Exponential!
An installation of suspended crochet units made from acrylic yarn
The PCR process can generate 100 billion similar molecules in an afternoon through a process of doubling. The installation reveals the spatial pattern of exponential growth, a doubling of chains made from two stranded acrylic/polymerised yarn, reflecting the double strands in DNA, the abstract concept of 'chain' in PCR, and incorporating fluorescent yarn to echo the fluorescent proteins used for the labelling of target DNA.
Each circle/cycle of the crochet units uses as much yarn as the sum of all the previous circles. The largest unit in the installation has 12 circles/rows and weighs 3.2 kilos. Such is the arithmetic of exponential growth, that if continued for another 12 rows, it would weigh over 13 tonnes!