A few times before, I’ve posted origami failures, outtakes and disasters.  This time I’ll focus on some failed experiments–design ideas that didn’t quite work out.

First, we have a failed prototype of ten intersecting triangular prisms.  This was after I had made four intersecting triangular prisms and six intersecting pentagonal prisms.  I thought it should be theoretically possible to create ten intersecting triangular prisms.  I wasn’t wrong!  However, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around how to construct it, so I made some prototype prisms and tried to fit them together.  I stopped at five prisms because I couldn’t quite get them to fit.  The dimensions of the prisms aren’t right, and it’s not possible to create a model from this prototype.

This model is an experimental variation on Ilan Garibi’s “Wave“.  “Wave” consists of overlapping horizontal and vertical pleats.  What if the pleats make an acute angle?  What if they make an obtuse angle?  Rather than trying to visualize it, I just tried folding it, and here is what I got.  The pleats interact in an unexpected way, collapsing into a sharp point.  I also tried the other way, using an obtuse angle, but the pleats collapsed into an overlapping mess and I didn’t even bother taking a photo of it.

This last model is a prototype for a particular shape I was trying to make.  I wanted a cube whose corners had been replaced with little cube-shaped holes.  I managed to make the shape, but it felt messy, inelegant to me.  And that’s before I even figured out how to connect the units together!  I decided not to continue with this particular design idea.  I’m sure there’s a better way to do it though.

These are the last of the “failure” photos in my files.  I’ve posted all of them now!  It’s not that I stopped making failures, it’s that I stopped photographing them.  Let me explain why.

I’m very interested in talking about the process of origami.  The process is very important!  A lot of what makes origami impressive is not the mere form of it, but the viewer’s knowledge that it was created with mere paper.  And so, when I started doing origami, I liked taking photos of the process.  I took photos of models mid-construction.  I took photos of paper selection, and of spare strips of paper left over.  Even photos of finished models were at first intended to be “raw”, sometimes photographed on top of the math textbooks I used as flat surfaces for folding, or next to diagrams I drew to aid in creation.

Failure is also an essential part of the process, and a particularly interesting part that is generally hidden from view.  So I took photos of the failures as well, and regarded them not with shame and disappointment, but joy and fascination.

But eventually, I suppose the novelty wore off.  Failure is an ordinary part of the process… so ordinary that I don’t feel the need to record it.  I’m not ashamed of the failures, they just stopped being noteworthy.