This weekend I attended the 3rd annual OrigaMIT convention at the venerable Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I had such a good time last year that this year Jeannie decided to come up with me. It was a great hang. I exhibited some models, taught two classes, and hung out with a lot of origami friends including Jason, Brian, Erik Gherde, Sipo, Ben, Mark, Anne, and others. My exhibit this year was smaller, with mostly new stuff: my Stellated Dodecahedron, Great Dodecahedron, and Penfractal Dodecahedron, my Penrose Tiles I-III, my Dog Timber and Cat Sophie, and to round things out my Moose, Armidillo and Cuttlefish from the book.
In the morning my class was Timber and Sophie. I was pretty impressed with the level of folders. They got thru both models in an hour. At OUSA in June they took an hour for each model. I guess maybe teaching it the second time I’m getting better at communicating the nuances effectively.
At lunchtime Jeannie and took a walk along the Charles river. There was a big rowing race going on, which was pretty cool, and towards the end a whole flurry of sailboats got out on the water.
After lunch I attended a lecture by Erik Demaine on the work of David Huffman. Huffman is more widely known for his work in computer science, having invented the encoding algorithm that’s at the heart of modern media codecs like jpg and mp3. But he was a pioneering origami guy as well, particularly with curved folding and tessellations. Erik is in the process of putting together a book about Huffman and his origami, and had slides of a lot of cool works I’d never seen before.
My second class was my Penrose Tessellations. I was expecting only a few people since the model is pretty advanced and rather esoteric, but the class was full and included a good handful of kids. Good thing I brought extra CP’s and paper. Kathy Stevick donated some pre-cut pentagon paper, which was a big time saver. Even so, teaching this class was harder than I expected. Most people aren’t used to folding in pentagonal geometry, so I had explain everything in more detail. Plus there was a lot of precreasing. The class was in fact for a system for folding tessellations of any number of cells. I had them start out making a 10-cell model out of small paper, and then start in on the 30-cell out of large paper. I figured the 10-cell would take about half the class, but it took more like 90 minutes. Still everyone hung in there and most folded a successful model. Those who were interested got enough to get going on the 30-cell one.
That evening there was a giant folding competition in the main room, and Jason asked me to participate, and Jeannie was my partner. We folded a giant version of Timber out a five- or six-foot square of white paper. I was concerned it might not stand up cuz the giant paper tends to be floppy, but somehow it worked. When it was done I called it a Dire Wolf. It was the crowd favorite, and Jeannie and I won first place. I got a copy of the proceedings of 5OSME and Jeannie got an OrigaMIT shirt.
Later that night Ben demoed his KNK Zing cutter. It’s basically the same thing a craft robo, but apparently better, cuz it can take wider stock and it has better software. It was pretty cool seeing one in action, and see how scoring the paper can save a lot of time and help with the folding. I’ve been thinking of getting one, although I delayed the purchase in favor of amps on other music gear. If I do, it’s good to know this is a good piece of gear.
As we left MIT we saw the lights of Fenway Park across the Charles. It was the last game of the pennant race. We got back to our hotel room just in time to catch the replay of a grand slam that turned the tide of the game in Boston’s favor and led the Red Sox to victory. On the drive home Sunday morning it was a perfect fall day for watching the foliage change color. The leaves were peaking red, yellow, crimson and orange. It seems like every few miles we’d round a curve and the view was just breathtaking.
