Category: Origami

Party on the Patio

As sometimes happens, I’m in the middle of a number of things, all of which are at a point where there’s obstacles to moving forward.

Fall is here, the days are getting shorter and nights are turning colder. Soon the season for biking and rollerblading will be over. We ran the heat for the first time yesterday morning. Jeannie is back to commuting into the city, at least for the next few weeks. Michelle has started school. Last week she attended classes online; this week she’s going into the the school. She’s pretty happy and excited about that. I’m picking her up in the afternoons, since we don’t want her taking the bus or train under the current circumstances. I have the house to myself in the daytime for the first time since March. I’ve started getting up early again.

I narrowed down the number of songs I’m actively recording to three. They’re all coming along. This is the most satisfying thing I’m doing at the moment. Mostly it just takes time, but it’s fun to spend time on it. Doing creative work of any kind means a certain amount of thinking and exploring, which to an outsider can look an awful lot like doing nothing, and of course there’s always has the risk of coming up empty, or with an unsatisfactory result. So one must keep trying or move on to something else. Then, once in a while and idea comes together and way forward is clear, at least until the next obstacle.

For Why Not Zed? the chords and song structure came together pretty quickly and I’ve laid down a basic track with midi bass and drums. I’m practicing the bass and guitar parts to lay down fairly soon. It’s a fairly heavy, rocking uptempo number. I originally envisioned it as something like They Might Be Giants might come up with, but it’s leaning more toward Crimso Astronomy Domine with a pop-punk edge.

Heavy Water is also coming along nicely. I have the song structure, the piano part, a synth bass, and a sketch of the melody, which will weave between the sax and synthesizer. Also practicing the bass guitar part, which I’m gonna lay down at the same time as Why Not Zed?

Autumn Eyes (a.k.a. Wolf Whisper) is further along. The main thing it needs is the sax part, which I’m gonna record when I do the sax for Heavy Water. I took my midi drum part and sliced up up so I can control the level of the different elements of the drum kit, but the drums are pretty minimal on this one. I’m thinking of recording some live drums on it too, to get sounds I can’t get from a drum machine, like brushes.

Plague of Frogs and the others are on the back burner for now. I’ll continue to work on the arrangements while I track these three.

I’m improving playing the drums. I can do a roll now, although there’s room for greater speed and evenness. Working on that and a handful of other rudiments. I can play more and more beats with more solidity and consistency at different tempos. Working on solid kick drum and building up endurance, especially for double and triple hits. In addition to the grooves I’m reading out of books, I’m putting together a few in 5/8 and 7/8 time with different feels.

And – this is potentially exciting – I’ve put together a new jazz group. I think I mentioned I started playing back in July at Lagond, with Mike O. and Rich F. and a new version of the old jazz circle. I haven’t played with them for over a year, so it’s good to be back and nice the group is finding it’s sound and seems to be hitting pretty strong. We’re doing an interesting mix of material, some of which is new to me.

But that’s just a rehearsal band. So in addition, back in August I hooked up with a piano player named Steve, who was looking to get together and jam. I invited Ken on bass and Steve on drums (it seems there’s always two guys with the same name) and we had a quartet. In addition to jazz standards we’re doing some fusion things like Metheny, Joco, Michael Brecker, Chick Corea and Weather Report. Well dig prog rock too. We’ve gotten together three or four times. So far it’s pretty fun, sounds good, and it seems like everyone is on the same wavelength. Too early to really tell, but it may have legs. Or wings. On the downside, the piano player seems to have to travel alot for his job, so that may make it hard to get a weekly thing going.

Alas, the original-oriented rock group remains grounded for want of a guitar player, even though Ken and Steve are into it.

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In other news, my origami book got to be far enough along that I’ve begun looking into publishing options. I have diagrams and page layouts done for nine models, and was working on the table of contents and planning out how many photos I’d need and of what models. The book was looking to be around sixty to sixty-four pages. I reached out to my friend John M and Marc K, who have a lot more experience publishing than I do, and they both had some good advice.

The main thing is I’ve decided to bring my book up to 120 to 128 pages or so, because that seems to be more commercially viable sweet spot. This of course means adding more models. In addition to the nine I already completed, I have five more diagrammed and ready to go; I just need to do the page layouts. Then I have three of four more designed and partially diagrammed, and another five or so that are partially designed but not yet fully worked out or diagrammed. So we’re looking at a few months at least. In the meantime I’ve decided I’m going to take some of the models and put them together in groups, essentially like a chapter of the book, and sell them as digital downloads on the Origami USA web site. So watch this space for that.

Speaking of the OUSA web site, I’ve signed on to create a new scheduling app for conventions and such, and began actively working on it in July. I’ve been working with Robert L., our webmaster, to get up to speed. The level of software to install and configure is pretty heavy. There’s Drupal, Drush, CiviCRM, PHP, a bunch of custom scripts, and whole host of other technologies on the stack. I’m the first person Robert ever tried to onboard, so we worked our thru issue after issue until I finally have the whole web site running on my local machine. Whew, it only took about six weeks.

Now I’m starting in the actual design and development. So far that’s been reading the existing code, the Drupal User’s Guide and Developer’s Guide and discussing thins with Robert. I’ve never written a Drupal module before, and the requirements are only partly clear. Ah fun.

Elsewhere in software development, the Global Jukebox proceeds apace. We’re looking to do another push to live in a few weeks, so it’ll be all shiny for the school kids using the classroom module. I recently put in a new piece of UX/UI to browse the new world taxonomy. It’s called the New Wheel, and unlike the Old Wheel, which radiates out from the center, but became too dense wit the introduction of the new Taxonomy, this one winds inward like the tumblers on a combination lock. It’s built entirely out of javascript, svgs and css and features cool animations. Very informative, intuitive and beautiful, plus the code itself is really quite good if I say so myself. After my last job at that chaotic startup, it’s so nice to able to have control over the codebase and actually write high-quality, well thought-out and well structured code.

Now we’re in the long tail of of random little bug fixes and usability issues, plus we want to get in a couple more minor features. I spent the last few days tweaking icons and going back’n’forth with Anna and Kiki about what everything things looks good and communicates the right idea.

Meanwhile Martin’s been looking at the backend, where our creaky old django/python app is in danger of being made obsolete due a pressing need to upgrade to a newer version of linux on our servers, in order to fix a timekeeping issue. Long story, big headache. Anyway he’s been doing alot and we’ll get there.

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And lastly, the topic that was the point of this whole post, the Patio Project. Well this is actually Patio Project part II. Back when Michelle was a baby and our house was new I built a stone path around the side of the house and patio in the back yard. My dad came down and helped me with the patio part. It’s made of bluestone flagstones on a bed of compacted sand over crushed stone. It took us five days if I recall, and one of those days was making a concrete step.

Well now I want to enlarge the patio to go deeper into the yard, so I’m adding an extension of 4′ x 20′. There have been a few delays getting going on this project. I first started thinking seriously about it last summer, but it was too hot to work on it then. The fall came and went I was too busy with other stuff. Then I figured I’d do it in the spring, but then it was the pandemic and the lockdown, and suddenly building supplies were scarce and I was sick for a month anyway. Then it was summer and too hot again. But at least I made a plan and figured out what materials I’d need.

Shortly after Labor Day looked up the place where I got the stones and other supplies for the original patio. But they’re out of business, and the lot is now a parking lot for school busses. So this weekend I researched where else I might get stones and sand and all that. I found three places within a reasonable distance and sent them each an email describing the project, listing the materials I think I need, and asking for a quote. Two of them got back to me and were both helpful, although one forgot to actually attach the quote to his reply.

In any event, it looks like it’s on! Hopefully this week I’ll go to one of these places and pick out the actual stones and arrange the delivery. I figure it’ll be three or four full days of work on my own, all though I’m more likely to break it into several sessions of a few hours each spread out over a few weeks. I figure I should get done pretty easily by the end of October.

Some Like It Hot

This has got to be the hottest July I can remember. It’s been above ninety pretty much every day the whole month, and alot of days above ninety-five. I usually like the heat but this is a bit much even for me. It’s not even enjoyable to be be outside except in the morning and the evening. No end in sight.

We took a mini pretend beach vacation this weekend. Saturday we went out to Jones Beach on Long Island to swim in the ocean and enjoy the scene. It was very nice. The water was warm and as calm as gets. Lots of fun swimming and floating. It was less crowded than usual because the parking lots were only allowing parking in every second space. We had originally intended to go to Robert Moses Beach but the parking there filled up before 10 am.

Sunday we went to an outdoor restaurant at Rye Beach, on the opposite end of the beach from the Tiki Bar and Playland amusement park, and enjoyed the sunset, some yummy seafood, and some live music with a sax player, percussionist, and a guy with a laptop computer playing loops and tracks. I’d never been to this place before but since the Tiki Bar is closed this summer we went exploring. Perfect chill vibe.

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In origami land, I’m drawing ever closer to finishing my book. The diagrams have been basically done for a while, but then I went back and picked out a harmonious color palette, with different colors for model with different themes, and re-rendered all the steps. Along the way I made a few improvements to the folding sequences and page layouts. I’m really going for a good-looking and high-quality book. Next step is model menu/TOC and then test folding and photography. Too bad it’s so hot. I might have to put in the air conditioner in my studio downstairs.

Also in origami land, I’ve resumed my scheduling project for Origami USA. If you recall, back in the winter, before the pandemic, I’d taken on managing the scheduling tool and the actual scheduling for the OUSA Conventions. The tool itself was an MS Access Database with a bunch of custom views and lots of macros. The plan was to use it for this year’s convention to get up the learning curve on the whole scheduling workflow, and then design and build a new tool in time for the new Chicago convention in the fall.

Well the OUSA June convention was replaced by the Un-Convention, which was a great success but had no need of scheduling. The Chicago convention is not happening either. But we figured we might as well go ahead and build the new scheduling tool, and hope the world is back to normal for the 2021 convention. So now I’m underway with that. First step is to install Drupal and a suite of plugins, since the what drives the OUSA web site. Next is to identify the points of integration and then come up with a design and a tech spec. Should be fun.

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Since I’m doing these blog updates rather infrequently these days, I might as well cover all the bases. We did a surprise soft launch The Global Jukebox at the end of June, for the benefit of our partner/sponsor CityLore, with whom we created an education section and interactive Musical Roots experience for use in New York City (and other) schools. However, there were a few loose ends in the app we didn’t have time to properly address. We’re just about finished with them and are preparing for the official Global Jukebox 2.0 release to live. Coming soon, very exciting. Watch this space for a future announcement.

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In the world of music, I’ve been going to the jazz jam sessions the last few weeks. All is cool so far, and it’s good to making music with other people. At first I felt pretty rusty, but now that I’ve shaken off the cobwebs I’m realizing my playing is reaching a higher level than before.

It still remains to get the new rock band off the ground, but there’s signs of hope.

Meanwhile, I’ve been continuing on working on a new batch of originals in my studio. Did I mention it’s really hot? The song I’ve zeroed in on is a medium-slow jazz number called Winter Wolf Whisper (although I’ll probably change the name) that we used to do in the Haven Street Quintet. Of course doing it on the computer requires changing the feel, so working thru that. One big thing is drums. I’m torn between making sound more natural and human, versus more electronic and machine-like. I’ve always been fascinated by bands with two drummers, or with a percussion section, so I’ll probably try combining both approached.

