Playing with modules

Some days, all you have is access to some paper, and time.  Or, in other words, I have a little spare time on my hands but forgot my projects at home.  Oops.

So I’ve gone back to an old hobby, folding paper or more formally known as the art of origami.  Personally, I prefer the kind of origami that uses multiple sheets of paper, rather than a single sheet.  There’s something satisfying about folding a set of modules and combining them into a single finished product that is more than the sum of its parts.

Fireworks Closed Fireworks Opening Fireworks Flipped

For instance, there is the Origami Firework designed by Yama Yamauchi, which consists of simple 12 models and produces a flexiball – a round torus that can be rotated by pushing up in the center from below, and out  along the edges from above (or vice versa).  It’s a wonderful fiddleball when thinking, and the colour combinations possible are endless; you have 12 modules, but what colours you choose, or how you order them, is entirely up to you.  In my case, I used one origami paper on the outside, and a second on the inside, making the contrasts happen.

And before I lose the link, here’s a site with many types of modules that I fully expect and hope to be playing with in the foreseeable future:  http://michal.kosmulski.org/origami/balls.html