Origami Tessellations

Buckminster Fuller Quote by Peet Fetsch, originally uploaded by Poster Offensive.

I was contacted by a local designer, Peet Fetsch, about using some of my work in a poster design for the fourth annual Poster Offensive exhibition.

As he was planning on using a quote from Buckminster Fuller, one of my personal heroes, I was quite interested. I’m so pleased with how this turned out.

I had a great time seeing it in the gallery – it’s always a blast to see something of yours on display, even if it is just background imagery for a Bucky quote!

It’s also intriguing to me how other people find the crease lines in this work to be the real focal point… I’m always fixated on the folding process, but with this piece in particular the unfolded crease lines add something to the piece as a whole, and for many people it’s what they focus on. Most people seem to think it is pen or pencil, which makes me chuckle a little bit. When I explain it’s all just folded lines, they don’t always believe me. 🙂

The original work of mine can be seen here:

My friend Jeff Rutzky stopped by the NYC Resistor workshop to share his detailed knowledge about all things CraftROBO. (For those of you not in the know – it’s a computer controlled cutting device made by Graphtec, and while it is sold for things like scrapbooking use the enterprising designer/artist/geek uses it for all sorts of fantastic uses. I’m a proud owner of one, and it’s been a lot of fun!)

Jeff specifically showed them some of his special techniques for making complex folding models out of polypropylene:

(this is one of his best secrets – when he explained this method to me I was just amazed. We made all sorts of cool stuff by using this technique!)

Jeff went to the event after talking with Bre Pettis, all-around-Maker-extraordinaire; here’s a shot of the setup from his flickr photostream:

And a shot of all the kids watching the fun, compliments of littlegreenfroggy:

I’m really pleased to see someone bridging the gap between the often-insular origami community and the geek-community-at-large – there’s tons of fantastic stuff to be done, and the more people involved the merrier. We need more talented technically-adept geeks to be involved with origami, because that’s how innovation happens!

(ps: 8/8/8! hope you all did something lucky today!)

-Eric

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