Contains instructions for making and information about string figures of Nauru Island. Is a "definitive work on Nauruan ekadawa as well as commentary on Nauru's history and society."

Diagrams and text illustrate the steps involved in creating over one hundred string figures while providing information on their origin and cultural background

This book addresses the mathematical rationality contained in the making of string figures. It does so by using interdisciplinary methods borrowed from anthropology, mathematics, history and philosophy of mathematics. The practice of string figure-making has long been carried out in many societies, and particularly in those of oral tradition. It consists in applying a succession of operations to a string (knotted into a loop), mostly using the fingers and sometimes the feet, the wrists or the mouth. This succession of operations is intended to generate a final figure. The book explores different modes of conceptualization of the practice of string figure-making and analyses various source material through these conceptual tools: it looks at research by mathematicians, as well as ethnographical publications, and personal fieldwork findings in the Chaco, Paraguay, and in the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, which all give evidence of the rationality that underlies this activity. It concludes that the creation of string figures may be seen as the result of intellectual processes, involving the elaboration of algorithms, and concepts such as operation, sub-procedure, iteration, and transformation.

Rooted in tribal customs and cultural traditions from around the world, making string figures is an ancient pastime that continues to charm people of all ages. This compilation of projects from String Figure Magazine presents easy-to-follow photographs and simple, step-by-step directions for creating more than two dozen captivating string figures that can jump, flip, and perform other tricks. In addition to basic instructions on how to get started, this guide features brief accounts of each figure's historical background. They include "Kidnapped Baby" and "Broken Home, Mended Home" from Hawaii, "A Flock of Birds" and "Old Man Chewing" from the Solomon Islands, and the Australian "Setting Sun." From the Congo come "Leopard's Mouth," "Rubber Band" from Tibet, and from India, "Scissors." Other figures spotlight the traditions of North America's Navajo and Kwakiutl peoples and natives of Brazil, Guyana, and Argentina. A great travel pastime and on-the-go activity, making string figures is a delightful, inexpensive, and easily acquired hobby.

How can artists (and others) who find themselves in positions of privilege think differently about the way they do what they do in order to create the conditions for better, more just relations to flourish? Finding an answer to that question is at the heart of this book. After critiquing the relationship between contemporary art, race and privilege the author brings together First Nation and feminist philosophies of relationality, the game of string figuring, and her own history as an artist to propose an alternate methodology that puts relation at the centre of practice. She introduces the multivalent concept of “tacking”—a movement at an oblique angle to prevailing winds—in order to traverse the waters of contemporary art to challenge power and create a more just future.