Eric Demaine is one of the better intersections of origami and mathematics, you should also read up on Dr Robert Lang, the OG and perhaps the most famous American JPL-physicist-turned-origamist: https://langorigami.com/
On the flip side the late Eric Joisel created perhaps the most amazing curved-crease and natural folding that we’ll ever see, his works were truly amazing art: https://ericjoisel.fr/en/home/
Looking at Lang's site, yes it is a super niche area, but there is a lot of self promotion - books, events, etc. I was first introduced to the general area of curved crease, etc was with David Huffman in the early 90s. He started that work in the early 70s. So, Lang proclaims to the the first, but salesmanship is important.
I had him as a lecturer in undergrad, and I still remember the weightlessness of his intellect. It was one thing to realize that we were the same age, but his ability to flit around different concepts was remarkable.
There were a lot of people around who felt like high performance athletes of the mind, while he was just this sort of effortless butterfly going from flower to flower.
I bought Folding Techniques for Designers: From Sheet to Form by Paul Jackson on a whim several years ago and found it fun to work through. I think he has a new edition and some other books but I don't have any experience with them.
I bought a few origami books on impulse today, Folding Techniques for Designers was among them so that's a good validation. I've vaguely wanted to make a fancy folded paper lamp for a while and seeing this on HN crystalized that desire into at least buying a handful of books. Thanks for the reference!
One of the underappreciated causes and effects of the industrial revolution is the precision that's around us all the time. To make that piece of paper required thousands of precision surfaces, rollers, etc.
And oh how we take it for granted. I recently spent a few minutes trying to make sense of a situation where I was using a corner of a paper for a square. It turned out the piece of paper was not at all square, at least a quarter of an inch out of square!
One important lesson I remember from high school woodworking class ~45 years ago - when using a set square, make your markings twice with the square flipped over in the opposite direction, so if the square isn't accurate you'll get two distinct markings - and for most wood working purposes just splitting the difference by eye will be accurate enough.
Sure, this would probably work with nice handmade paper. But you won't necessarily get a clean fold with thicker or uneven paper, and depending on fiber length and distribution you might get waviness or other issues
These remind me of the Elliptic Curve pieces from another post on the HN front page right now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44315321) I wonder if the poster was inspired by that one to also post these here?
Anyway, these are pretty cool/unique looking! I hadn't seen curved origami like this before.
For folks interested in folding and origami, the documentary Between the Folds was excellent. I don't know if anyone recorded a Q&A when it did the film festival circuit, but if you could find one, it'd be worth watching.
The force from curved folds can be used in other ways. If you score a sheet of copper in a curved line, then fold it along the score you get a twisted form. If you have some poster board handy you can use the same technique as well. Vessels!
Wonderful, a nice meeting place between modern and classical art. Arguably one of the most alluring features of classical art is the complexity and intricacy of detail.
On the flip side the late Eric Joisel created perhaps the most amazing curved-crease and natural folding that we’ll ever see, his works were truly amazing art: https://ericjoisel.fr/en/home/