Still, I feel like I’ve gone as far as can with my current approach to drums. So I decided to buy a drum set. Something to practice on, and potentially record. Actually having drums has been on my list for a long, long time, and they’ll also come in handy if I ever have band rehearsals at my house again. I was pretty amaze at the kind of deals you can get these days on a new kit, complete with cymbals, stands and a throne. It should be here on Thursday, so mare on that soon.

Origami USA Unconvention

This weekend is usually the Origami USA Convention, four days of fun and folding, and reconnecting with my origami friends, sharing great origami and learning new stuff. It’s always a super-intense experience.

This year of course we didn’t have a convention due to the pandemic. So we did what we could. OUSA organized an unconvention, an online, virtual convention. It was two days instead of four, and had a single stream of classes. Robert Land, Beth Johnson, Michael LaFosse and a few others taught over Zoom video conferences. Wendy acted as host and led some sessions such as the opening and closing, the awards and the annual meeting.

All in all it was really good, given the limitations. Technically and presentation-wise, it came of smoothly and without a hitch. I learned a few cool new models and got to connect with my origami friends, and it kept the feeling of the convention alive.

Perhaps the best part of all is Adrienne Sack and Jared Needle organized a late-night folding and hangout session. There were only 20 or 30 people (over 1200 attended the main unconvention), but they were largely the ones I’d have hung out with late night anyway, so it definitely hit the the social folding vibe. I even taught a model. It was an international crowd with some CFC people there too like Ilan and Dascha. On Saturday night five continents were represented. I ended up staying up until after 3 am both nights.

There was talk at the annual meeting about whether the fall convention in Chicago would be happening, and the criteria they’re using to make that determination. If it’s on I can back to rewriting the scheduling tool. If it’s not I guess and could anyway. We’ll see what they say.

In other new my new book is lurching towards completion. I redesigned my Martian for inclusion. I’m renaming him Wise Martian rather than, says, Martian Mark II. I improved the folding sequence and the sculptural aspect of the face, as well as the stability of the standing pose and the lock. Now it’s down to finishing updating the layouts of diagrams for the last two models.

Sea of Tranquility

We’re now into week seven. Not too much going on. Or should I say everything that’s happening is happening slowly. Spring has been pretty cold and rainy so far. I mowed the lawn last week for the first time.

I’ve finished the style redesign on the Global Jukebox, and now I’m doing data work, updating the model for the cultures tree, and adding in 700 pop songs. We should be going live before too long.

In music land, I’ve been working my way thru Patterns for Jazz on the sax, I’m up to pattern 78 now, getting into flat thirds and fifths. I’ve also been working thru the Real Book, sight-reading every head and running down the changes, doing a few every day. If there’s a song that’s interesting I’ll take a few days and study it and try and memorize it. So far all the Charlie Parker songs have been interesting in that way. Right now I’m up to Blues for Alice, and the next few songs after that are Bluesette, Boplicty and Bright Size Life, so that’s a fun place to hang out for a while.

I ordered the Charlie Parker Omnibook in Bb. I studied the thru whole book back in high school, but in Eb on alto. I always thought playing Bird songs on tenor was kinda weird, cuz they don’t lay on the horn as well. They tend to wrap around the octave in funny ways and are often either too high or too low, since Bird made use of the full range of the horn. And his tunes are hard enough to begin with. But now I’m thinking it’s worth it to try and get some of his riffs in my bag.

On piano I’m also working my way thru the Real Book, but at a much slower pace, picking and choosing songs to work up as solo piano pieces. Mainly ballads, with alot of emphasis on voicings. I’ve finally gotten pretty good at Body and Soul, and I’ve been playing ‘Round Midnight for ages. Next tune I’m gonna woodshed is either My Romance by Rogers and Hart, or Naima by John Coltrane, or maybe both.

It also occurs to me I know literally hundreds and hundreds of rock and pop songs on piano and voice, and there’s many more I kinda know, but I rarely play more than a handful of them. So I’ve started putting together a notebook of all the charts so I can rotate them in and out of my practice and keep them fresh.

In the recording realm, I’ve finished my sax and synthesizer parts on The Story Lies and Who Speaks on Your Behalf (actually only WSoYB had synths), so now we’re up to the vocals, and then it’s just the mixdown. At the start of the year I was hoping these songs would be done by end of June. Together they’re about 10 minutes, which would put me on track for 20 minutes of produced music for the year. Now it’s looking like they’ll be done in early May, and with luck it’ll be more like 30 minutes of music this year. Woo-hoo!

In origami land, I’ve been continuing to work on my book. I settled on eight or maybe nine models, somewhere between 50 and 60 pages. I have six of the models done with new diagrams and layouts complete. The others are mostly done: the diagrams are finished and I have a draft of the layouts. That is, except for one model. The Martian appeared my previous kit book, and although it’s a great idea I was never really satisfied with the final design. So now I’m redoing that model without the constraint of having to keep it to an intermediate level with a low step count. Changing the body proportions, adding more detail to the head, everything. It’ll be substantially a new model in the end.

Folding Time

It’s been a while since I wrote a post about origami, but I’ve been pretty busy with origami stuff since I got back from Spain.

First off, going back to the new year, I’ve been doing work for Origami USA, taking over the scheduling function for the annual convention. This involves several activities, the most important being to create the schedule of classes for the convention. This is supported various kinds of software, whose maintenance and authoring I’ve taken over.

On the OUSA web site there’s forms for teachers to put in the class the want to teach, with fields for class level, availability restrictions and lots of other things. Then there’s a app built in MS access to take the teacher input and construct the schedule, with helpful validation. The pipeline is convoluted and idiosyncratic, reflecting a history of changes over many conventions. Serena, the previous Schedulemiester and creator of the Access app, has been very helpful with training and handing things off. Of course now the convention is on hold and surely soon to be cancelled, so in a sense the whole effort is moot.

Of course eventually the plague will run its course and we’ll all be able to play outside again. My first thought when I saw the Access app is that we should convert it to mySql and have it run on the web site. I talked to Robert Lang, our webmaster, about this. He said it’s already on the roadmap for 2021, and if I want to jump in and take the lead on it, I’d be more than welcome. I felt I needed to come up to speed on the existing workflow first, so we came up with a plan to use the current system for the New York convention in June, and try and do the migration in time for the Chicago convention at the end of October.

Along the way, the convention committee started asking for changes in the app to reflect changes in the organization of this year’s convention, so in addition to Serena’s training I started hacking into the guts of the Access app. At this point I’ve pretty much grokked the whole thing, and I might as well reach out to Robert and see about starting the migration.

And if the time is not right, I have another project in the offing … dusting of the Foldinator!

Second, in Spain I learned there’s an active international origami community on Instagram, so I created an Instagram account to follow other artists and promote my origami. My handle is zingorigami. Check it out. I’ve been posting three times a week. Right now I’m going thru my extensive backlog of photos of models I’ve already designed and folded. Hopefully soon I’ll get around to photographing some of my new stuff and posting that.

Third, I’ve been working on a new origami book. It’s going to be Classic Origami from Air and Space. This is sort of a sequel to my last book, which also had a theme around aircraft and spaceships, but was a kit book aimed at a beginner to intermediate audience. The new book will feature mainly advanced models, notably my classic Rocketship, U.F.O., and my newer Blimp, as well as my Hot Air Balloon and a handful of other models. The notion is to sell it as a digital download from the OUSA web site, since everybody sitting at home these days is gonna want new stuff to fold. Mostly OUSA downloads are diagrams for single models, or sometimes a collection. I’m gonna put a bit of production values into mine, with a cover and and intro, good photography and all. Hopefully down the line I can publish it as a print book.

I started a while back by putting my anchor models into InDesign to do the page layouts and figuring out how I wanted to present things. This was basically copying them from the diagrams for the individual models. I realized I had somehow never finished diagramming my Rocketship. I know I taught it some years ago; it must’ve been from a CP. There were just a few steps to go, the part where it’s 3-D. So I started folding one to get up to the point where the diagrams ended. When I went to make it 3-D I discovered an unnecessary fold that was interfering with a new fold I need to make. I ended up redesigning and re-diagramming the whole model, making the paper usage slightly more efficient, the proportions slightly more elegant, and cutting out about ten steps from the folding sequence. Now the Rocketship, U.F.O. and Blimp are all done. It’s just a matter of rounding it out with few more less complex models, doing the photos, and putting it all together. It’ll probably eight to ten models total, 32 t0 40 pages in all.

Stay tuned for future announcements.

Like a Wheel Within a Wheel

Now we get to the trip inside the trip, like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own. We arrived in Zaragoza late Friday night. The train station was sparsely peopled, and we wandered down, thru the concourse, up the other side to exit on the correct side. From there is was was a long pedestrian bridge arcing above a wide highway, whose reticulated walking surface made our luggage rattle out a rhythm as it rolled along. It was colder and windier here than by the seaside, very bracing. Zaragoza is in the desert and the mountains, although often strongly foggy.

The hotel was one building past the conference center. The whole neighborhood was built for some kind of Expo about twelve years ago, and it had that kind of vibe, all modernist right angles. The hotel was nice, stark yet cozy, modern and European. There were some friendly faces in the lobby, our the conference organizers and our hosts. I knew a few of them who had been to origami conventions in the states, and everyone was warm and friendly.

Next day up bright and early for breakfast. I met a few fellow folders including Robert Lang, David Brill and Jared Needle and Matt Green. More bacon and eggs and croissants and cappuccinos. Yum!

Over at the conference center I set up my exhibit. This was first international exhibit, most of ’em here had never seen my work before. I brought a box a small suitcase as carry-on luggage, about fifteen models. The idea was sort of a greatest hits collection.

The evening before our flight to Spain I went around the house and picked out my favorite models and set them on the table to see how they went together. There’s some air and space ships, a set of single-sheet polyhedra, a series of big animals and one of small animals. The big animals include my Elephant and Dragon, but they were a bit too small for the others in that series, the Oliphaunt and Moose.

So I started folding a new one of each. I ended spending most of the next day folding Dragons and Elephants, and my exhibit was the last thing I packed, just before leaving for the airport. It was totally worth it, both models turned out great. For the Elephant i found a 12″ square of scrapbook paper, mainly white with bright paint splatter design, evoking a circus. I didn’t know how well the paper would fold but it ended up being perfect for the model, not too thin, not too thick, not too soft and not too stiff. It came out quite well, nicely sculptured, and was one of my most admired models in the exhibit.

For the dragon I used so-called shiny paper from the Origami Shop, which is an excellent paper, thin an crisp, and sort of sparkly on one side. I started folding a blue dragon from a 16″ square, but once I got the base finished it was clear it would not be bit enough. I went up to a 24″ green square. Probably a 20″ square would have been perfect, but I didn’t have one. Still it worked well at that size, and was compatible with the Oliphaunt, just a slightly more ancient dragon than I had in mind.

Once my stuff was set up I took a look around. There was tons of fantastic stuff there. The exhibit space was nice, bright and well-lit, and got a good amount of traffic over the weekend, not just from the convention but from the public at large.

I knew about half the artists there. There was so much great origami, and (unlike OUSA where I see many of the same people every year) alot of it was new to me. It’s impossible to try and describe it all, you’ll have to wait for the pictures. One thing I’ll say is there was alot of interesting stuff with tessellations. I had kinda thought tessellations were pretty much played out, but here was alot of new, expressive work. One artist named Roman particularly caught my eye with a 2-d interpretation of a 4-d Torus. Wow.

The conference opened with remarks by Ilan, the conference chair. The organizers were mostly French, Spanish and Israeli. The format was much like a Monday at OUSA, with seminars and discussion, no teaching models and not alot of actual folding. Everybody there was a world-class origami artist because CFC2, a.k.a The Conference for Creators, was invitation only. It was an honor to have been invited, and It was really amazing to be among such high-level artists. I missed the first CFC, in Lyon, France in the summer of 2017 because I was ill. So making it to this one was extra special for me.

The topics included aspects of the creative process, hand vs. computer diagraming, photography and photo diagramming, spontaneous public origami exhibits, preparing papers for exhibiting, traditional handmade papers, how to social media, and connections between origami and other creative disciplines. There were also several roundtable discussions. Very inspirational.

The pacing was pretty leisurely. There was breakfast, a couple talks, coffee break, another talk or two, another break, more talks, then dinner and/or evening activities. It stretched out so dinner wasn’t until 8 or 9 o’clock. This left lots of time for socializing and hanging out. The attendees included Spaniards, French, Americans, Brits, Germans, a couple from Poland and another from Austria, a few Italians, a few Israelis, a friendly guy from Denmark, and another sharp friendly guy and from Belarus whose English was so good at first I thought he was Scottish, a lady from Switzerland, and several people from South America. Maybe seventy or eighty people total.

I re-struck relationships with people I hadn’t seen in years and made some new friends. I was happy to discover alot of people were familiar with my work and hold it in high regard. Some cited my models as points of inspiration or reference for their own work. That’s a huge compliment from artists you admire.

The French people were telling us to come the French convention next year, the Spanish said to come to the Spanish convention, and the Germans said to come to the German one. This last one sounds pretty tempting cuz it’s one of the larger conventions in Europe, and I seemed to hit it off comfortably with the Germans and Austrians. But everyone said: you gotta go to the Italian convention, it’s a great time and a huge party.

Zaragoza has a very active folding community and many of them are connected with IMOZ (Escuela Museo Origami Zaragoza), the world’s largest permanent museum for origami. Spain has it’s own origami tradition independent of Japan’s, dating back to the 7th century when paper was introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors. We took a tour there the first evening. It’s quite impressive and includes quite a few works by Yoshizawa and Erik Joisel, and a variety of other stuff, historical and modern, Spanish and international.

We walked around the old downtown for a while, to eventually arrive a restaurant for the convention banquet, which was mainly standing like a cocktail hour, as were the lunches, to promote mingling. The other nights’ dinner was at the hotel, and seated. One night Jeannie and I sat a table full of Germans and Austrians, the other was Spaniards and an Argentinean. More socializing, ham, seafood and fine red wine.

Sunday was the last day of the conference and in the evening, after the official end, were more tourist activities. We went to a place called the Tower of Water, built for the Expo. It was a funny building, a glass and scaffold skyscraper maybe twenty stories high, enclosing a large interior space in which hung a giant sculpture of a splashing water droplet frozen in time. We took an elevator up then spiraled around a continuously ramping balcony back to the lobby. The building had no current use, but at working electricity. One of our hosts had a key to get in.

We wandered thru the Expo grounds, which was broad pedestrian avenues, curvy concrete bridges, and the aforementioned cubist buildings. Parts of the complex, like the conference center (the Etopia Center for Arts and Technology) and the hotel were in active use. Some of the buildings seemed to be offices or apartments. But alot of it was just empty. Not run down or abandoned, just unused. Kinda reminded me of planet Miranda in the movie Serenity, but, you know, not all creepifying. Apparently there was a plan to convert the buildings to other purposes after the Expo, but then the housing bust happened and the money vanished. We ended up at the Aquarium, which was pretty cool. The focus was on the major rivers of the world, so they had alot of fish and reptiles that you don’t normally see.

Bit by bit, over the course of the weekend, people started to get out packs of paper and do some actual folding. I’ve been working on a Human Figure base, derived from my Astronaut, since my nephew Matthew asked me at Christmastime if I could design a Golem. So I folded lots and lots of variations, looking for expressive possibilities, and for different way to approach the neck and shoulders, which is the key to any animal model, human figures included.

Finally Sunday night was the inevitable late-night folding. A bunch of us, under the direction of one of the EMOZ curators, folded a giant corrugation, about three meters square. We didn’t get much sleep that night, but still got up before sunrise to take the train back to Barcelona and on to Montserrat.

There’s lots more happening in the origami world these days, but that will have to wait for another post.

Well I Never Been to Spain, Parts I & III

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Spain to attend an origami conference, the CFC or Conference for Creators in Zaragoza. I took Jeannie with me, and along the way we spend a few days in Barcelona, a beautiful city.

We flew out on the redeye Tuesday night and landed in Barcelona Wednesday morning. The first thing we wanted to see was the famous Basílica de la Sagrada Família designed by the architect Antoni Gaudí. It was a nice walk from our hotel.

La Sagrada Família is well nigh indescribable. It’s been under construction for over 130 years and still not finished. Giant, ambitious, architecture as high art, at once deeply traditional and fiercely, playfully radical. Completely mind blowing. I mean, we’ve seen some of great European cathedrals, and I get to whole thing with the totality of symbolism, faith and grace made stone. But this takes it to whole ‘nuther level. For one thing it’s huge. When it’s finished it will be the tallest building in the city and the tallest church in the world. The outside is a riot of sculpture and symbolism and crazy spires and multiple, conflicting styles. So busy it almost makes you queasy. Inside is a maybe the largest room I’ve ever been in, and even though there’s alot going on visually it’s minimalistic compared to the façades, grandly ordered and strangely tranquil, like being a forest of giant redwoods made of stone. I could go on but words really do not convey the experience.

We walked down to the marina district near our hotel, where lots of yachts were parked, and got our first close up look at the Mediterranean Sea. There was a sort of boardwalk there where lots of people came to jog and bike and just hang out. We watched the sun go down and then headed back to the hotel for dinner of yummy Spanish food.

Next day we got up and had breakfast in the hotel. It seems Spain is big on thinly sliced smoked ham and thick sliced meaty bacon, and also lots of fish and seafood. And I gotta say the bacon, with farm fresh eggs, is totally awesome for breakfast. Also local cheeses and of course cappuccino and croissants.

Our first destination Thursday was the Picasso Museum. On the walk over we passed thru a really cool park full of gardens and fountains and statues and a sort of grand structure like an open air art deco temple. I also noticed they have giant ducks in Spain that we don’t have at home.

The Picasso Museum itself was really cool. It’s in a old neighborhood of winding street too narrow for cars, although that doesn’t stop all of them. The building used to be some sort of old palace or mansion for some noble; parts of it are hundreds of years old and it’s been modified at least a few time over the centuries. The bottom level is full of interlocking courtyards and long, vaulted concourses. The galleries are all upstairs. Most of it was plain white walls, but one room was kept in it’s original (?) condition, so ornately rococo it looked like it belonged in Schloss Schönbrunn.

Picasso went to art school in Barcelona, and the museum has alot of his early work. He was a master of the realist style and did quite a few landscapes and portraits, and dabbled in a few different takes on surrealism before he really came into the style he’s famous for. So it was cool to see that development unfold. I also noticed in some photographs he had a crooked nose, and I wonder if his whole style grew out of an inability to be at peace with that. His antigeometric faces began with just a bit of asymmetry around the nose and eyes, and took off from there.

We wandered around the city some more, and made our way to the beach, which was not too far. I stuck my hand in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and Jeannie got her feet wet.

There was a tram nearby the went over the harbor and up to Montjuïc, a hill in the heart of the city and a meter higher than the Gaudi basilica. Up on top was nice views of the city and place for lunch, chicken croquets and local beer. Lots of food prepared with tomatoes too. Jeannie had a memory the the Olympic diving pool from the ’92 games was up there somewhere so we hiked around to try and find it, but didn’t know exactly were to look.

Later on, back at the beach we had dinner at at Barcelona’s idea of an American style beach bar. I had a burger that of course had bacon and fried egg on top. Jeannie got a seafood dish, a plate of fried whole prawns, heads and all. Maybe it was just the drink menu that was American style, with things like Long Island Iced Tea and Cosmopolitans.

In the evening we got on the train to take us to the origami conference in Zaragoza. It’s about 4 hours away by car, but the train goes 300 km/hr, so it’s only about an hour and half.

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Monday morning were on the train again, coming back from Zaragoza, and on to a monastery called Montserrat, in the mountains outside of town. The train to Montserrat was part of the local subway system, although it was mostly above ground once it got out of the city center. At the base of the mountain we transferred to a cog railroad that took us halfway up the mountain to where the monastery is.

The mountains themselves are really weird looking, all puffy and cartoonish with lots of bizarre peaks and mounds, cliff faces and deeply cleft valleys. Close up the stone is unusual, soft sandstone full of rocks ranging from pebbles to good sized stones, so it almost looks like concrete. The range is not long, but it’s pretty high, a dramatic local upthrust.

The monastery is nestled right in the side of the mountain. There’s a whole complex there with a beautiful gothic church, a courtyard, shops and restaurants, an art museum with some really cool stuff including a bunch of medieval religious art, presumably from the monastery’s past, and alot of famous painters and sculptors, spanning from classical to modern, mostly Spanish but also French, Italian, Dutch and others.

From there you can take the funicular up to the top of the mountain. We hiked along the trails to the various peaks. To the south you can see Barcelona and the sea. To the north the snow-capped Pyrenees near the French border. To the east it’s hills and to the west high plains and desert. There’s even a shrine to Sant Joan up there.

There’s also some interesting plants and birds. There’s a very distinctive black and white bird I’ve never seen before. About the size of a crow, but much prettier. There’s also a variety of cyprus tree that grows around there, tall and thin and very dense so it looks like it’s been pruned. They tend to grow in clumps or rows. Almost certainly the inspiration for Guidi’s Nativity Façade. There’s also palm trees (not so much on the mountaintop, but all over town), and pine trees and cacti and other succulents. In fact it’s alot like California. Even the weather is similar, very mild and often foggy.

Then we caught the same set of trains in reverse order and were back in Barcelona. Our hotel the first leg of the trip was out near the beach, but this time were in the middle of downtown, right near one of the main train stations. We were pretty tired by the time we got back to the hotel, but luckily there was a row of restaurants right across the street. We found a great Lebanese place that serves shawarma and things like that.

I didn’t have a problem with the language. I didn’t really study up on Spanish like I did with German and Hungarian for the last trip. Still I was able to read the signs and understand a bit of conversation. Alot of people spoke english, but when they didn’t I found I could still communicate well enough to order food and that kind of thing. However I found myself wanting to say “danke” instead of “gracias” all the time.

Tuesday was the last day of the trip. We spent the morning walking around the neighborhood. Right next to our hotel was another funky park, and past that another picturesque old neighborhood. We made our way to Montjuïc from the opposite side, happened upon some castle, and past that the big Catalonia art museum. Spain seems to have alot of great artists and holds them in high regard. Although we didn’t have time to go inside, the grounds around it were pretty impressive, as was the architecture.

Then it was back the airport and home. Cold and rainy New York City.

The Devil Is in the Details

We had a great weekend in Boston and OrigaMIT. We went up a day early, on Friday to take in the sights in downtown Boston. Michelle had never been there and it had been a long time for Jeannie and me. We started with the famous historical sailing ship U.S.S. Constitution, A.K.A. “Old Ironsides”. I’d never seen it before and it was pretty cool. Turns out in addition to famously surviving numerous battles on the high seas in the early to mid 19th century, the ship was actually the first vessel built by or for the United States Navy, one of six for America’s freshman fleet, back in the 1790’s in the Washington administration. As you’d expect the ship was full of lots of cannons and sailing rigging, technology from another era. And predictably ceilings and doorways were low, and got lower the further belowdecks you went.

One cool thing was the ship is still on active duty after 222 years. The museum is in fact an active Navy Yard, and the tour guides on the boat were sailors serving as the ship’s crew. They kept on referring to events from hundreds of years ago in the second person, as in “We won that battle…” At first this reminded me of sports fans rooting for their team, but I realized as American Navy Sailors they’re perfectly entitled to talk that way because the the continuity is real.

We had lunch in a nearby pub that was built in the 1700’s, where Paul Revere used to hang out. The food was great, enjoyed the chowdah. After lunch we walked over the bridge where Magnus Chase got killed and sent to Valhalla and into the old historic town. It was pretty cold and windy, below freezing, actually, for the first time after a mild fall so far. We saw the Old North Church, the slightly-less-old Catholic North Church, Paul Revere’s House and Quincy Market. We ended up taking a ferry across the harbor back to our starting point as the sun was setting. All in all a very nice day.

OrigaMIT, a.k.a the M.I.T Origami convention, itself was great. I always feel like I don’t have enough new stuff in my exhibit, and I hadn’t really done much folding since June, but in the last week or so I managed to jam out a few longstanding unfinished projects.

First was Two Intersecting Tetrahedra (a.k.a. Stellated Octahedron) w/ Color Change. This was a subject I had tackled several times in the past but was never satisfied with the result. So ended up going with a someone else’s idea. Beth Johnson has a model of this shape and was kind enough to send me her CP. Beth is not generally known for her single-sheet color-change complex polyhedra but her approach is great, with a clever twist fold to form the pyramids that augment the primary faces along with a hexagonal layout to accomplish the color change reasonably efficiently. I can’t help but think there’s a more efficient layout out there, maybe from a square, but so far I haven’t been able to improve on her design. Folding from the CP it was a bit of a puzzle, but once you understand it goes together nicely. Like alot of models of this ilk it tends to spring apart, but wetfolded out of the right paper it holds together quite well. I’m pleased I was a able to fold an exhibit quality model. Thank you Beth!

Next up, my Oliphaunt. This is one of my most complex models, barely foldable at all. You need to pick the right paper cuz it can get really thick, and you need to start with a large (50cm or more) sheet. A while back I found a really nice piece of paper, perfect for the subject. Only problem was that it was kind of soft, so I laminated to a sheet of gold foil for a stiffer backing. I got ninety percent of the way finished for OUSA last June. But it turned out the foil was not stiff enough to overcome the softness of the paper, and it was not wetfoldable either. So I had to set it aside.

Now alot of guys who do supercomplex models (everyone from Robert Lang, Brian Chan and Jason Ku on down) put glue and tape and metal armatures inside their models all the time. I’ve always resisted this even for common problems like countering the tendency for the legs to splay out (the issue with my Oliphaunt) or making a bird or other biped balance on two legs. I’ve always preferred to try and fix the issue in the design. But you know, sometimes you need a little help to get by. I ended up making a simple inverted U-shaped armature of out of an old handle for a Chinese food box, and taped it inside, and it was just the thing.

While I was at it, I had a nearly complete rendition of my American Turkey hanging around that suffered from the same problem. I taped a wire inside that and had another excellent exhibit-quality model.

So suddenly I had three great new models. Woo-hoo!

And, I almost forgot to mention I made a Giant Squid for the OUSA Holiday Tree at the Museum of Natural History. I made it from a semi-glossy sheet of dark red paper with a silvery backing. It looks perfect. The finished model is over a foot long. Talo says he’s gone set it up fighting a blue whale.

I taught two classes this year, teaching three of my models. Two of the models were new: my Catamaran and Speedboat. I designed the Catamaran last February at Origami Heaven after returning from a sailing trip in the Bahamas. I designed the speedboat sometime around OUSA in June. For this convention I diagrammed both. I had thought of them as both high intermediate cuz they only take 10 or 20 minutes each to fold, but the repertoire of folds and the 3D-ness probably lands them in the complex realm. In any event the class was full and went quite well, although it’s apparent that the Speedboat is not quite perfected: finishing it so it holds together is fussier that it ought to be. So there will another round of diagrams for that one in the offing.

The other class I taught was my Medieval Dragon III. This is a very old model. In fact, the original version of it was my first truly successful original design and dates back to the 1980’s. The base is half blintzed bird base and half blintzed frog base with a little preliminary base grafted onto one corner, borrowed from John Montroll’s Pegasus from his Origami for the Enthusiast book. Sometime in the early 2000’s I revisited it and enlarged the graft to allow for improved detail in the head and claws on the wings. Even though the folding style is dated, it has a great, classic look and is lots of fun to hold. To this day it’s one of the better dragons out there. The class was two hours and it was quite popular and everyone in it finished the model and did a great job.

In between teaching was alot of hanging out with origami friends: Adrianne, Robby, Anne, Michael and Richard, Talo, Brian, Jason, Robert, Mark and some new faces. All in all a long, exhausting but very fun weekend.

Next up: pictures!!!

Living for Giving the Devil His Due

Things are okay with me these days, but I’ve been pretty tired and burned out this week, with the cold and the dark closing in and all. Still objectively, rah yeah.

The gig last weekend went great. We had over fifty paying guests, so the band made a good chunk of change. More importantly the music was really on. We played all nine songs that are going to be on our next record. It’s just great to do what I think of as a risky song, maybe because it’s challenging to listen to, or has a slow grove, and to look up and see a room full of people totally into it, hanging on every note. Next stop: the recording studio.

This week we also hit a major milestone with the Global Jukebox and CityLore. Whew, man that was a ton of work.

