Pepakura & Origami

“Between the folds” Documentary about the art & science of folding paper in the modern world through an ancient technique.

Widely awarded and acclaimed in film festivals, this movie covers the ancient technique of Origami (paper folding) and Pepakura (papercraft) originating from Japan, and how it is used nowadays by renowned scientists and artists, MIT and NASA included. They do it as a way for representing mathematics, to experiment with geometry and prototyping, or just to express beauty through art. I strongly recommend watching this inspiring and revealing film about a intriguing technique with plenty of potential.

Directed by Vanessa Gould from Green Fuse Films

And for the ones wanting to step further, you can download and experiment with Pepakura Designer, a program for converting 3D objects into paper sculptures. Or take a look at the work of other artists for inspiration, like Richard Sweeney, one of my favourites, or Isaac Salazar and Taras Lesko. Also, there are some good websites around this, like Pleat Farm and huge Flickr Galleries with examples.

Icosahedron by Richard Sweeney	Read Cursive by Isaac Salazar

You can see the Trailer of the movie below and if you like it

, it is available in Amazon

Film extract:

Independent Lens: Between The Folds
Think origami is just paper planes and cranes? Meet a determined group of theoretical scientists and fine artists who have abandoned careers and scoffed at graduate degrees to forge new lives as modern-day paper folders. Together they reinterpret the world in paper, creating a wild mix of sensibilities towards art, science, creativity and meaning.Origami may seem an unlikely medium for understanding and explaining the world. But around the globe, several fine artists and theoretical scientists are abandoning more conventional career paths to forge lives as modern-day paper folders. Through origami, these offbeat and provocative minds are reshaping ideas of creativity and revealing the relationship between art and science. BETWEEN THE FOLDS chronicles 10 of their stories. Featuring interviews with and insights into the practice of these intrepid paper folders, the film opens with three of the world's foremost origami artists: a former sculptor in France who folds caricatures in paper rivaling the figures of Daumier and Picasso; a hyper-realist who walked away from a successful physics career to challenge the physics of a folded square instead; and an artisanal papermaker who folds impressionistic creations from the very same medium he makes from scratch. The film then moves to less conventional artists, exploring concepts of minimalism, deconstruction, process and empiricism. Abstract artists emerge with a greater emphasis on concept, chopping at the fundamental roots of realism, which have long dominated traditional origami. The film also features advanced mathematicians and a remarkable scientist who received a MacArthur Genius Award for his computational origami research. While debates ebb and flow on issues of folding technique, symbolism and purpose, this unique film shows how closely art and science are intertwined. The medium of paper folding—a simple blank, uncut square—emerges as a resounding metaphor for the creative potential for transformation in all of us.