Thursday, August 11, 2011

What is creativity?

Translation by Mickael Assis

What is Creativity?

It could be that it is the art of rearranging diverse elements into a new order to create a new whole.
That is why it is so important to know the elementary building blocks of your art!

If you are unaware of what existed and has worked in the past, you won’t be able to build on top of them! The chef Ferran Adria therefore mastered the whole art of classical cuisine, before forgetting everything in order to reinvent a new cuisine (becoming a practitioner of molecular grastronomy). This in turn has caused his establishment to be designated, after 10 years, the “best restaurant in the world”!

On the other hand, the failure of Palm in the smartphone business is due to the simple fact that its CEO had never used an iPhone and therefore didn’t understand the immense gains that Apple had made with the public.

In other words, if you really want to be creative in origami, to really bring something new to it, you will need to master the full collection of techniques in origami and to understand their essence.

If you are addicted to boxpleating or only swear by the works of Kamiya, Lang, or Brian Chan, it is time to explore other areas, for example tessellations, the crumpling technique of Floderer, or modular origami. Otherwise, you will be condemned to be Kamiya-like, of which you will clearly have no interest in.

If you are reticent, then all the better: that means that you will really learn something new.

For example, tessellations will teach you the delicate work that light and shadows perform to change the texture of the paper; Floderer’s crumpling technique will usher you into the amazing world of ordered chaos, where the paper’s tension defines the structure of the model; the modular approach will teach you all the types of locks, which are particularly useful for locking your models.

If you are a fan of models with 200 steps, then discover the surprising richness and genius of the simple models by Nick Robinson or Javier Caboblanco (and you will discover that it is a lot harder to create a simple model than a complex one).

If you are addicted to boxes and Chinese modular units, discover the animals of Roman Diaz, overwhelming with ingenuity.

In short, venture into areas that you haven’t mastered, even those you’re put off by. Integrate them, understand them, and break them down into multiple elementary units. Once you have done that, you will be able to bring everything together to create something novel. You will be able to, finally, bring something new to the art of origami.

Here are two examples of models that are really a blast of innovation:


The incredible sheep by Victor Coeurjoly is a daring and improbable mix of crumpling and classical techniques of origami:



The tower and the ruins of Gachepapier combine different types of tessellations that together amplify the works.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Je conviens avec vous, Nicolas.
Une bonne réflexion sur la créativité et l'innovation, mais je poser une question, pensez-vous il ya encore des techniques de découvrir ou de ce qui s'est réellement les impacts sont les modèles qui sont créés avec les techniques existantes? ...
Le succès réside dans le dynamisme du modèle créé, comme vous avez dit dans votre commentaire précédent sur le lapin Gachepapier, ou le pionnier d'une nouvelle technique que d'autres suivront et développer les limites absolues?
La Fondation a développé dans les années 70 ont été dépassés. Je suis curieuse et pourrait écrire sur l'endroit où vous pensez que l'origami est à la tête ...
Merci pour votre comenatrios et j'espère que mon français traduit par un programme informatique sonne bien:)

Halle

Anonymous said...

I agree with you, Nicolas.
A good reflection on creativity and innovation, but I ask one question, do you think there are still techniques to discover or what really impacts are the models that are created with existing techniques? ...
Does the success lies in the dynamism of the model created, as you said in your previous comment on the rabbit Gachepapier, or pioneering a new technique that others will follow and develop to the absolute limits?
The bases developed in the 70's have been surpassed. I'm curious and might write about what´s the future of origami...
Thank you for your comments and I hope my French translated by a computer program sounds good:)

Halle

Unknown said...

Great article. I like Couerjoly's concept of creation and how he mixes both crumpling and traditional tecniques. Really interesting.
I have folded some tessellations and modular origami so I hope to start creating soon! ^^ haha

Nicolas TERRY said...

>I ask one question, do you think there are still techniques to discover or what really impacts are the models that are created with existing techniques? ...

I don't know if there are still techniques to discover. I Hope.
For example, Robert Lang just developed Hex-pleated and will bring new Tesselation theories.

> Does the success lies in the dynamism of the model created, as you said in your previous comment on the rabbit Gachepapier, or pioneering a new technique that others will follow and develop to the absolute limits?

There are many Arts : There is the art of create new technics and the Art to assemble this technics to offer emotional. Both are important and both are gift that Artist offer.

Anonymous said...

web blog may great new rose
http://socialnetwork.techblogexpert.com/members/diegowort/activity/53034/
http://social.orai.cc/blogs/user/KennethHen
http://www.expanti.com/hand4/link/18315
http://www.ampmcomputersinc.com/EDU/blogs/user/OctaviaStr
http://www.asociacionpornuestrainfancia.org/node/5642/

Origami University said...

Good grief that ruins model looks fantastic!