“Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism. Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories… human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon...” - Douglas Hofstadter

Automorphic Knotwork
270˚ hologram display animation film
full HD video display kiosk, glass square pyramid, USB connected
Documentation by Margarida Sardinha

KNOTWORK is an ongoing project and a search study based on Celtic knots called Icovellavna and knot theory mathematics. Margarida became interested and has been producing this work mostly based on the Book of Kells that she came to know in 2004. Since then she studied endless knots regarding their spiritual and religious symbolism in addition to their aesthetic, geometric and mathematical qualities. Borromean rings that resurfaced in different cultures symbolizing unity, the adaptation of Celtic knots in Christian monuments and manuscripts, such as the 8th-century St. Teilo Gospels, the Book of Kells that captivated me, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and also their appearance in Tibetan Buddhism. Endless knots, named strange loops or paradoxes by Douglas Hofstadter, symbolise a union of opposites in Knotwork for in topology a circle is bound by all its homeomorphisms and the knot is an embedding of a circle in knot theory (study of mathematical knots in topology). By replacing topological knots, which cannot be disentangled, with Celtic endless knots that also have connected ends creates a symbolic-continuum, where string theory could be discrete. The strings made of small partons threaded together as points describing the topology of its interactions on the string render space-time as event-symmetric in string field theory. Where the string’s partons may cross randomly through space-time events for they are tied to the strings. Thus, in an otherwise unstructured event-symmetric universe, the strings tie together space-time events providing an origin of topology. The strings are entwined when formed from loops of partons with fractional statistics, continuing ad infinitum with space-time itself endlessly entangled.