Between The Folds

I recently watched a video on the topic of origami that was produced by Independent Lens titled Between The Folds (now, to be fair, when I say recently I mean some weeks after its air-date... but whatever). The exciting part about the video is that it gives a quick introduction to the wide variety of artists out there using origami. They each have a unique interpretation as to the importance of the art form and they express themselves in radically different ways. There are the rule-makers and the rule-breakers. There are scientists, teachers, rebels, sculptors, ad infinitum. Okay, so there are a finite number of folders in the world, but this video tries to shed light on all of them!

The video also shows how origami is coming into the 21st century with amazingly practical applications in mathematical theory, space travel, medicine and other fields. Origami is on the cutting edge of technology.

If you look around the room or out of the window and list how many things fold, the obvious thing: this sweater, my shirt, my collar is folded, the skin here on my eye. If I talk to you on to the camera then the air is folding going into your ear. Even the galaxies, sort of wheeling around and folding itself over eons as it goes around. That [a crumpled sheet of paper] looks like mountains and valleys for the reason mountains and valleys go through the same process. Even DNA is folded. You and I are born from folding!
-Paul Jackson

To study origami is to study the universe. Or maybe that's too grand, but the point is that there are many applications to the study of folding, and some are explored in the video. See, it all comes down to the simple fact that "Origami is a metamorphic artform," says Michael LaFosse. Nothing added, nothing subtracted, all accounted for.

And so, I recommend the video to anyone who is even vaguely interested in origami, and especially to people looking for a place to start!

[The image is the cover of the DVD case which I found on the OrigamiUSA website]