Professor Erik Demaine of MIT at work on a piece.
The documentary Between The Folds (2008) is less about the mechanics of origami, the art of folding and warping paper, and more about the philosophy and frontiers of origami. It narrates the history of both the vocation and its leading practicioners of the time (2008), exploring the emotional interstices between audience, artist, and process in one sequence, the aesthetic questions of technique vs art in another, and the potential practical applications of origami in fields as diverse as safety engineering and mathematical research, or, as one mathematician remarked, how a single piece of paper encompasses all of mathematics, from geometry to number theory.
Too damn cute. By Bernard Peyton.
This is a simply presented subject, letting it speak for itself, and this transformational art certainly has a lot to say. From time to time my Arts Editor gasped in wonder as an artist found something new to add, such as color, and how the folds transformed the crude color application into a startling and beautiful contrast; or how the mottled skin of a representational figure left us bemused.
It’s something to say that, afterward, we held a short discussion on the application of origami into research on prime numbers. I doubt we’ll ever get to it, but simply thinking about the topic, the application of living geometry to one of the most mysterious aspects of mathematical systems, is fascinating.
It’s not hard to recommend this documentary, not just for the student origamist, but for the cross-disciplinarian who is looking to expand their mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE4lqYzS2m0
