I had a fabulous time teaching at the International Summer School Bernau, at the famous Bauhaus Denkmal Bundesschule Bernau in (wait for it) Bernau, Germany. It was an eye-opening experience and a real joy to teach something new to both the attendees and to people from the local public.
More on this to come, but here’s some photos of the experience, compliments of the talented photographer Victoria Tomaschko.
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
Eric instructing a Preliminary Course at the International Summer School Bernau
I am teaching a Preliminary Course for the next two weeks at the International Summer School at the Bauhaus Denkmal Bundesschule Bernau, in Bernau bei Berlin, Germany.
Very excited to be doing a specific program focusing on the teachings and instruction of Josef Albers (pre-eminent teacher at the Bauhaus, and later the Black Mountain College in N.C. and then Yale). I’ve been studying his works and historical materials for several years now, and it intersects nicely with my origami work. Most of my classes and instructional sessions over the last few years have centered around the work of Albers, so actually teaching his material in a Bauhaus-built school feels like everything coming full circle.
My morning sessions are open to the public, from my understanding, so if you are in the Berlin area and have an interest in folding some Bauhaus creations, please do come visit!
Some amazing work from the extremely talented Tomohiro Tachi, together with Erik Demaine, our origami community’s resident origami genius.
While we’ve long watched and admired Tomohiro’s work with Origamizer (rendering 3D models as crease patterns using some complex mathematics) it appears they have taken this further to help simplify the process as much as mathematically possible. That’s a pretty huge step and has lots of ramifications for the future.
Tomohiro’s work uses Voronoi tessellations in it’s calculation of things – that’s one of the underlying principles behind topological manipulation of polygons on a single surface, when calculating pleats and folding – so as an aficionado of this process, I’m happy to see this coming to real fruition.
The pages will be displayed in sandwiched plexiglass frames, to allow light to pass through and permit the audience to see them floating in space – very much the way the paper looks and feels when handled.
Here’s my artist statement from the exhibition:
Specimens is the first of its kind: a book created with a new bio-paper medium made entirely from bacterial cellulose. Its pages were once alive.
The quality of this new paper, which I developed over the past seven years, is its unparalleled strength and transparency. Each sheet is grown in a vat and harvested after several weeks. After processing, many layers – five or more – are laid on top of one another with the text block carefully placed within. Then the entire stack is pressed. The act of pressing these sheets is what gives them their strength.
Trapped forever within the thin lamina of Specimens’ pages is the poetry of e.e. cummings. The challenge of retaining the poet’s complex typographic wordplay required a new approach for placing text. Drawing upon my fascination with Voronoi tessellations – the natural pattern of cell structures in all living things – I created custom software to generate a Voronoi framework that would hold the text in place. The text block was then laser-cut from Korean hanji.
Close-up of finished pressed page. Laser cut text pressed within 5 layers of bio-paper to form one large single sheet.
Close-up of finished pressed page. Laser cut text pressed within 5 layers of bio-paper to form one large single sheet.
Close-up of finished pressed page. Laser cut text pressed within 5 layers of bio-paper to form one large single sheet.
Close-up of finished pressed page. Laser cut text pressed within 5 layers of bio-paper to form one large single sheet.
Harvesting the raw bio-paper from its growth medium. It is almost completely clear due to holding 200x its weight in water.
Harvesting the bio-paper from its growth medium. Again, the translucency at this stage is surreal.
A processed sheet of bio-paper waiting to be pressed.
Post-processing, vats of bio-paper waiting for selection in the wetroom.
Some very thin sheets of bio-paper floating in the tank. When dry, these will be ephemerally thin.
Laser-cut text from korean hanji, waiting to be placed within the bio-paper sheets and pressed.
A collection of processed bio-paper sheets waiting for pressing.
Ioana helps with placement and cleanup of the text block. This was a one-chance-only moment, once placed on the wet medium it cannot be moved or changed.
Eric inspects the final placement of the text block.
Mahadevan and his team have characterized a fundamental origami fold, or tessellation, that could be used as a building block to create almost any three-dimensional shape, as seen above (credit: Mahadevan Lab/Harvard SEAS)
This comes partially from Tomohiro Tachi, an origami friend, and one of the top people worldwide working with computational/mathematical origami tessellations and corrugations.
If you look further at his Flickr page you can find beautiful examples of 3D constructs and controlled folding mechanisms. It’s very exciting work!
