Article about Robert Lang 1
from the Boston Globe newspaper, 11th Nov, 2004 Unfolding origami's secrets Artist Robert Lang hopes to demystify the ancient art By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff | November 11, 2004 Robert J. Lang says origami is like music. If that's so, he writes its symphonies. Lang, who comes to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week to give a series of lectures and workshops on the art and theory of origami, combines a firm grounding in mathematics with a refined aesthetic sense to create dazzling, elegant works out of a single sheet of paper: a swooping owl, a horned beetle, a stunningly detailed fish complete with scales. The process, he says over the phone from his California home, is not unlike what composers do, taking known rules of composition and using them to achieve their own artistic goals. What's different about origami, though, is that although the art is hundreds of years old, its theory has only started to be understood. ''For many years, by far the vast majority of origami participants were just performers," Lang says, not composers; they followed instructions to replicate others' designs, rather than creating their own. But in the last 10 to 15 years, he says, many more have started to compose their own works, and ''the techniques for design or for composition have started to become known." Lang, who began his career as a physicist and engineer, then became a full-time origami artist three years ago, is one of the art's leading theorists; he has presented several technical papers on origami mathematics and was the first Westerner invited to speak to the Nippon Origami Association's annual meeting. When he discusses the theories he has developed, he says, ''it feels similar to teaching the rules of musical composition: what are chords; what is a tonal progression; if you want to get a particular effect, here are codified ways of doing that." Both in a talk for general audiences (tonight at 7) and in a more specialized one for mathematicians (Monday at 11 a.m.), Lang will discuss his ''tree theory," which shows practitioners how to develop a folding pattern for any ''treelike" form -- a shape with one axis and branches, which could be anything from a lizard with arms, legs, tail, and head to a six-legged insect to, yes, a tree -- by mapping it onto a stick-figure diagram. It's in discussing that theory that Lang's host at MIT, the MacArthur Award-winning professor Erik Demaine, grows particularly animated. ''It helps a lot to have some theory in how paper can be folded -- how to use paper in an efficient way," says Demaine. Part of Lang's time here will be spent in continuing a project he has already begun with Demaine: to expand the tree theory to encompass even more shapes -- and, ultimately, to develop a theory for constructing any shape from a single, folded sheet of paper. ''In some sense, we're shooting for the moon," Demaine says. ''We know mathematically that anything is possible. Now it's just a question of doing it artistically and elegantly." In his own work, Demaine mostly sticks to the theoretical side of origami, which, he explains, ''fits into a broader set of problems, geometric folding." But that theory can also have practical applications: ''foldable structures that can get very small and then very large later on," which can be useful, for example, in deploying a telescopic lens in space or in designing more efficient airbags for cars. In nanomanufacturing, Demaine says, developing efficient ways to fold protein strands could lead to new ways to fight disease. Lang has worked on such practical applications himself, particularly a prototype of a space telescope that, with a lens 100 meters across, would be about 40 times larger than the Hubble.
from the Boston Globe newspaper, 11th Nov, 2004 Unfolding origami's secrets Artist Robert Lang hopes to demystify the ancient art By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff | November 11, 2004 Robert J. Lang says origami is like music. If that's so, he writes its symphonies. Lang, who comes to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week to give a series of lectures and workshops on the art and theory of origami, combines a firm grounding in mathematics with a refined aesthetic sense to create dazzling, elegant works out of a single sheet of paper: a swooping owl, a horned beetle, a stunningly detailed fish complete with scales. The process, he says over the phone from his California home, is not unlike what composers do, taking known rules of composition and using them to achieve their own artistic goals. What's different about origami, though, is that although the art is hundreds of years old, its theory has only started to be understood. ''For many years, by far the vast majority of origami participants were just performers," Lang says, not composers; they followed instructions to replicate others' designs, rather than creating their own. But in the last 10 to 15 years, he says, many more have started to compose their own works, and ''the techniques for design or for composition have started to become known." Lang, who began his career as a physicist and engineer, then became a full-time origami artist three years ago, is one of the art's leading theorists; he has presented several technical papers on origami mathematics and was the first Westerner invited to speak to the Nippon Origami Association's annual meeting. When he discusses the theories he has developed, he says, ''it feels similar to teaching the rules of musical composition: what are chords; what is a tonal progression; if you want to get a particular effect, here are codified ways of doing that." Both in a talk for general audiences (tonight at 7) and in a more specialized one for mathematicians (Monday at 11 a.m.), Lang will discuss his ''tree theory," which shows practitioners how to develop a folding pattern for any ''treelike" form -- a shape with one axis and branches, which could be anything from a lizard with arms, legs, tail, and head to a six-legged insect to, yes, a tree -- by mapping it onto a stick-figure diagram. It's in discussing that theory that Lang's host at MIT, the MacArthur Award-winning professor Erik Demaine, grows particularly animated. ''It helps a lot to have some theory in how paper can be folded -- how to use paper in an efficient way," says Demaine. Part of Lang's time here will be spent in continuing a project he has already begun with Demaine: to expand the tree theory to encompass even more shapes -- and, ultimately, to develop a theory for constructing any shape from a single, folded sheet of paper. ''In some sense, we're shooting for the moon," Demaine says. ''We know mathematically that anything is possible. Now it's just a question of doing it artistically and elegantly." In his own work, Demaine mostly sticks to the theoretical side of origami, which, he explains, ''fits into a broader set of problems, geometric folding." But that theory can also have practical applications: ''foldable structures that can get very small and then very large later on," which can be useful, for example, in deploying a telescopic lens in space or in designing more efficient airbags for cars. In nanomanufacturing, Demaine says, developing efficient ways to fold protein strands could lead to new ways to fight disease. Lang has worked on such practical applications himself, particularly a prototype of a space telescope that, with a lens 100 meters across, would be about 40 times larger than the Hubble.