Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Yum Yum For The Brain: Design1o1, Day3








Today's homework became a journey through the treacherous landscape of trial and error (error after error after error!). It ignited my love of a challenge, tested my patience, called on my tenacity, and after many grumblings and crumplings, eventually yielded success.

Crumply Crumplings And Crane.
Success, Basic: I finally managed to transform the square piece of paper into something resembling an Origami crane.

Success, Advanced: I was reminded about the process of learning, and learning how best to learn. I ended up having to use a combination of two separate online Origami resources, a wiki, and a tutorial to actually understand how and where to fold the paper at certain tricky junctures. I kept getting stuck at a certain point with the wiki -- that's where the pile of crumplings happened. After a while, I zoomed out and tried instructions from a different site. Luckily the tutorial provided the key I was missing. Yes, you need to carefully fold the paper... AND you need to go over each fold several times with a ruler to make it super-duper-uber crisp. Otherwise, the paper doesn't respond and you are left with a mess.

Finding that key is so gratifying. I love that moment when precisely at the point where you were so terribly stuck, you now flow through like a river to the sea. In that little moment, at that turning point, larger horizons appear, hope is renewed and optimism soars.

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Feeding At The Trough Of Nature

Then came the photo shoot. Where was I going to put this bird? And this bird is supposed to represent ME? Ok, fun.

I went outside and ended up "Feeding At The Trough Of Nature."

Is this me? Is this not me? Meh. I don't particularly care one way or the other. I'm an overthinker by nature and I am using this course to work on doing the exact opposite.

"Don't think too much, just do! Make a choice and go with it! Quick, quick!" I keep feeling the dizzying, beneficial influence of my ceramic sculpture teacher, Biliana Popova.




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Lastly, the references. References, research, discovery and exploration -- yum yum for the brain! With the addition of the secret sauce Community factor which for me is working mostly via Twitter (as of now, the iversity discussion platform is unfortunately terribly inadequate and cumbersome).


Loved Robert Lang's talk:



Loved Erik Demaine's Computational Origami -- most especially the exquisite circular fold sculptures:



Loved bumping into this recommendation and following up on it (can you spot the other Charles & Ray Eames reference in this post? Hint: It's all the way at the top!):




Finally, loved reading this post by Yusra Mujib, another of my fellow students:


PS: Ummm, what about that 1-hour limit? Yep. Not so much, today! Oh well...!

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