Review: Between the Folds (2009)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                         BETWEEN THE FOLDS
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: This 56-minute documentary written and
     directed by Vanessa Gould looks at origami, the art
     of paper-folding that has gone from a simple art of
     creating figures of animals out of paper to an
     explosion of styles and practical applications.  The
     film looks at some of the major figures in creating
     origami and the vast array of applications in the
     real world of engineering, biology, and mathematics.
     The film sweeps viewers from intricately beautiful
     works of folded paper art to the submicroscopic
     origami of proteins, and it is well worth the trip.
     Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10

The documentary BETWEEN THE FOLDS, written and directed by Vanessa
Gould, is being shown on PBS's Independent Lens series in December
and January.

A personal note: I am a hobby origamist.  I started folding toys
out of paper by age six.  Like many origamists I began with paper
airplanes.  Since then I got into many forms of origami, mostly
still folding toys and mathematical ornaments.  Over the years I
have probably invented more than a hundred figures.  But I have
always gone from squares and/or rectangles and folded animals,
spaceships, or perhaps abstract pieces.  While I was folding simple
figures this the field completely changed under me and seeing a
film like BETWEEN THE FOLDS tells me much of what has been going on
of which I had been ignorant.

This is an art form, but it is an art form that is restricted by
mathematical rules.  In the TED Talk cited below Robert Lang gives
the four mathematical laws that restrict the structures that can be
made using origami.  Artists love self-imposed constraints and
BETWEEN THE FOLDS shows the vast panoply of creations that can be
made under those restrictions.

We see examples of people who start with wet paper to get more
realistic contours when creating animals.  Michael LaFosse makes
his own paper and folds figures using the paper, sometimes wet.  By
making his own paper he can control the texture.  But he basically
is folding like I am, creating figures as realistic as possible.
If there is a difference there is the complexity of his creations.
Over the years figures have gone from seven or ten folds to dozens
and then hundreds.  Pangolins, for example, can be given realistic
surfaces by tessellations of scales on their backs each
individually folded.

The film continues on to show origami subjects following the styles
of modern art, getting less realistic to find a greater truth in
their subject.  More abstract forms are found.  Some are more
complex, but Paul Jackson has made a study of abstract shapes that
one can get with a single crease and just some flexing.

All of this is art, but so far it has little practical application.
The simplest use is to use origami to teach geometry as a geometry
instruction tool as Miri Golan does in Israel.  (I have done this
myself.)  Origami turns geometric principles into a game.  Tom Hull
applies it to more advanced subjects such as number theory and
higher algebra.  Still it is being as just an illustration.

Martin and Erik Demaine, father and son professors at MIT, work on
general theoretic questions like what shapes can be formed by
folding paper and then making one straight cut.  But their work has
a practical side.  They, Robert Lang, and others contribute to
medicine, biology, natural sciences, and space.  Lenses for space
telescopes can be folded into packages small enough to send into
space only to be opened up when they reach orbit.  Science now
applies origami to a broad range of applications from compacting
car airbags so they too can be stored in a relatively small space,
to DNA structure.  Erik Demaine has made advances in folding the
molecular structure of proteins to create drugs to use against
toxic viruses.

As one folder makes the point, everything seems to fold.
Geological pressure makes the surface of the planet fold.  DNA
folds and unfolds.  Even when we speak the vibration of our voice
folds the air.  The science of what can happen when things fold is
turning out to be a fundamental study of how our world works.
Sadly at 56 minutes this film cannot cover to satisfying depth the
origami-related art, technology, science, mathematics, and even
philosophy.  But what it does cover is well worth seeing.

This is a film that is intelligent, intriguing, and beautiful.  I
rate it a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1253565/>

A T.E.D. Talks with Robert Lang discussing practical applications
of origami and new software approaches to solving origami problems
is available at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYKcOFQCeno>.


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper