Origami Turtle, a pencil sketch by me, of an origami model folded by me. Someone at an origami meetup taught me how to make this. I do not know who designed it, possibly he did.  ETA: I have identified the model as Baby Sea Turtle by Neige A.

Since I’ve been writing about AI art, I want to talk about the implications on my own artistic medium of choice: origami. Since I do not draw (although I have the ability to make a sketch), I’m not directly impacted by AI.  But there are some distinctive artistic values that emerge from origami, and I think it might help explain where I’m coming from.

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Bacteriophage, designed (and taught) by Miguel Romero

Last month I went to the local origami convention, and this is one of the models that I learned.  Later I folded a second one.

This origami uses a technique called box pleating.  Box pleating typically starts by folding the paper into an NxN grid of squares.  You then collapse into a base that has the right number of “points”.  In this case, there are 6 points for the 6 legs, 2 points are internally hidden, and the head is the 9th point.

This model is simple as far as box pleating goes, but it’s still quite difficult to teach in a convention setting!  When you’re familiar with box pleating, you don’t necessarily have explicit steps in your head, you just do it.  But most people in the workshop won’t have experience with box pleating, and so the teacher needs to come up with step by step instructions.  Even people who are familiar with box pleating may not fold very quickly.  So when I say this model is simple, that’s to its benefit.  Simplicity is a virtue in origami, especially origami that you teach to others.

Purple Graphite, Based on the “growing polyhedra” schemata in Tomoko Fuse’s Unit Origami

Today’s model is an example of what Tomoko Fuse called “growing polyhedra”.  Fuse basically provides a construction kit–designs for triangular double-pyramids and connectors.  These components can be put together in any number of ways.  I decided to create three layers of hexagons following the crystal structure of graphite–specifically the “ABC” allotrope.  This model is quite large, about 8 inches across–and very sturdy too.

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Ace and Arrow designed by me, based on “Valentine” by Robert Lang

It’s February, and in the US, the culturally dominant holiday for February is Valentine’s Day.  A lot of people don’t like it though, for various reasons that I am sympathetic to.  One February, I decided to take Robert Lang’s “Valentine” design, which is a heart with an arrow, and turn it into a spade.  I’m pretty happy with this design.  I made several of them.

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Sparaxis/Bitterroot, designed by Ekaterina Lukasheva

Some context on my origami blogging: I have hundreds of origami photos spanning over a decade.  Every month I select one to blog about based on however I happen to be feeling at that moment.  You can in fact find all my photos on my Flickr, if you are clever enough to find the link, but that’s a rather different experience.

I don’t follow any pattern in selecting photos, except that I separate the photos that I’ve blogged about and those that I haven’t.  One of the consequences of this method is that sometimes it feels like the oldest remaining photos are the dregs.  I don’t mean that they’re dregs in the general sense, I mean they’re my personal dregs, the models that I feel least enthusiastic about for one reason or another.  So let’s talk about this model from 2014, which I have somehow never selected until now.

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Pleated leaf, designed by me, but likely a common design

At some point, I discovered the area of pleat tessellations, a technique popularized by origamist Goran Konjevod.  There are a bunch of things you can do with this technique, but I thought I’d show the simplest example I have.  This is something that you can fold at home, and experiment with your own variations.

To make this model, we start by folding the paper into 16 divisions both horizontally and vertically.  This is a common first step in many origami tessellations, so forgive me for just throwing it out there like it’s nothing.  For once, I’ll go into more depth about how to do that.

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