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| 2-28-2014 |
Check out the photos
Researchers at Hasselt University iMinds in Belgium have built a shape-shifting prototype phone. Called Paddle, it's design is based on 3-D Rubik’s Magic Puzzle, a loop of 8 squares that can currently fold into 15 different iterations. It unfolds for a map, scrolls a list in a circular loop, or flips "pages" for viewing album photos.
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| September 4, 2011 |
An ad for the Renault Clio car had some pretty girls pull up next to a young man in a Clio. The girls flirt by blowing bubble gum bubbles, and the young man responds by putting a candy wrapper in his mouth and folding a crane with his tongue.
The principal is the same as in real aviation: thermals. Thermals allow real sailplanes to fly for hours. As real thermals are to strong for our selfmade paper airplane, we are using a miniature thermal that everyone has in his kitchen: Hotplates. Four hot plates producing hot air which rises and let our paperplane fly as long as we want. The paper aeroplane must be centered while it performs it turns, in the middle of the for heating plates. so it took me about 87 takes to produce this video. if the paper airplane isn´t exactly in the centre of the plates, it will drop off.
The Frog Prince Trick is considered by many who study the finer arts of magic to be a modern day classic. It was first devised by Mike Close and published on 'Workers 2' out of the 'Workers' DVD and book series. He was the first person to fold a playing card into an Origami frog and then incorporate that folded card into a card routine.
For many years prior to WWII various venders made and sold puzzles to children. These puzzles had a number of different pictures on the front, and when folded in a special complex way depicted a hidden picture of an old man, or sometimes a political laeder, sports figure or movie star.
Pig Puzzle
During WWII the British Special Operations executive is believed to have produced a number of different puzzles showing four pigs on the front, that when folded depicted the face of Adolf Hitler. At least four types of the pig puzzle are known, and it is believed that besides being used in Allied countries as a morale booster, they were also shipped to partisans in Nazi-occupied nations to attack and belittle the German Fuhrer.
One type with English text says, "Fold as directed to find the biggest pig of all." Another English-language puzzle says, "Puzzle of the pig. Here is the puzzle of the fifth pig. To find a fifth one fold as directed." A third puzzle is found in both French and English and was also distributed in Australia.
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Apparently, many of these puzzles were also dropped by the Royal Air Force. In 2008, I received a letter that stated:
My father came to Canada from the Netherlands in the 1950s. When he was a young man in Holland during the war he collected different things. He has a paper he said they threw out of an airplane. It is written in Dutch and English. "Can you find the 5th pig." There are four pigs on the picture, and when folded right the four pigs together make a face that resembles Hitler.
Hat tip: Patricia Grodner
Seams can be your biggest enemy when you're trying to design a jacket that's both lightweight and wind/waterproof. So The North Face engineered its new Fuse Uno jacket to assemble from a single piece of fabric like a complex origami model, reducing the number of seams that need to be stitched and sealed.
The main part of this toy is a piece of corrugated paper that can flex into different shapes. However the addition of a fin and a pair of eyes makes it into a kind of a fish! Squeeze the tail and the mouth opens, in quite a realistic way. But Tim always likes exploring new options, and the toy can be folded into a hat, rather like the traditional pith helmet that was worn in the tropics. But there's more... fold it another way, and you get a very strange hat, where the eyes give a very strange effect indeed!
This toy was bought back in 1995, and has not been available for a long time now.
And then at lunch…something Came Around.
Behind me in the lunch line, one of the women in my session thanked me for giving her a couple of new paperfolding stories. She said, “I already do a story with the paper cup. And I do that hat — you know, the one with the feathers…”
I perked up.
“…and the little girl — Triangle Girl…”
I got very still.
“Tell me that story,” I said.
"The Carol Duvall Show," aired two episodes (934 and 941) showing footage from last year's Pacific Coast Origami Conference (PCOC) in San Francisco. Their website contains a 4 minute video clip from the second episode. http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/cr_paper_crafts_origami/article/0,1789,HGTV_3293_1383567,00.htmlBut the episode is no longer available. I'd love to see it again but don't know if anyone has a link to a video clip of that segment.