And last night I finally got together with this dude Zeno, the guitarist looking to put together an originals band with prog and pop influences. There was a bass player, Robert, on 5-string fretless. We basically hung out and jammed some riffs and talked about ideas, no actual songs, at least yet. I’d say it was a productive session, worth exploring further. We’re gonna try and get together again when the drummer is available.

Tomorrow we’re headed up to Boston. A much-needed day off. OrigaMIT is on Saturday, so we figured we’d take a day and hang out in the old historic downtown. Michelle has never seen beantown, so it’ll be cool. So this evening I pulled together a bunch of origami, including finally finishing an Oliphaunt and a Turkey with wire and tape on the inside were it doesn’t show. I also folded a couple of Beth’s Stellated Octahedron, one with a color change and one without. The model features a clever twist to accomplish the color change. However, it tends to spring apart so ended up wetfolding them.

The Devil You Know

Fall is proceeding apace. Hallowe’en is just around the corner, time for fun costumes, jack-o-lanterns, lawn decorations, witchcraft, devilry and all.

Things have actually been pretty boring around here recently. Work work work, getting things done. Sunday was a quiet rainy day at home, Hallowe’en devilry aside. There’s been lots of rain this October, which makes up for a dry September, but the weather has been generally pretty warm and mild. I’ve been able to get out skating and for a bike ride every week.

A couple weeks ago I was out for a bike ride in the Nature Study Woods. It was Sunday morning and there was a half marathon going on that included a trail section, with the runners coming the opposite way that I wanted to do. I ended up taking a bunch of trails that I don’t normally travel, just to find the road less taken. By the time I got to the far end of the woods I decided to take the road back rather then the trails. As I was pulling up a long hill I noticed my chain slipping of it’s sprocket into the next gear. Then without warning the chain snapped.

The bike is over twenty years old, and it was the original chain. I bought the bike in California, when Google was still a tiny little startup with their offices above Palo Alto Bicycles. (I actually talked Jeannie out of applying for a job there – worst mistake of my life.) I’ve ridden that bike over tons and roads and trails. So it was not too surprising.

I took it to a place in Pelham called Danny’s Bikes, that used to be Pelham Bicycles. The replaced the chain, which was fine, but I paid for a tune up and told them specifically that the derailleur was out of alignment and need to be adjusted, but they failed to do that. I ended up adjusting it myself, which I’d done plenty of times before, since it was easier that taking back to the shop and complaining. But still.

Last weekend Jeannie and I went on a hike in the Palisades. We’ve done a couple hikes around there, down near the George and up near the Mario. This time we picked a spot midway between the two bridges, right on the NY-Hj border. We got all the way down the cliffs to the river; it was very cool.

The same weekend we saw the famous guitar player Larry Carlton at the Iridium in NYC. We went with my origami friend Marc, who is also a guitar player and into cats like that. It was a great show, and the band consisted of Larry, his son Trevor on bass, who was most excellent, plus a sax, trombone, piano and drums. He played maybe six Steely Dan songs and the rest was his own stuff, sort of bluesy funk fusion. As luck would have it, Steely Dan was playing the same night uptown at the Beacon.

Speaking of origami, the OrigaMIT convention is coming up in just a couple weeks, so I’ve been folding and diagramming, ramping up and trying to finish and perfect some new models. Meanwhile OUSA has asked me to contribute some models to the annual Holiday Tree. The other night I folded one of my Giant Squid out a a 24″ square of some kind of cool paper I bought a while back. It’s over a foot tall. It looks great, very impressive. Just the finals sculpting to go.

In other news, my new recording Sun of the Son is almost done. (I know you’re been wondering since I haven’t talked about it in a while, but yeah I’ve keeping at it.) I’ve actually been working on it since the springtime, and even dusted of my alto sax to play the lead back at the end of the summer. Since then I recorded the synth solo and the piano solo, plus a few backing keyboard parts to pad things out. For the synth solo I had a concept in mind from the start, and was able to dial in the sound I wanted (a layering of several synth tones) and went down pretty smoothly. The piano solo turned out to be a bit more challenging. Since it’s just a piano you can’t rely on fancy patches or effects, it’s all down to the lines you play.

I had in mind a jazzy, bluesy solo something like Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea might do. But it turns out I can’t really play like those guys. Whatever I did came out sounding like a deranged mashup of Thelonious Monk and Keith Emerson. I guess that makes sense since I have studied those guys pretty deeply and have a fair amount of their pet riffs in my bag. So I decided to roll with it. Even so, I ended up stitching the solo together from multiple takes and it took a fair amount of effort to make if flow.

Now the tracking is done and next up was rendering out all the midi files (mainly the drums and keyboards) to audio for mixing. I finished that this weekend and began applying effects to the drum kit, mainly EQ’s and compressors. I have a default set of effects I use on my drum kit, but it always takes a fair amount of tweaking to make the drums sit right and really groove. Right now I’m honing in on the kick and snare. I want them to be present without being overpowering. The song has a fair amount of dynamics, and it has to sound good soft, loud, and in between. Almost there, then it’s on to the bass.

In the rock world, I’ve been keeping an eye out for new opportunities. One ad on craigslist caught my eye recently. It’s a drummer and guitarist starting up a originals project, looking for a creative keyboardist. The cited among their influences King Crimson, Tame Impala and the Delfonics. Well this seemed weird enough, and Crimso is one of my all-time favorite bands, so I got in touch. Now he’s putting together some audio demos and wants to schedule a rehearsal/audition. Meanwhile I sent him a few of my tracks, and learned how to play In the Court of the Crimson King. We’ll see how it turns out.

Also a reminder my jazz group, Haven Street is playing Saturday November 2 at the Bean Runner Cafe in Peekskill, eight o’clock downbeat. Hope to see you there.