Paper Engineering, Origami & Kirigami Study and Experimentation

Since viewing the Artists Books at The National Art Library at The V&A, I decided I would like to achieve a much more interactive experience with my artists book. It made me think about how I wanted to make the viewer feel when they look at my work. When I think of the theme of migration, it inspires feelings of adventure, exploration, anticipation & excitement in me. Stepping into the unknown, striving to find a better place to put down roots, hope.

The artists book Mapa ed Veneiis by Genevieve Seille felt exciting in this way with all the compartments and scrolls and pull outs - the viewer was led to explore the book, seeking out new treasures hidden within.

I thought about how I could achieve this effect for my project - her artists book was made out of a wooden school desk and mine will be made out of paper and card, so I thought I would look into Paper Engineering, Origami and Kirigami.

Paper Engineering

Paper engineering can be defined as meaning creating mechanisms that are used to provide movement in models, pop-up books and other products with moving parts.

Origami 

Origami is the art of paper folding with the goal of creating a sculpture, originating in Japan.

Kirigami

Kirigami is a variation of origami that includes cutting the paper as well as folding it.

I decided to make a small book exploring these techniques, finding tutorials for creating the basic mechanisms which I could then be creative with, making them more fitting with my project. I made the book using 3 pieces of paper in shades of brown to tie in with my planned colour scheme. I folded them in half and hand stitched the spine, so I had 5 pages to work in.

I was unsure of where I stood with regards to copyright with origami, so I researched this online. I found that whilst a court in Japan has asserted that the folding method of an origami model "comprises an idea and not a creative expression, and thus is not protected under the copyright law", it is good practice to credit the original artist, so I have added links to the original tutorials that I followed.

Origami Copyright Information

The first I tried was this "christmas snowball" kirigami tutorial from youtube:

I watched the video, printed off the templates and voila! I must admit I did squeal with excitement when I had finished it and opened the book for the first time. It is a delightfully smooth mechanism and opens up beautifully.

To me, this is reminiscent of a pine cone and I can envision adding lips to each of the top edges to make it more so. I could then create seeds and attach them to the inside of each pocket, creating a treasure to discover in each pocket. They would need to be flat in order for them to not affect the function of the mechanism.

The second I tried was this Bouquet of Flowers origami pop-up from youtube:

This one was a bit trickier, as I was just going by the images and didn't realise how important is was to only glue the very tips of each flower together. It was initially very disappointing as it wouldn't open properly, but once I realised my mistake and amended it, it was a very impressive mechanism.

An exquisitely beautiful mechanism which reminds me very much of a scabious seedhead:

                                           

The third one I kind of made up myself. I was thinking of poppy seed head skeletons and how they would make great cut outs and then conjured up a way to make them fan out as you open the page using a concertina fold, attaching the cut out poppy skeletons to each crease.

I had a few issues along the way that I had to resolve - the concertina didn't open evenly - I fixed that by sewing the centre edges together. The poppy skeletons were also far too delicate and floppy once they had been cut out, so they had to be reinforced by gluing a wooden coffee stirrer along the stem. Using sturdier card would work for the final piece. Finally, with them being so delicate, they rip quite easily, although if I am using sturdier card this won't be so much of an issue, and anyway, a few broken skeletons make them look more realistic as they are delicate and do break in nature.

It worked out far better than I had anticipated, when light shines through from either left or right, the shadows cast are beautiful. I will use this in my dispersion page and will ensure that the lighting is arranged to cast shadows as the sunshine did in video (bottom of post).

The fourth one I am also very excited about! It is just envelopes stuck together to form a fan that opens into lots of little pockets into which I can secrete little treasures such as seed related lino prints, recipes, poems, pictures made from seeds, paintings on seed heads etc...

The fifth one is an exploration of the traditional origami spirit bomb.

The central one is a straightforward half spirit bomb. I wanted to make it look more like a seed casing under a microscope, so I tried some kirigami techniques and cut out the flat pieces and kept only the folds and a couple of milimetres either side. It was effective but fiddly and would be very delicate - perhaps too delicate for an artists book as it would probably get broken after it had been opened and closed a couple of times. I then tried with smaller cut outs (the bottom one) which was much sturdier but less aesthetically pleasing.

Following on from this experiment, I started thinking about the installation of my piece and decided I would like to have the artists book displayed in the midst of an exploding seed pod.  I had a think about which would be suitable and decided on a viola, as they have an explosive seed dispersal from a triple podded mechanism which would allow me to make the most of the space and make the viewer feel like they were immersed in the act of the dispersal of the seeds.

The viola has 3 seed pods, all shaped like canoes. As the casing dries out, it splits open and tightens until the seeds are explosively ejected from the pod one at a time. Here's a video I found on youtube:

As I would need to scale this up considerably for this purpose, I made some origami spirit bombs from A1 paper. The seeds aren't perfectly round, so I adjusted the measurement between the folds to elongate the shape and make it more oval. I also painted the paper in my selected colour scheme - burnt umber & prussian blue. The finished size is 50cm x 33cm.

As each of the 3 pods has around 8 - 10 seeds, and to create an impact, I will need at least 20 seeds - some left in the pods and some suspended on nylon thread to look like they have just popped out. each seed will need 2 sheets of A1 paper, so I will have to make 40 halves altogether...quite time consuming but hopefully it will be worth it. The canoe shaped seed pods I will make from withy sticks and tissue paper. The book will be on a tripod easel above the seed pods, surrounded by the suspended seeds.