Origami is a source of inspiration for BYU mechanical engineers who are working with the National Science Foundation, NASA/JPL and origami master Robert Lang to design complaint mechanisms for use in space and in other applications.
(Video produced by BYU News. Producer Julie Walker, Photographer Brian Wilcox, Editor Samuel Reimer. Additional images provided by NASA/JPL, langorigami.com, BYU Compliant Mechanisms Research Group, Matthew Gong, and Carrie Henzie (Redpath Museum).
See more about BYU space research and collaborations with origami master Robert Lang at http://bit.ly/17WMdRX
1. Add Paper2. Do not add water3. Close the top of the bag4. Shake it up.5. Blow air through the top6. Hold bag tight and clap hands together7. Open bag. Ready to serve
Pet Origami
When I was a kid I decided to try Origami. I made a crane at school and it was fun. My parents bought me a book and ream of coloured square paper to make stuff with. I could manage the first few things like a red Samurai hat and a cyan lobster, but the really complex stuff was just super frustrating. I’m not very precise with my paper folding lines. Some how I manage to be off by just enough each time to cumulatively mess it up by the end.
Konica Minolta's MFP gives shape to your ideas by using ORIGAMI. All the ORIGAMI seen here was made from paper printed with Konica Minolta's MFP, "bizhub." With bizhub's notably brilliant colors, we invite you to enjoy the magical world of the traditional Japanese art form of ORIGAMI.
These three Japanese greeting cards date from the 1980s, and they are all the work of Masahiro Chatani. He was a Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and he is considered to be one of the founders if not the founder of a technique called Origamic Architecture.
The designs sometimes show architectural forms, or they can also demonstrate geometric patterns.
Initially he just gave his cards away to friends and family. But he went on to write over 50 books on the subject, and he felt that these designs helped people appreciate the complexity of three dimensional designs, and also inspire an interest in mathematics and art in young people.
Professor Masahiro Chatani died in 2008.
This child's toy consists of a number of large cardboard cubes, printed with different designs. By arranging the cubes you can create a variety of pictures. Basically a very simple jigsaw idea.
The things that we liked about these is the paper engineering that has gone into the cardboard cubes. They come packed flat in a box, and when you take them out, they immediately pop up. The cubes have an elastic band inside, and this pulls the cube into its final shape. Once you have finished playing with the toy, the cubes can all be squashed flat again, and popped back into the box.
Tim bought this toy 20 years ago, and as far as we know, it is not currently available anywhere.
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| September 2005 Created by Hideo Komatsu (small Panda by John Montroll) Folded by Michael Sanders from regular kami (commercially available origami paper). |
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| October 6, 2005 |
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| October 6, 2005 |
Last year, some folks from Sony asked to film me for a documentary they were
making about a videogame that has something to do with driving a fast car.
(Not sure of the connection to origami there, but hey, sure, let's do it.)
They've now released the documentary on YouTube, here
It's not quite "Between The Folds" (actually, it's about a million miles
from BTF), but they do include a nice little segment that ties in origami
that starts right around the 25:00 mark and runs for about 3 minutes. (The
whole video is 83 minutes. I haven't watched the whole thing.)
Background trivia: the design I'm working on in the image is this Katydid
I diagrammed it for an upcoming compilation book from Gallery Origami House,
which I just learned has been placed on indefinite hold ;o(. (Indefinite,
but not entirely stopped, they say, so there's hope.)
Dr. James Porter, medical director of robotic surgery at Swedish folds a small paper airplane with the da Vinci robot to demonstrate how this device gives surgeons greater surgical precision and dexterity over existing approachesWhen the surgeon folds a Dr. Lang insect with these robotic arms out of 3 inch paper, then I'll be impressed with the "surgical precision and dexterity" of the device. (~_^)
