Student Origami Exhibit 2006-2007

The Wiesner Student Art Gallery has been taken over by various insects, monsters, even a dancer—and each is a marvel of engineered folding.

The exhibit will open Thursday, November 9th from 4-6 pm on the second floor of the Stratton Student Center, and will run 24 hours a day through November 30th.

View the list of past winners or a photo gallery of their creations.

About the judges

About the contest
Sponsored by the Office of the Arts/Student & Artist-in-Residence Programs, MIT Japan, and the Office of Erik Demaine, this contest was designed to promote interest in origami in the MIT community and showcase student work. Models must be made entirely by folding - no glue or tape can be used - although they may be modular. Original designs are encouraged but not required. Submitted works are judged by a jury and winning entries are exhibited in the Wiesner Gallery.

2006-2007 Winning Submissions

Best original design and and best MIT theme: Mens et Manus II
Brian Chan, G

Best boat: Ship 4
Jason Ku '09

Best miniature origami: Eastern Dragon
Michael Forbes '09

Best insect: Mayfly
Brian Chan, G

Best monster: Rose Monster Metamorphosis
Aviv Ovadya '08

Best movie-inspired origami: Guy Fawkes (V's Mask)
Brian Chan, G

Best human figure: Dancer
Jason Ku '09

Some examples of student's work:

"Modified Valentine" by Andrea Hawksley '07

"Mantis" by Brian Chan 'G

"MIT Pleat Fold" by Howard Kellogg '08

For more information, email artscoordinator@mit.edu or call 3-8089.

About the judges :

• Elsa Chen graduated with a SBEE from MIT in 1989. She will always be grateful to Mr. Bob Giovannucci at Lincoln Laboratory for telling her about the origami mailing list in 1990. She learned about the Friends of the Origami Center of America (since renamed OrigamiUSA) from this e-mail list and hasn't missed an OrigamiUSA Convention since. She has taken classes from origami artists specializing in various styles of work, ranging from complex representational (e.g., Akira Yoshizawa, Michael LaFosse, Robert Lang) through geometric (e.g., Chris Palmer, Jeannine Mosely, Tomoko Fuse). She has been a contributing member of the origami fanzine, imagiro, since 1995. More recently, she has traveled to Japan to attend conventions of the Japanese Origami Academic Soceity and the Nippon Origami Association.
• Erik Demaine is Esther & Harold Edgerton Associate Professor in EECS who, in addition to enjoying folding paper, studies origami mathematically and algorithmically. He is currently co-authoring a book on folding and unfolding together with Joseph O'Rourke. Erik is also collaborating with Robert Lang to understand the algorithmic design process of origami and implementing these ideas into a program called TreeMaker. Erik writes a bimonthly column for Imagiro, an origami zine. He has been folding origami for 6 years.
• Martin Demaine is a visiting scientist in the MIT Lab for Computer Science studying folding problems and algorithmic art. He has been enjoying origami for 20 years. As a glassblower, his work is in several museum collections in Canada and Australia. He also has been commissioned to make a set of goblets for Queen Elizabeth. Martin and Erik Demaine developed the paper folding methods for "Hyparhedra"--polyhedral sculptures based on hyperbolic paraboloids--featured in "Fragments of Infinity" by Ivars Peterson.
• Anne LaVin (MIT SB 1985, Aeronautics and Astronautics) has been practicing origami for over 30 years, ever since being introduced to it (and loving it immediately) in elementary school. A member of OrigamiUSA since 1992, and the Japan Origami Academic Society since 1998, she regularly attends workshops and conventions in New York and, when possible, in Japan. Her origami interests span the range of the craft, in style, content and technique, from representational and sculptural to geometric and mathematical, and extend to a variety of related paper crafts, including papermaking and bookbinding. Her most recent origami activities have included the translation, from Japanese to English, of the book "Polyhedron Origami" with origami creator and author Miyuki Kawamura, and the production of origami artwork for a television advertisment for Cingular Wireless.
• Jeannine Moseley (MIT Ph.D. 1984, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) first started doing origami as a child, over 40 years ago. She joined Origami USA in 1995 and regularly attends any origami conventions she can get to. She has designed numerous geometric original models, and is best known for her models made from business cards. In 1996 she started the Business Card Menger's Sponge Project to build a model of the fractal known as Menger's Sponge out of 66,048 recycled business cards. This is a community educational project involving hundreds of volunteers, and she expects the model to be completed in 2003. In 2002, she was chosen as one of two recipients of the Yoshino Issei Prize by the Japan Origami Academic Society, which paid for her trip to Tokyo to attend and teach at their annual convention.