Admission is $5 per person boxed meals are available for pre-purchase for $10 (call for menu options and to order). Doors open at 6:30 program runs from 7 to 8 p.m. The human touch and eye are unmatchable.” The next Science Café, “The Science of Chocolate,” is Tuesday, April 24. “With software, we can design complicated things, but the act of folding is an entirely different circumstance. But asked if robots would ever take over the human origami artist’s role, Lang brought the mind-boggling science/technology train to a screeching halt.Because of origami’s enormous potential, Lang said there is ongoing research in modular mechanics (a Land Rover that folds down), deployable structures (solar panels) and programmable matter (robots that reconfigure automatically).“Problems that you solve for their own interest, because they are fun, have real life applications. He mentioned other scientific applications for origami: cell phones, solar arrays, medical stents, heart implants, and DNA research. Lang’s designs have been tapped for air bags and an Eyeglass telescope prototype developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.The audience Q&A session revealed a number of gems: “I folded Sampan (Japanese boats), but they didn’t float for very long before the paper got wet,” Bachofer said, proudly holding up the “Bull/Frog” he had folded during the lecture and rapidly creating a “water bomb” while responding to a writer’s questions. The Pleasant Hill 16-year old has been folding since elementary school, when he used class projects as an excuse to practice his craft. “One of the things we do is give away our secrets,” Lang announced, causing people like Mark Bachofer to pull out their iPads and cell phones to record the Internet address for Lang’s open source software program, TreeMaker. “Math lets us complete the creative arc,” he said, showing computer-aided designs that allowed him to render an astounding rattlesnake with 1,500 scales, amazingly detailed feathers on the feet of a bird and a human figure seated at an organ that received applause. (The latter of which were tragically destroyed when workers folded and “wadded them up for shipping, basically ruining them,” he said, in a recent interview.) Lang’s approach has formed a bridge between science and fine art. Textures, or crease patterns, lead to commercial work, like his recent Google Doodle, a Mitsubishi Motors commercial and an awesome life-size orchestra he created for paper company Norske Skog. “You can create textures on demand,” he explained. He wasn’t referring to literal paper dollar bills - like the one folded to form the profile of a woman on Time Magazine’s current March 26 cover (an ironic coincidence of timing) - but to profit. “Rules lead to crease patterns that generate art, but also can be used to make money,” he stated. Zooming through colorability, alternate angles, intersections and the like, Lang posed the all-important question,”What can you do with the rules?” “This took it beyond flapping birds to something like this,” Lang said. “Today, origami would be a dull, dead art if everything hadn’t changed in the middle of the 20th century,” he said, introducing the work of Akira Yoshizawa, who created a teachable language of dashes and folds that kicked off the world of modern origami. More than 200 years ago, someone folded paper in Japan, Lang began, showing simple cranes depicted in a 1797 Japanese drawing. On March 20, Alamo’s Robert Lang - a physicist, mathematician, recent Google Doodle artist and internationally-renowned origami expert - set hearts aflutter and eyes popping with his stunning, uncut square pieces of paper and his “Science of Origami” presentation. The series, whose name deceptively suggests a casual evening sipping lattés while contemplating the stars, delivers breathtaking Mach 10 exposés of the rigorous science behind the most improbable subjects. The power of paper was on full display at the Lafayette Library & Learning Center’s Science Café, a monthly gathering in which artists, DNA researchers, “Survivor” television celebrities and even chocolate makers fling a whirlwind of revelations at audiences packing the facilities’ Community Hall.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |