotting geospatial information. In the graphic interface of this software the track points are connected with a series of lines that link them together into a route.</p>
<p>This is a visualisation of my movements, abstracted into a line for quick and easy representation. Ask someone to draw a route from A to B and they'll probably draw a similar series of lines, bending where you should make a left or right turn. The most direct route is a completely straight line (as the crow flies) but this is hardly useful to the average pedestrian. Utility here is predicated by a delicate balance between a certain level of detail, and a certain level of abstraction.</p>
