The New Yorker ran an article about an origami guy (Robert Lang) without any pictures of origami. Lang's webpage is here and has lots of pictures, including this tarantula:
with the following crease pattern:
What the New Yorker article really should've had is a picture of an origami sculpture along with a description of how it was done and why it was hard. I mean, the article was OK, but just generic journalism. If you're going to do an article about an artist with unusual technical skills, why not discuss these a bit?
The really annoying thing is this guy Lang. Successful scientist, lots of original work, patents, etc. Origami genius, super creative, takes the art into places it's never been before. Develops folding algorithms, programs them up nicely. Very generous with his talents, gives away his programs, encouraging to others. Excellent writer and, if he designed his website himself, an excellent web designer too.
Where does this guy get off? For god's sake, the rest of us feel inferior enough without having people like this to compare ourselves to.
Can't this guy just do some desultory work every now and then and spend most of his time in front of the TV, like a normal person?
Phil,
Maybe we can get him a blog. That's a good way to reduce someone's productivity.
On a more interesting matter, I can't at all visualize how the crease pattern above can make the 8 legs of the tarantula. I guess I'll have to read Lang's book.
Gosh - blogs, alcohol, drugs of all sort, women, men, sports (even better, just watching sports on TV), ...
Then again, maybe origami was the universe's way of protecting itself against him, after all else failed.
A friend pointed me to this post because he knew I was interested in Origami. Robert Lang is a great origamian. I haven't read the article, but one of his signature achievements in the art was constructing a computer program to come up with crease patterns for a model with an arbitrary set of proportional points.
It's a downloadable program:
http://www.langorigami.com/science/treemaker/treemaker5.php4