Between the Folds

Recently I watched Between the Folds, an amazing documentary about the math of origami.  In it there are interviews of brilliant artists, physicists, and mathematicians who share an interest in the interrelationship of science and art.

Michael LaFosse makes paper for most of the leading folders in the world and is one of the only people who folds his own paper.  He talks in the documentary about the difference between additive and subtractive art.  Painting is additive, made by adding paint to paper.  In contrast, sculpture is based on taking things away from the material.  Origami is unique, he says, because you are just changing the shape, neither adding nor subtracting material.

An interesting debate about origami occurs between of Eric Joisel (French) and Robert Lang (American).  Joisel's style is emotional.  He says that origami involves [for him] "breathing life into the paper"--and his characters' individual personalities come to life in his folds.  Lang's art, by contrast, is incredibly detailed and he bases his patterns on mathematical algorithms.  His origami constructions are very precise.  Interestingly, he names his art by opus number--the same way music is named.  I find the work of Joiesel and Lang equally fascinating.

Their debate moves throughout the origami world.  Young artists are finding new ways to make incredibly technical work, with hundreds of steps.  Joisel, however, worries that if too much energy goes into technicality, not enough will go into emotions.  Lang sees benefits in the more technical work and uses the example of Chopin’s etudes, pieces originally used primarily for learning technique, as a counter to Joisel's claim.  In Chopin's case, his etudes are incredibly soft and musical.  In fact, my favorite definition of etude is "a musical composition featuring a specific point of technique but performed because of its artistic merit."

One of my favorite  parts of the documentary is about Vincent Floderer and the French origami movement, Le Crimp.  Their idea is to crumple paper rather than fold it, creating hundreds of small creases and elasticity in the paper.  In the film, Floderer uses the crumple technique to create a a very realistic mushroom.

Eric Demaine, another origami enthusiast, is a very young professor at M.I.T.  He is a computational geomitrist.  Demaine, formerly a homeschooler, went to college at the age of twelve and finished grad school at twenty-two.  He was then hired by M.I.T on the spot.  Demaine is fascinated by the idea of origami as a lab for mathematics.  One of the questions he explores is what shapes can be created by folding a single piece of paper into a flat plane and then cutting one straight line across the folds.  What he has found (and proven with his father) is that you can create any shape with this process.  In the documentary, he cuts out a swan by this method.

Demaine is also interested in the practical applications of origami.  For instance, the process for folding airbags is based on an algorithm from origami.  Robert Lang has even designed and built a collapsible satellite lens that could fit inside a rocket.

The movie is fascinating.  I highly recommend it.


--Abe