These works on paper stem from a collaboration between artist Gemma Anderson and mathematician Alessio Corti to create a novel visualization of embryonic development using topological concepts from mathematics. Rather than representing embryonic development as a series of disconnected stages, they applied Morse theory to create a continuous “stratified space-time worm” that shows the entire developmental process as a single connected image.
Starting with Kathryn Tosney’s “Origami Embryo” model (which uses paper folding to demonstrate embryonic development), they identified key topological changes in development and drew these as a series of 14 cross-sectional “slices.” These slices were then reassembled into a three-dimensional representation where time is treated as a spatial dimension. This approach allows viewers to see embryonic development not as discrete snapshots but as a continuous topological transformation, capturing how structures like the neural tube and gut form through folding and fusion. Their work transforms traditional embryological visualization by emphasizing topology over morphology, creating images that represent both the individual stages of development and the continuous process as a whole.
More about this work can be found in the open access book Drawing Processes of life here
